Koran 7:127

7:127 And the eminent among the people of Pharaoh said, “Will you leave Moses and his people to cause corruption in the land and abandon you and your gods?”

[Pharaoh] said, “We will kill their sons and keep their women alive; and indeed, we are subjugators over them.”

Koran 7:127

The Story of Moses

The above verse from Koran is really bad summary of the following passage from Torah and Bible in NIV Exodus 1:6-22:

The Israelites Oppressed

⁶ Now Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation died, ⁷ but the Israelites were exceedingly fruitful; they multiplied greatly, increased in numbers and became so numerous that the land was filled with them.

⁸ Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt. ⁹ “Look,” he said to his people, “the Israelites have become far too numerous for us. ¹⁰ Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.”

¹¹ So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. ¹² But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites ¹³ and worked them ruthlessly. ¹⁴ They made their lives bitter with harsh labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their harsh labor the Egyptians worked them ruthlessly.

¹⁵ The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, ¹⁶ “When you are helping the Hebrew women during childbirth on the delivery stool, if you see that the baby is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live.” ¹⁷ The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live. ¹⁸ Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, “Why have you done this? Why have you let the boys live?”

¹⁹ The midwives answered Pharaoh, “Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive.”

²⁰ So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous. ²¹ And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own.

²² Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: “Every Hebrew boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.”

NIV Exodus 1:6-22

As you can see, Muhammad has the “eminent” question the ruler with: “Will you leave Moses and his people to cause corruption in the land and abandon you and your gods?” which is a bad rephrase of the new king’s statement in verse 9-10:

Look… the Israelites have become far too numerous for us. ¹⁰ Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.

verse 9-10

Muhammad has the decision of the ruler [Pharaoh] as: “We will kill their sons and keep their women alive; and indeed, we are subjugators over them.” which is a bad restatement of Pharaoh’s order: “Every Hebrew boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.”

This Koran verse is out of order, and should be before the earlier verses in the Koran, because the end of this Koran verse is the cause of Moses being placed in the Nile in a basket by his mother, and his adoption by the Pharaoh’s daughter and being brought up as a Egyptian prince, while being nursed by his Hebrew birth mother, as shown in the next chapter of Exodus, NIV Exodus 2:1-10:

The Birth of Moses

2 Now a man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman, ² and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. ³ But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. ⁴ His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him.

⁵ Then Pharaoh’s daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the riverbank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her female slave to get it. ⁶ She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. “This is one of the Hebrew babies,” she said.

⁷ Then his sister asked Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?”

⁸ “Yes, go,” she answered. So the girl went and got the baby’s mother. ⁹ Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you.” So the woman took the baby and nursed him. ¹⁰ When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, “I drew him out of the water.”

NIV Exodus 2:1-10

You can see how badly this verse is corrupted, being also out of order and missing so many details and lacking the context. You can also see Muhammad’s sexism and bigotry as he didn’t want to relate the story of the Pharaoh’s daughter and her kindness in saving Moses from the water and disobeying her father, the Pharaoh.

The next passage of Muhammad’s recitation, Muhammad’s Koran, confirms this view with the complaint of Moses’ people, the Hebrews.

So you can see the best replacement for this verse is: “”, the empty sentence.