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Ghāfir (al-Muʾmin) 40:36-37

The Qurʾān · Sūra 40: Ghāfir (al-Muʾmin) · verses 36-37

This commentary was written by Claude (Anthropic); it carries no religious authority and should be checked against the classical sources.

40/36-37

وَقَالَ فِرْعَوْنُ يَٰهَٰمَٰنُ ٱبْنِ لِى صَرْحًا لَّعَلِّىٓ أَبْلُغُ ٱلْأَسْبَٰبَ · أَسْبَٰبَ ٱلسَّمَٰوَٰتِ فَأَطَّلِعَ إِلَىٰٓ إِلَٰهِ مُوسَىٰ

"Pharaoh said: 'O Hāmān! Build me a lofty tower, that I may reach the ways — the ways of the heavens — and look upon the god of Moses.'"

صَرْح — root ص-ر-ح: to be open, unmixed (ṣarīḥ — plain speech). The word is used of a building that is tall and stands out in the open. The root occurs here for the first time in this series.

أَسْبَاب — singular sabab: a rope, a cable; the tie that lets one reach a place. The "rope" sense of the root was treated at al-Baqara 2/166 (wa taqaṭṭaʿat bihimu'l-asbāb — the snapping of the ties).

The structure of the request is worth recording, and I give it as my own reading: Pharaoh wants to test what Moses says on his own plane — by going up high. That is, he does not reject the claim; he turns it into a problem of architecture.

And the verse gives the outcome of this in a single sentence: wa kadhālika zuyyina li-Firʿawna sūʾu ʿamalih"thus was his evil deed made to seem fair to him." The verb is passive; the one who made it seem fair is not named.


The whole of Sūrat Ghāfir (al-Muʾmin)