وَٱضْمُمْ يَدَكَ إِلَىٰ جَنَاحِكَ تَخْرُجْ بَيْضَآءَ مِنْ غَيْرِ سُوٓءٍ ءَايَةً أُخْرَىٰ · لِنُرِيَكَ مِنْ ءَايَٰتِنَا ٱلْكُبْرَى · ٱذْهَبْ إِلَىٰ فِرْعَوْنَ إِنَّهُۥ طَغَىٰ
Waḍmum yadaka ilā janāḥika takhruj bayḍāʾa min ghayri sūʾin āyatan ukhrā · Li-nuriyaka min āyātina'l-kubrā · Idhhab ilā Firʿawna innahu ṭaghā
"'Draw your hand to your side; it will come out white, without any ill — another sign. · That We may show you some of Our greatest signs. · Go to Pharaoh; he has transgressed.'"
مِنْ غَيْرِ سُوٓءٍ — "without any ill". The note itself is worth recording: the verse states separately that the whiteness is not a disease. For a man of that day a hand gone white in the desert was a direct sign of disease; the sentence closes off that possibility.
جَنَاح — when the word janāḥ is used of a human being it means "arm, side, armpit"; it was treated at al-Qaṣaṣ on 28/32 (waḍmum ilayka janāḥaka mina'r-rahb), and the explanation the lexicographers ground in the image of a bird was transmitted there. I rely on that treatment.
And the difference is worth recording: in al-Qaṣaṣ the drawing in of the janāḥ was against fear; here the putting of the hand into the janāḥ is for the producing of a sign. The same word, in two different offices.
The root ط-غ-ي was treated in many places in the series (al-Nāziʿāt, Qāf, al-Fajr, al-Qalam) and is not repeated here. The description given there: water's overflowing its vessel; going past the measure and out beyond it.
| Verse | Expression | Who |
|---|---|---|
| 24 | Idhhab ilā Firʿawna innahu ṭaghā | Pharaoh — the ground of the commission |
| 43 | Idhhabā ilā Firʿawna innahu ṭaghā | Pharaoh — the same sentence, in the dual |
| 81 | Wa lā taṭghaw fīh | The Children of Israel — after being delivered |
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the three verses above: the sūra warns the delivered party with the very root that characterises the one they were delivered from. That is, ṭughyān is given not as a risk attached to an identity but as one attached to a position — and indeed in the eighty-first verse the subject of the prohibition is the favour itself.