﴿ قَالَ مُوسَىٰٓ أَتَقُولُونَ لِلْحَقِّ لَمَّا جَآءَكُمْ ۖ أَسِحْرٌ هَٰذَا وَلَا يُفْلِحُ ٱلسَّٰحِرُونَ ﴾

“Said Moses: "Do you speak thus of the truth after it has been brought to you? Can this be sorcery? But sorcerers can never come to a happy end!"”

When the language of reasoning was not understood by Pharaoh, he (Moses) drew his hand out of his armpit and it shone brightly. Pharaoh had no answer for this. So, he tried to hide his defeat at the hands of Moses by giving the false impression that what Moses said and did was not the Truth but a form of magic. It is true that there is some outward similarity between magic and miracles. But very soon it becomes clear that magic is simply a feat, a trick. On the contrary, a miracle is real. Magic finally proves to be magic and a miracle finally establishes itself as a miracle. On this occasion Pharaoh made two more statements calculated to divert his people from the call of Moses—one being that Moses wanted them to turn away from the religion of their ancestors. Pharaoh should have tried to understand the Message of Moses in terms of Truth and untruth. But he tested it by the ancestral and non-ancestral standard, so that he should not have to admit his wrong approach. By keeping to ancestral and non-ancestral matters, he had some justification for continuing to act as he did. The second point that Pharaoh made was that Moses and Aaron wanted to establish their supremacy in their country. This was only a political stunt to deceive the public, because in the very first instance Moses had made it clear to Pharaoh that his sole purpose was to deliver the message of God to him and thereafter to leave Egypt for the Sinai desert along with the Israelites. This being so, the allegation that Moses was planning to usurp the rule of Egypt was obviously untrue.