Al-Qasas (The Stories)

19. “So when he intended to assault him who was the enemy of them both, the man said: ‘O Moses! Do you intend to kill me as you killed a person yesterday? You desire nothing but to be a tyrant in the land; and you do not desire to be of the reformers’.”

The Arabic word /batš/ means: ‘anger accompanied with severity and power’.

Criticism upon the friends’ fault should not cause them to leave the fact and do not support their right.

(Though Moses criticized his friend, saying:

‘…You are one erring manifestly’,

yet he decided to support him again.)

The verse says:

“So when he intended to assault him who was the enemy of them both, the man said: ‘O Moses! Do you intend to kill me as you killed a person yesterday? You desire nothing but to be a tyrant in the land; and you do not desire to be of the reformers’.”

This sentence shows that Moses had already expressed his reforming intention both in the castle of Pharaoh and outside of it, and some narrations indicate that he had some conflicts in this field with Pharaoh, too.

That is why the Coptic man says to Moses that every day he wanted to kill a man; what a reformer he was! While if Moses decided to kill this tyrant, too, it would be a step on the way of reform.

However, Moses understood that the yesterday event had been revealed and, in order that he would not face with some more difficulties, he did not follow the matter.

By the way, Ibn Abbas, as well as the majority of the commentators of both sects, have said that the subject of the Qur’anic verb /qala/ is the Israelite man for whose support Moses had killed the Coptic man the previous day, and who fearfully said that Moses wanted to kill him as he killed the Coptic man.¹