Page 98 - Miracles of The Qur'an Vol. 3
P. 98

Miracles of the Qur’an



                    Allah told the Prophet Moses (as) and those with him to leave
              where they were:
                  We revealed to Moses: 'Travel with Our slaves by night. You will
                  certainly be pursued.' Pharaoh sent marshals into the cities:
                  'These people are a small group and we find them irritating and
                  we constitute a vigilant majority.' We expelled them from gar-
                  dens and springs, from treasures and a splendid situation. So it
                  was! And We bequeathed them to the tribe of Israel. So they pur-
                  sued them towards the east. (Surat ash-Shu'ara', 52-60)

                  As revealed in the Qur'an, the two peoples—the Israelites and the
              Egyptians—came together at the end of this chase. Allah rescued the
              Prophet Moses (as) and the believers with him by parting the sea, while
              destroying Pharaoh and his people. Allah's assistance to the believers is
              revealed as follows in the Qur'an:
                  So We revealed to Moses, 'Strike the sea with your staff.' And it
                  split in two, each part like a towering cliff. And We brought the
                  others right up to it. We rescued Moses and all those who were
                  with him. Then We drowned the rest. There is certainly a Sign in
                  that yet most of them are not believers. Truly your Lord is the
                  Almighty, the Most Merciful. (Surat Ash-Shu'ara', 63-68)
                  The Arabic word "idrib," translated as "strike" in the first of these
              verses, also means "to open, divide or separate." In the light of this ex-
              pression and what happened subsequently, the verse may be a reference
              to the formation of tsunami waves. (Allah knows the truth.) Tsunami
              waves cause large amounts of water to shift and they can give way to the
              emergence of earth on shallow grounds. In the time of the Prophet Moses
              (as), as with the tsunami waves, the waters might have pulled back some

              hundreds of meters and this might have caused the parting of the sea.
              (Allah knows the truth.)
                  In addition, the waters are compared to mountains in the above verse.
              The waters collected in a tsunami form a giant peak  81  and resemble a
                    mountain seen from below.  As with mountains, the base of




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