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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