for you, Allah would have guided him just as He guided her.” (1) Asiya was then told, “Name him.” She said, “I have named him Moses because we found him among the water and the trees: mu means water, and si means tree.” (2) This is the meaning of His saying, exalted is He: “So Pharaoh’s household picked him up…”

“So Pharaoh’s household picked him up, that he might become an enemy and a cause of grief to them. Indeed, Pharaoh, Haman, and their soldiers were sinners. And Pharaoh’s wife said, ‘A comfort to my eye and yours. Do not kill him; perhaps he may benefit us, or we may adopt him as a son.’ Yet they were unaware.”

“Pharaoh’s household picked him up”: picking something up means finding it without having sought it. “That he might become an enemy and a cause of grief to them”: this lam is termed the lam of consequence, or the lam of eventual outcome, for they did not pick him up in order for him to become an enemy and a cause of grief to them; rather, that was the eventual outcome of their affair. Hamzah and al-Kisa’i recited “a cause of grief” with the ha vowelled with dammah and the zay unvowelled, while the others recited it with both the ha and the zay vowelled with fathah. Both are valid dialectal forms. “Indeed, Pharaoh, Haman, and their soldiers were sinners”: that is, disobedient (3), sinful.

His saying, exalted is He: “And Pharaoh’s wife said, ‘A comfort to my eye and yours.’” Wahb said: When the chest was placed before Pharaoh, they opened it and found Moses inside. When he looked at him, he said, “A Hebrew—one of our enemies!” This angered him, and he said, “How did this boy escape slaughter?”

Pharaoh had married a woman from the Children of Israel named Asiya bint Muzahim. She was among the finest of women and descended from the prophets. She was like a mother to the poor: she showed them mercy, gave charity to them, and provided for them. Sitting beside Pharaoh, she said to him, “This infant is older than a year, whereas you ordered only the boys born this year to be slaughtered. So leave him, that he may be a comfort to my eye and yours. ‘Do not kill him.’”

It is also related that she said to him, “He has come to us from another land; he is not from the Children of Israel. ‘Perhaps he may benefit us, or we may adopt him as a son.’” They did not realize that their destruction would come at his hands. Pharaoh therefore spared his life, and Allah cast love for him into Pharaoh’s heart. He said to his wife, “Perhaps he will benefit you; as for me, I have no desire for his benefit.”

Wahb said that Ibn Abbas, may Allah be pleased with him, said: “Had the enemy of Allah said concerning Moses what Asiya said—‘Perhaps he may benefit us’—Allah would have benefited him through Moses. But he refused, because of the wretchedness Allah had decreed for him.” (4)