THE KILLING OF AN EGYPTIAN. 123
of Moses is attributed to Pharaoh's wife, 1 and she is mentioned as a believer, 2 evidently having been confounded with Pharaoh's daughter, by whom Moses was found according to the Scriptures, 3 and in the same way the name 4 given to Pharaoh's wife by the commentators is a corruption of the name 5 by which his daughter was known among the Jews. The words of the Bible : " Shall I go and call thee a nurse of the Hebrew women ? " 6 give rise to the following Eabbinical fable : ? " Why must the nurse be a Hebrew women?" This shows that he refused the breasb of all the Egyptian women. For Grod said : " Shall the mouth that is one day to speak with me suck an unclean thing?" 8 According to Muhammad Moses regarded his slaying of the Egyptian as sinful and repented thereof, 9 which is contrary to the Jewish view, 10 expressed as follows ; " The verse in the 24th Psalm (according to the reading of the Kethibh \ t Who took not away his soul out of vanity ') refers to the soul of the Egyptian, which Moses did not take away, until he had investigated his case judi- cially and had found that he deserved death." That the Hebrew whom he released strove again on the following day with an Egyptian, 11 and that he betrayed Moses, because he would not uphold him, but on the contrary reproved him
1 Sura XXVIII. 8. 8 Sura LXVI. 11. 3 Exodus, ii. S.
4 &f! ' 5 rTtfS 1 Chron. iv. 18. 6 Exodus, ii. ,'
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8 There is an allusion to this also in Sura XXVIII. 11.
9 Suras XXVI. 19, XXVIII. 14.
10 Midr. Rabb. on Exodus, para. 5
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11 Sura XXVIII. 11 ff.
