Al-Qasas (The Stories)

8. “Then the people of Pharaoh picked him up (from the River) that he might be unto them an enemy and a (cause of their) grief; verily Pharaoh and Haman and their hosts were sinners.”

When anxieties and difficulties often rush, Allah is the best guide and support for the believers.

In the way of performing the commandments of Allah we must neither afraid of anything nor be anxious of any problem.

The Qur’an says:

“Then the people of Pharaoh picked him up (from the River) that he might be unto them an enemy and a (cause of their) grief…”

The Qur’anic word /’altaqata/ is derived from the word /’iltiqat/ which originally means: ‘reaching to something without any effort and endeavour’. And it is also for this reason that the lost things that one finds, in Arabic, are called /luqatah/.

It is evident that the men of Pharaoh did not take the box of this baby from the waves of the river with the purpose that they would foster their enemy in their own lap, but as the Pharaoh’s wife said, they wanted to take ‘a refreshment of eye’ for themselves, but finally it became as it happened.

The delicacy of this meaning is in this very fact that Allah intends to show His power that how He made this group, who had mobilized all their forces to kill the boys of the Children of Israel, to take care of and foster eagerly the some one for whom they applied all those cruelties in order that they could vanish him.

However, the Arabic phrase: /’alu fir‘aun/ (the people of Pharaoh), used in the verse, shows that not only one person but a group of the people of Pharaoh participated in taking the box from the water, and this is an evidence for the fact that they were waiting for such a thing.

At the end of the verse, the Qur’an adds:

“…verily Pharaoh and Haman and their hosts were sinners.”

They were sinners in every thing. What a sin is greater than this that they had left out the path of truth and justice, and founded the foundation of their government on vice, injustice, tyranny, and polytheism. And what a sin is clearer than this that they killed thousands of children to destroy Moses, but Allah put him in their own hands to take him, foster him and bring up their own enemy.

Raqib in Mufradat says:

“There is a difference between the Arabic words /xati/ and /muxti/. The term /xati/ is used for the one who begins a job that he can not afford doing it and goes a wrong way, while the term /muxti/ is used for a person who begins a job that he can afford it very well, but it happens that he makes mistake and wastes it.”