Ibrāhīm 14:6

Wa idh qāla Mūsā li-qawmihi'dhkurū niʿmata'llāhi ʿalaykum idh anjākum min āli Firʿawna yasūmūnakum sūʾa'l-ʿadhābi wa yudhabbiḥūna abnāʾakum wa yastaḥyūna nisāʾakum · Wa fī dhālikum balāʾun min rabbikum ʿaẓīm

"And when Moses said to his people: 'Remember God's favour upon you: when He delivered you from the people of Pharaoh, who were making you taste the worst of punishment, slaughtering your sons and sparing your women. In that was a great trial from your Lord.'"

The concrete sense of the root is a term from herding: sāma'l-māshiya — he turned the animals out to pasture, he grazed them. Sāʾima — a grazing animal; sawm — to graze an animal, to turn it loose.

And from this comes the sense "to impose something on someone continuously, to drive him along." The lexicographers explain the transition thus: the herdsman drives the animal where he wants; when the word is used of a human being it conveys a continuous and involuntary exposure.

I record this as an observation about the word: the verb is not ʿadhdhabūkum (they punished you). The word chosen pictures the punishment not as an event but as a regime — a treatment that goes on and on, that has become daily.

And the verb's coming in the imperfect supports this: yasūmūna, yudhabbiḥūna, yastaḥyūna — all three in the mood of continuance. The deliverance (anjākum) is in the perfect, the oppression in the imperfect. That is, something finished and something still going on are separated by a difference of tense.

Istiḥyāʾ from the root ح-ي-ي: to spare, to leave alive. (From the same root comes ḥayāʾ — modesty; the lexicographers explain this second sense by the picture of "life being drawn back".)

The word order of the sentence is worth recording: the sons are slaughtered, the women are left alive. The second is on the face of it a kindness; but it is placed in the list as part of the oppression.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the list itself: the sparing is here not a mercy but the other half of the cutting off of a people's bearing generation. The verse makes this visible by enumerating the two in a single breath.

The root ب-ل-و: to test, to try; and to wear out (the fraying of a garment). The lexicographers record that beneath the root lies the idea of "bringing out what a thing is by using it."

That the word is used in the Qurʾān for good as well as for evil was treated at al-Anbiyāʾ 21/35 (wa nablūkum bi'sh-sharri wa'l-khayri fitnah) and in al-Fajr. I rely on that treatment.

Two readings are transmitted as to what the pronoun dhālikum here refers back to:

Both readings are transmitted; I do not impose a preference. But this must be recorded: the root itself carries both readings, because a balāʾ is worked with good as well as with evil.