فَتَوَلَّىٰ فِرْعَوْنُ فَجَمَعَ كَيْدَهُۥ ثُمَّ أَتَىٰ · قَالَ لَهُم مُّوسَىٰ وَيْلَكُمْ لَا تَفْتَرُوا۟ عَلَى ٱللَّهِ كَذِبًا فَيُسْحِتَكُم بِعَذَابٍ وَقَدْ خَابَ مَنِ ٱفْتَرَىٰ · فَتَنَٰزَعُوٓا۟ أَمْرَهُم بَيْنَهُمْ وَأَسَرُّوا۟ ٱلنَّجْوَىٰ
Fa-tawallā Firʿawnu fa-jamaʿa kaydahu thumma atā · Qāla lahum Mūsā waylakum lā taftarū ʿala'llāhi kadhiban fa-yusḥitakum bi-ʿadhāb, wa qad khāba mani'ftarā · Fa-tanāzaʿū amrahum baynahum wa asarru'n-najwā · Qālū in hādhāni la-sāḥirāni yurīdāni an yukhrijākum min arḍikum bi-siḥrihimā wa yadhhabā bi-ṭarīqatikumu'l-muthlā · Fa-ajmiʿū kaydakum thumma'tū ṣaffā, wa qad aflaḥa'l-yawma mani'stalā
"Pharaoh turned away, gathered his scheme, and then came. · Moses said to them: 'Woe to you! Do not invent a lie against God, or He will wipe you out with a punishment. Whoever has invented has surely lost.' · Then they disputed their affair among themselves and spoke in secret. · They said: 'These two are certainly sorcerers; they want to drive you out of your land with their sorcery and do away with your exemplary way. · So gather your scheme and then come in ranks. Whoever prevails today has surely prospered.'"
A point of word order must be recorded: in the sixty-first verse the one Moses addresses is not Pharaoh but lahum — that is, the sorcerers who have been brought forward.
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the addressee: Moses does not tell the men set against him that they ought to lose. He tells them what the work they are doing is. And this agrees with the measure of the forty-fourth verse: the other side is given a sentence in which it can see its own condition.
And the outcome has its counterpart in the text as a datum: in the sixty-first verse it says wa qad khāba mani'ftarā; in the seventieth those same sorcerers will fall down in prostration. That is, the warning has found its addressee.
يُسْحِت — root س-ح-ت: to scrape away at the root, to destroy utterly. From the same root suḥt — earnings whose blessing has been scraped away, unlawful gain (al-Māʾida 5/42). The picture in the word is an erasing from the bottom, not from the surface.
فَتَنَٰزَعُوٓا۟ أَمْرَهُم بَيْنَهُمْ وَأَسَرُّوا۟ ٱلنَّجْوَىٰ — "they disputed their affair among themselves and kept their whispering secret."
The root of najwā was treated in detail at al-Mujādala; I do not repeat it here.
What belongs here is an observation about the structure: asarrū (they kept secret) and najwā (whispering) stand in the same sentence. Whispering is secret already; the verse records a further layer of secrecy. And the answer to this had been given in advance in the seventh verse of the sūra: fa-innahu yaʿlamu's-sirra wa akhfā — "He knows the secret and what is more hidden than it".
| Verse | Expression | What |
|---|---|---|
| 7 | Yaʿlamu's-sirra wa akhfā | The principle — a double secrecy is known |
| 62 | Wa asarrū'n-najwā | The event — a double secrecy is enacted |
This is an overlap that can be verified within the sūra, and I record it as my own reading: the abstract sentence at the sūra's opening finds its counterpart as a concrete scene inside the story.
طَرِيقَتِكُمُ ٱلْمُثْلَىٰ — "your exemplary way". Muthlā is the feminine of amthal: "most exemplary, most excellent". Worth recording: the objection is framed not as a religious claim but as the preservation of an order and a way of life.
The same logic was treated at al-Qaṣaṣ on 28/57 (in nattabiʿi'l-hudā maʿaka nutakhaṭṭaf min arḍinā), and it was recorded there: the objection is built not on belief but on a concern for security. I rely on that treatment. The difference in Ṭāhā: the object of the concern is not the land but the ṭarīqa — the order of living.