Surah 10. Yunus, Ayah 83

If the expression 'ala khawf is taken to mean "despite [their] fear" (referring to those who did declare their faith openly), the above sentence would read thus: "...a few of his people declared their faith in Moses despite their fear that Pharaoh and their great ones would persecute them" - implying, as does the rendering adopted by me, that, because of their fear, the majority did not declare their faith openly.

Lit., "believed in Moses"; however, since the sequence shows that not belief as such but its open profession is referred to here, I have rendered the above phrase accordingly. As for the term dhurriyyah (lit., "offspring"), we have several authoritative statements to the effect that it often denotes "a small group [or "a few"] of one's people" (Ibn 'Abbas, as quoted by Tabari, Baghawi, Razi and Ibn Kathir, as well as Ad-Dahhak and Qatadah, as quoted by Tabari and Ibn Kathir); hence my rendering. Since the Qur'an mentions (e.g., in {7:120-126}) that some Egyptians, too, came to believe in Moses' message and openly proclaimed their belief, it is reasonable to assume that by "his people" are meant not merely the Israelites but, more generally, the people among whom Moses was living: that is, both Israelites and Egyptians. This assumption is strengthened by the reference, in the next clause of this sentence, to "their great ones" - an expression obviously relating to the Egyptian "great ones".

The pronoun "his" in "his People" is taken by some Commentators to refer to Pharaoh. The Majority Of Pharaoh's people refused to believe at the time, but the sorcerers believed (vii. 120), and so did Pharaoh's wife (lxvi. 11), and ultimately Pharaoh himself, though too late (x. 90). If we took "his" to refer to Moses, it would mean that the Israelites were hard-hearted and grumbled (vii. 129) even when they were being delivered from Egypt, and only a few of them had any real faith in Allah's providence and the working of His Law, and they feared Pharaoh even more than they feared Allah.