وَأَدْخِلْ يَدَكَ فِى جَيْبِكَ تَخْرُجْ بَيْضَآءَ مِنْ غَيْرِ سُوٓءٍ فِى تِسْعِ ءَايَٰتٍ إِلَىٰ فِرْعَوْنَ وَقَوْمِهِۦٓ إِنَّهُمْ كَانُوا۟ قَوْمًا فَٰسِقِينَ
wa adkhil yadaka fī jaybika takhruj bayḍāʾa min ghayri sūʾin fī tisʿi āyātin ilā Firʿawna wa qawmih, innahum kānū qawman fāsiqīn
"'Put your hand into the fold of your garment; it will come out white, without blemish. These are among nine signs to Pharaoh and his people. They are a people gone out of the way.'"
The Qurʾān counts the signs given to Moses as nine in two places: here and al-Isrāʾ 17/101. This is a fact that can be verified from the text, and it was recorded in al-Qamar at 54/41-42: Sūrat al-Qamar gathered the same signs into a single word, kullihā ("all of them").
| Place | Expression | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| al-Qamar 54/42 | kadhdhabū bi-āyātinā kullihā | Gathering — it gives no number |
| al-Naml 27/12 | fī tisʿi āyāt | Counting — nine |
| al-Isrāʾ 17/101 | tisʿa āyātin bayyināt | Counting + a quality |
Which signs the nine are has been counted in different ways in the classical commentaries, and the list is not entirely fixed. The staff, the hand, famine, the loss of crops, the flood, the locusts, the vermin, the frogs and the blood — these items are transmitted; there is disagreement over the order and over some of the items. I do not impose a definite list.
بَيْضَآءَ مِنْ غَيْرِ سُوٓءٍ — "white, without blemish." The note matters: the phrase min ghayri sūʾ states plainly that the whiteness is not the mark of a disease. The text itself adds a gloss, so that the sign will not be read as a defect.
And the word sūʾ had already occurred in the preceding verse: baddala ḥusnan baʿda sūʾin. The same word in two consecutive verses, in two different domains: one moral, the other bodily. This is a repetition that can be verified within the sūra; I build no link of meaning on it; I record only the repetition.