His saying, exalted and majestic is He:

﴿And We want to bestow favor upon those who were oppressed in the land and make them leaders and make them the inheritors﴾ ﴿And We will establish them in the land and show Pharaoh and Haman and their soldiers from them what they feared﴾ ﴿And We inspired to the mother of Moses, 'Suckle him, and when you fear for him, cast him into the river, and do not fear and do not grieve. Indeed, We will return him to you and make him one of the messengers.'﴾

The meaning: Pharaoh is being weakened, and We want to bestow and magnify the favor upon the oppressed. And "the leaders" refers to the rulers of affairs. Qatadah said: ﴿And We will make them the inheritors﴾ means: the land of Egypt and Sham. Al-Amash read: "And We will establish them" with a ل, while the majority read: "And We will show Pharaoh" with a damma on the ن and a kasra on the ر and a fatha on the ي and the نصب of "Pharaoh." Hamzah, Al-Kisai, and Ibn Mas'ud read: "And he will see" with a ي and a fatha on the ر and a sukoon on the ي in the past tense, attributing the action to Pharaoh and those after him. The meaning is: Pharaoh and his people and his soldiers will fall into what they feared and were cautious of from the Children of Israel and their emergence. Haman is the minister of Pharaoh and his greatest man, and he was mentioned for his position in disbelief and for his prominence among his people. Thus, he has in this place smallness and a curse without honor.

And this "revelation" to the mother of Moses, a group said: it was a saying in her dream, and Qatadah said: it was inspiration. A group said: it was by a king who appeared to her. And all agreed that she was not a prophetess, but the sending of the king to her was in the manner of speaking to the leper and the bald man in the famous narration and other than that from what has been narrated of the speaking of angels to people without prophethood.

The gist of the matter of the mother of Moses is that she realized that what occurred in her soul was from Allah and a promise from Him; this necessitates His saying, exalted is He: ﴿So We returned him to his mother that she might be comforted and not grieve and that she would know that the promise of Allah is true﴾ [Al-Qasas: 13]. And this is the meaning of His saying: ﴿That she be among the believers﴾ [Al-Qasas: 10], meaning: by the promise. And Al-Suddi and others said: she was commanded to nurse him after the birth and to do with him what is in the verse; for the fear was after the birth. Ibn Jurayj said: she was commanded to nurse him for four months in a garden, and if she feared that he would cry because her milk would not suffice him, she did this.

Qadi Abu Muhammad, may Allah have mercy on him, said:

The first is more apparent, except that the latter is supported by two matters: one of them is His saying: ﴿So when you fear for him﴾ and "if" is a circumstance for what is to come in time. The other is that he did not accept wet nurses, and the child after his birth does not do that, unless it is from him that Allah, blessed and exalted is He, made it forbidden for him and made him refuse it unlike other children. Amr ibn Abd al-Wahid read: "that you nurse him" with a kasra on the ن as a conjecture, not as a lightening, and the common lightening is a fatha on the ن, as Ibn Jinni said. Al-Mahdawi attributed this reading to Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz, may Allah be pleased with him. And "the river" refers to the majority of water and most of it, and the intended meaning is the Nile of Egypt.

It is narrated in the stories of this verse that the mother of Musa, blessings and peace be upon him, whose name was Yuḥānā, took him and wrapped him in his clothes. She made for him a small box and secured it with a lock, hanging its key on it. She entrusted him to Allah and awaited His promise. When he disappeared from her, her fear returned to her, and she became preoccupied with him. The devil despaired her, and she became anxious about him, almost revealing her secret. The sister began to search for him, that is, to seek his trace.