He said, “O my Lord! truly I have slain one of them, therefore fear I lest they slay me.
My brother Aaron is clearer of speech than I. Send him, therefore, with me as a help, and to make good my cause, for I fear lest they treat me as an impostor.”
He said, “We will strengthen thine arm with thy brother, and we will give power unto you both, and they shall not equal you in our signs. Ye twain and they who shall follow you, shall gain the day.”
And when Moses came to him with our demonstrative signs they said, “This is nought but magical device. We never heard the like among our sires of old.”
And Moses said, “My Lord best knoweth on whom He hath bestowed His guidance, and whose shall be the recompense of the abode of Paradise. Verily, the wicked shall not prosper.”
And Pharaoh said, “O ye nobles, ye have no other God that I know of but myself. Burn me then, Haman, bricks of clay,[1] and build me a tower that I may mount up to the God of Moses, for in sooth, I deem him a liar.”
And he and his hosts behaved themselves proudly and unjustly on the earth, and thought that they should never be brought back to us.
40But we seized on him and his hosts and cast them into the sea: Behold, then, the end of the wrongful doers:
And we made them imâms who invite to the fire of hell, and on the day of Resurrection they shall not be helped.
We followed them with a curse in this world, and covered shall they be with shame on the day of Resurrection.
And after we had destroyed the former generations, we gave the book of the Law to Moses for man's enlightening, and a guidance and a mercy, that haply they might reflect.
And thou wast not on the western slope of Sinai when we laid his charge on Moses, nor wast thou one of the witnesses;
But we raised up generations after Moses, men whose days were lengthened;[2] neither didst thou dwell among the inhabitants of Madian to rehearse to them our signs, but we sent Apostles to them.[3]
- ↑ Lit. kindle upon the clay. Comp. [Ixxviii.] xl. 38-49. “He (Pharaoh) said to them: From the first have ye spoken an untruth, for Lord of the Worlds am I. I created myself and the Nile, as it is said (Ez. xxix. 3), ‘My river is mine own and I have made it for myself.’” (E.T.) Mid. Rab. on Ex. Par. 5.
- ↑ So that the oral traditions would be easily handed down.
- ↑ Or, yet have we sent thee as an Apostle to them.
