قَالَ كَلَّا ۖ فَٱذْهَبَا بِـَٔايَٰتِنَآ ۖ إِنَّا مَعَكُم مُّسْتَمِعُونَ · فَأْتِيَا فِرْعَوْنَ فَقُولَآ إِنَّا رَسُولُ رَبِّ ٱلْعَٰلَمِينَ · أَنْ أَرْسِلْ مَعَنَا بَنِىٓ إِسْرَٰٓءِيلَ
Qāla kallā; fa'dhhabā bi-āyātinā; innā maʿakum mustamiʿūn · Fa'tiyā Firʿawna fa-qūlā innā rasūlu rabbi'l-ʿālamīn · An arsil maʿanā banī Isrāʾīl
"He said: 'No! Go, both of you, with Our signs; We are with you, listening. · Come to Pharaoh and say: We are the messenger of the Lord of all the worlds. · Send the Children of Israel with us.'"
كَلَّا in Arabic announces firm refusal and deterrence. In the Qurʾān it generally comes to reject a claim (it was treated in al-Qiyāma, ʿAbasa, al-Takāthur).
What it rejects here has been disputed. There are two readings, and both can be supported from the text:
| Reading | What it rejects | Its ground |
|---|---|---|
| It rejects the fear | "They will not kill you" | The guarantee comes immediately after: innā maʿakum |
| It rejects the objection | "These excuses do not lift the mission" | The command is repeated after it: fa'dhhabā |
The two readings do not exclude one another. What is to be recorded is this: the first word after kallā is a command, not a consolation. The consolation is placed behind the command.
The verb is dual: idhhabā — "go, the two of you". But Aaron's being commissioned had not been stated in a verse; Moses had asked for it (13). The answer therefore does not announce in a separate sentence that the request is granted — it announces it directly through the form of the verb.
This is a point of word order and is worth recording: it is not said "I have sent Aaron too"; the verb shifts to the dual. The granting is inside the grammar.
| Explanation | Ground |
|---|---|
| Pharaoh is included | The exchange is to be mutual; the party listened to numbers three |
| Two persons have been counted as a plural | Using the plural in place of the dual is ordinary in Arabic |
| Moses, Aaron and the Children of Israel are meant | The Children of Israel are named in the seventeenth verse |
I do not impose a preference. But I record an observation: the same verse holds both the dual (idhhabā) and the plural (maʿakum); the change is therefore a deliberate shift, not a casualness.
مُّسْتَمِعُون — root س-م-ع, active participle of Form X. Samiʿa is to hear, istamaʿa is to lend an ear, to listen. The difference matters: hearing is passive, listening is a directed business.
The guarantee is therefore not "we hear you" but "we are listening to you". And this will meet, later in the sūra, the sentence that comes out of Pharaoh's mouth: alā tastamiʿūn (25) — "are you not listening?" The same verb, in two different mouths.
This construction is one of the notable places in Arabic grammar: the subject is plural (innā — we), the predicate singular (rasūlu — messenger). It is not "we are messengers" (rusulu) but "we are the messenger".
| Explanation | Ground |
|---|---|
| Rasūl is in the sense of a verbal noun | In Arabic rasūl is also used in the sense of "message, what is sent"; a verbal noun makes no singular-plural distinction |
| The message of the two is one | Two messengers carry a single messengership |
| In Arabic rasūl can be both singular and plural | The lexicographers record this property of the faʿūl pattern (like ʿaduww) |
The Qurʾān's own usage supports the first explanation: not fa-inna ʿalayka laʿnatī, but at Ṭāhā 20/47, for the same event, it says innā rasūlā rabbik (dual). The same scene is thus given in two sūras in two different moulds: singular in al-Shuʿarāʾ, dual in Ṭāhā. This is a difference that can be verified from the text and requires an explanation; I have given the transmitted explanations above, and I do not impose a preference.
And the content of the request is worth recording: faith is not asked for, the abandoning of the throne is not asked for. The only thing asked for is the release of a community.
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the bareness of the sentence: the messengership first demands the lifting of a concrete wrong. The call to God's oneness will come later (23-28), because Pharaoh asks. The order is therefore this: first the demand of a right, then — upon the questioner's own question — the description of God.