“…and I will surely crucify every one of you.’ (49)
They replied, ‘No harm; to our Lord we shall return. (50) We hope our Lord will forgive us our sins, for we were the first to believe.’ (51) [verses 49–51]
The point is that Pharaoh lied and slandered, plunging into the very depths of disbelief when he said, ‘He is your chief who taught you magic.’ He hurled a calumny whose falsehood is apparent to every person of knowledge—indeed to all mankind—when he declared, ‘This is but a scheme you have plotted in the city so that you might drive out its people; but you will soon know.’ His threat, ‘I shall surely cut off your hands and feet on opposite sides,’ means the right hand and the left foot—or the reverse. ‘And I will crucify every one of you,’ that is, he would make of them a public example and a warning, lest any of his subjects or co-religionists follow their lead. Hence he also said, ‘I will certainly crucify you upon the trunks of date-palms,’ meaning on their lofty, conspicuous stems, ‘and you will surely know which of us is sterner in punishment and more lasting’—in this world.
They answered, ‘We shall never prefer you to the clear proofs that have come to us, nor to Him Who created us.’ Some take the phrase as a conjunction, others as an oath. ‘So decree whatever you will,’ meaning: do whatever lies within your power; ‘you can only decree concerning this life of the world.’ Your authority over us ends with this earthly life; once we leave it we will pass to the judgment of the One to Whom we have submitted and whose messengers we have followed. ‘We have believed in our Lord that He may forgive us our sins and the magic to which you compelled us. Allah is better and more enduring’—His reward is better than the nearness and favors you promised us, and more lasting than this perishing abode.
In another verse they said, ‘No harm; to our Lord we shall return. (50) Indeed, we hope our Lord will forgive us our sins,’ meaning the offenses and prohibitions we have committed, ‘for we were the first to believe’—among the Copts—in Moses and Aaron, peace be upon them.
They also said to him: ‘And what do you resent in us except that we believed in the signs of our Lord when they came to us?’—we have no crime in your sight but our faith in what our messenger brought and our acceptance of our Lord’s signs. ‘Our Lord, pour upon us patience,’ that is, make us steadfast under the punishment of this obstinate tyrant, this powerful ruler—indeed, this rebellious devil—‘and cause us to die as Muslims.’
They further admonished him, warning him of their Lord’s might: ‘Indeed, whoever comes to his Lord as a criminal—for him there is Hell; he neither dies therein nor lives.’ They were saying to him: beware lest you be among them—but he became one of them. ‘And whoever comes to Him as a believer who has done righteous deeds—for such people there are the highest ranks: Gardens of perpetual residence beneath which rivers flow, abiding therein forever. That is the reward of those who purify themselves.’ They urged him, therefore, to strive to be among them. Yet the decrees of the Most High, the Almighty—decrees that can neither be resisted nor opposed—intervened, and the judgment of the Exalted One was that Pharaoh—may Allah curse him—would be among the inhabitants of Hell, tasting the painful torment, as scalding water is poured over his head, while it is said to him