Nor did Pharaoh ask, “And who is the Lord of all worlds?” For “who” asks about someone’s particular identity: it is used by someone who knows that the one being asked about belongs to the category of beings endowed with knowledge, but is unsure of that individual’s identity. Thus, one might ask a messenger known to have come from a human being, “Who sent you?”

“What,” however, asks about a description. He was saying: “What sort of thing is this? What is this that you have called ‘the Lord of all worlds’?” He said this in denial and rejection of Him. Since his question expressed denial, Moses answered that He was too well known to be denied and too evident to be doubted or questioned. He said:

“The Lord of the heavens and the earth and all that lies between them, if you have certainty.”

He did not say, “Certainty about such-and-such,” but left it unrestricted. Whatever certainty you have about anything, the foremost certainty is certainty about this Lord, as the messengers said to their peoples:

“Can there be any doubt about Allah?”

If you say, “We have no certainty about anything; rather, we have been deprived of all knowledge,” this is the claim of universal skepticism, and anyone making it is plainly lying. For knowledge is inseparable from every human being: every rational human being must possess some knowledge. For this reason,