If you are not of this class, then I have given you the second answer, if you are people of reason and delimitation and confine the Real to what the proofs of your reason establish. Moses thus presented both aspects to make Pharaoh aware of his excellence and truthfulness. Moses knew that Pharaoh had understood this, or would understand it, because he had asked about the essence. He therefore knew that Pharaoh’s question did not follow the ancients’ convention of inquiry, and for that reason he answered. Had he understood him otherwise, he would have declared his question mistaken.

When Moses identified the object of the question with the world itself, Pharaoh addressed him in these terms, without the people realizing it. He said to him:

‘If you take a god other than me, I will certainly make you one of the imprisoned.’

The sīn in sijn (imprisonment) is an added letter; the meaning is: ‘I shall conceal you, for your answer has supported me in making such a statement. If you say to me in the language of allusion, “Pharaoh, you have shown ignorance by threatening me, for the reality is one—how, then, have you distinguished between us?”’ Pharaoh replies: ‘It is the ranks alone that have differentiated the reality; the reality itself has neither become separate nor been divided in its essence. My rank now is to exercise actual power over you, Moses. I am you in reality, but I am other than you in rank.’”

He continued until he said:

“Since Pharaoh occupied the seat of rule, held authority in his time, was the ruler by the sword, and acted within the established normative order, he said:

‘I am your lord, the most high.’

That is: although all are lords in some respect, I am the highest among them by virtue of the outward power over you that I have been given.

When the sorcerers recognized the truth of what he had said to them, they did not deny it, but acknowledged it and said to him:

‘Decree whatever you will decree; you can decree only concerning this worldly life.’

Thus, dominion is yours.