Al Shu‘arā’

إِنَّ فِي ذَلِكَ لاَيَةً وَمَا كَانَ أَكْثَرُهُم مُّؤْمِنِينَ

وَإِنَّ رَبَّكَ لَهُوَ الْعَزِيزُ الرَّحِيمُ

67. “Verily in this is a sign, yet most of them do not believe.”
68. “And verily your Lord, certainly He is the Mighty, the Merciful.”

By explaining the history of some of the former nations, Allah soothes the holy Prophet of Islam (S) and teaches him patience. Yes, it is true that the Qur’an says:

It seems that their eyes are close, their ears are deaf, and their hearts are asleep. Where the people of Pharaoh, with those wonderful scenes and events, did not believe, the Prophet (S) should not surprise of this infidel people and he would not be worried of their disbelief because the history has contained many of them in it. The application of the Arabic word /’akar/, mentioned in this noble verse, refers to this sense that some of the people of Pharaoh embraced the religion of Moses and joined his companions.

Not only ’Asiyah, Pharaohas wife, and Moses’ faithful friend who is mentioned in the Qur’an as ‘the believer of the people of Pharaoh’, but also some others, such as the wizards, repented and joined Moses (as). In the next verse, through a short and expressive sentence, the Qur’an refers to the unlimited power and mercy of Allah, where it says:

It is because of His ‘Might’ that whenever He wills He issues the command of the destruction of a rebellious nation, and for destroying a tyrannical group He does not need to send down the army of the angels from heaven, He may order the water, which is the cause of their life, to put them to death, and that very Nile River, which was the source of wealth and power for the people of Pharaoh, becomes the place of their dead bodies. And, it is from His Mercy that He does not haste in issuing this command, but He respites them for years, sends miracles for them, and completes the argument, and it is also from His Mercy that He makes these oppressed slaves free from the grips of those cruel rulers.

This point is noteworthy that it is repeatedly mentioned in the Qur’an that by the command of Allah Moses (as) made the Children of Israel pass the sea, /bahr/⁵, and in a few occurrences the word /yam/ has been used for it.⁶ Now, what is the objective of the words /bahr/ and /yam/ used here? Do they refer to the vast and great river of Nile from which the whole freshness and liveliness of Egypt originate? Or they refer to the Red Sea. There are some evidences which show the purpose is the great river of Nile, because the word /bahr/ in Arabic, as Raqib in Mufradat says, originally means ‘vast and abundant water’, and the word /yam/ means the same. Therefore applying these two words for Nile does not matter.