وَقَالَ فِرْعَوْنُ ٱئْتُونِى بِكُلِّ سَٰحِرٍ عَلِيمٍ … فَلَمَّآ أَلْقَوْا۟ قَالَ مُوسَىٰ مَا جِئْتُم بِهِ ٱلسِّحْرُ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ سَيُبْطِلُهُۥ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ لَا يُصْلِحُ عَمَلَ ٱلْمُفْسِدِينَ · وَيُحِقُّ ٱللَّهُ ٱلْحَقَّ بِكَلِمَٰتِهِۦ وَلَوْ كَرِهَ ٱلْمُجْرِمُونَ
"Pharaoh said: 'Bring me every learned sorcerer.' · When the sorcerers came, Moses said to them: 'Throw what you have to throw.' · When they had thrown, Moses said: 'What you have brought is sorcery. God will certainly bring it to nothing. God does not set right the work of those who spread corruption.' · God brings the truth about by His words, however much the guilty may dislike it."
| Reading | Structure | Sense |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mā is a relative pronoun, al-siḥru the predicate | "What you have brought is sorcery" — a finding |
| 2 | Mā is interrogative, the sentence a question | "What is it you have brought? Sorcery!" — a question plus its answer |
Both readings are transmitted; I do not impose a preference. The sense arrives at the same place either way: what has been brought is named.
And what is to be recorded of the word order is this: al-siḥru comes definite. In the seventy-sixth verse Pharaoh's men had said siḥrun mubīn (indefinite). The same word, once indefinite and once definite.
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the difference of definiteness: they called the truth "a sorcery"; Moses names what really is sorcery definitely. The word, that is, is returned to where it belongs.
I record this as an observation about the word order: the sentence states the outcome of the event before it happens. And the same structure had occurred in the thirty-first verse of the sūra: fa-sa-yaqūlūna'llāh. In both places the particle sīn gives as certain a thing that has not yet happened.
إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ لَا يُصْلِحُ عَمَلَ ٱلْمُفْسِدِينَ — and two opposite roots stand in the same sentence: ص-ل-ح and ف-س-د.
The word order of the sentence must be recorded: the verse does not say "the work of those who spread corruption is corrupt"; it says "God does not set it right". The ruling, that is, is not about the quality of the work but about its not being supported.
وَيُحِقُّ ٱللَّهُ ٱلْحَقَّ بِكَلِمَٰتِهِ (82) — verb and object are from the same root (ح-ق-ق): yuḥiqqu'l-ḥaqq.
Form IV: to bring a thing about, to make it stand fixed. The sentence means, that is, not "He makes the truth true" but "He sets the truth in its place".
And the means is stated: bi-kalimātihī — by His words. And the same word had occurred in the sixty-fourth verse: lā tabdīla li-kalimāti'llāh. It is a link that can be verified within the sūra: the word that does not change is the instrument by which the truth is brought about.