Exegetical Crossroads by Walter de Gruyter

Author:Walter de Gruyter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Published: 2018-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

2Islamic Exegesis on the Confrontation between Moses and Pharaoh

On Q 26:18, which has Pharaoh allude to his raising of Moses, the early tafsīrs attributed to Ibn ʿAbbās (d. 68/687) and Muqātil b. Sulaymān (d. 150/767) mention only that Moses stayed with Pharaoh for 30 years.767 Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1210) makes the same remark (which is meant to explain why Pharaoh specifically mentions to Moses in this verse “Did you not stay with us for years of your life”). To this Rāzī adds an anecdote which describes the scene of the encounter between Moses and Pharaoh:

The doorman said, ‘Here is a man who says that he is a messenger of the Lord of the worlds.’ [Pharaoh] said, ‘Let him come in that we might have fun with him.’ So they [Moses and Aaron] delivered the message. He recognized Moses and first recounted his favors done to him and then secondly recounted the wrong which Moses had done to him.768

The mention of a “wrong” at the end of this passage here is connected to Q 26:19 (cf. 20:40; 28:15, 33), in which Pharaoh alludes to Moses’ killing of an Egyptian: “Then you committed that deed of yours, and you are an ingrate” [or “unbeliever”].”

To Ibn Kathīr (d. 774/1373), the tradition-minded Shāfiʿī commentator, the main tension between Pharaoh and Moses in this scene is not the demand which Moses makes of Pharaoh to let the Israelites leave Egypt but rather Pharaoh’s memory of this killing. Ibn Kathīr paraphrases Q 26:18–19 by having Pharaoh declare to him: “Are you not the one we raised among us and in our midst and on our bed, the one whom we showed favor to for a long time, and then after you repaid this goodness from us with that deed by killing one of our men? You renounced our favor to you.”769

The account of Moses’ killing of an Egyptian, something only alluded to by Pharaoh in Q 26,770 is found in Q 28:

15 [Moses] entered the city at a time when its people were not likely to take notice. He found there two men fighting, this one from among his followers and that one from his enemies. The one who was from his followers sought his help against him who was from his enemies. So Moses hit him with his fist, whereupon he expired. He said, ‘This is of Satan’s doing. He is indeed clearly a misleading enemy.’ 16He said, ‘My Lord! I have wronged myself. Forgive me!’ So He forgave him. Indeed, He is the All-forgiving, the All-merciful. 17He said, ‘My Lord! As You have blessed me, I will never be a supporter of the guilty.’ (Q 28:15–17).771

Unlike Exodus, the Qurʾān has Moses blame the deed on Satan and seek forgiveness for it. In addition, Q 28:15–17 seems to make it clear that Moses’ killing of the Egyptian was wrong. This is a departure from the Bible. Exodus has Moses hide the Egyptian’s body in the sand (2:12), and it relates that Moses was afraid

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