“It is incumbent upon me to say nothing about Allah except the truth. I have come to you with a clear proof from your Lord, so let the Children of Israel go with me. (105)”

He said, “If you have brought a sign, then produce it, if you are truthful.” (106) So Moses cast down his staff, and there it was: a manifest serpent. (107)

Allah Most High says: “Then We sent, after them”—that is, after Noah, Hud, Salih, and Shuʿayb—“Moses with Our signs,” meaning, with Our proofs, “to Pharaoh and his chiefs, but they wronged them,” that is, they denied them. Wrongdoing is to put something in other than its proper place; their wrongdoing was to put disbelief in place of faith. “So see how the end of the corrupters was,” and how We dealt with them.

“And Moses said,” when he entered before Pharaoh, “O Pharaoh, I am a messenger to you from the Lord of all worlds.” Pharaoh said, “You lie.” Moses replied:

“It is incumbent upon me to say nothing about Allah except the truth.” 134/b That is, I am one who ought to say nothing about Allah except the truth. Thus, the preposition ʿalā, “upon,” has the sense of bi, “with,” just as one may say, “I shot with the bow,” or “I shot upon the bow,” and, “I came in a good state,” or “with a good state.” This is supported by the recitation of Ubayy and al-Aʿmash, which reads with bi: “I am bound to say nothing about Allah except the truth.” Abu ʿUbaydah said: It means, “I am careful to say nothing about Allah except the truth.” Nafiʿ recited it as ʿalayya, “upon me,” with a doubled yā’: that is, it is a binding duty upon me to say nothing about Allah except the truth.

“I have come to you with a clear proof from your Lord,” meaning the staff; “so let the Children of Israel go with me,” that is, release them and let them return to the Holy Land. Pharaoh had subjected them to arduous labor, such as making bricks, carrying soil, and the like.

In reply to Moses, Pharaoh said: “If you have brought a sign, then produce it, if you are truthful.”

So Moses “cast down” his staff from his hand, “and there it was: a manifest serpent.” A serpent of this kind is a huge male snake. If it is asked: Did He not say elsewhere, “as though it were a small snake” (al-Naml 10), while a small snake is a little serpent? The answer is that it was like a small snake in its movement and agility, while in body it was an enormous snake.

Ibn ʿAbbas and al-Suddi said: When he cast down the staff, it became an enormous yellow, hairy serpent, with its mouth agape; the distance between its jaws was eighty cubits. It rose from the ground to the height of a mile, stood upright before him on its tail, and placed its lower jaw upon the