And when We delivered you from the folk of Pharaoh: its exoteric aspect and its explanation is as it appears, reminding [them] of the favours to incite love [on their part], while its esoteric aspect and interpretation [is]: And when We delivered you from the folk of Pharaoh, the [evil-]commanding soul (al-nafs al-ammāra) that is veiled by its own egoism thinks itself superior to the Master of Existence; Egypt is the city of the body which, together with its faculties of estimation, imagination, evacuation, wrath, passion and the spiritual powers, namely the sons of God's close friend, Jacob, have enslaved the spirit, the natural powers of the body in the form of the external senses, as well as the vegetative powers; who were visiting you with evil chastisement, charging you with difficult hardships, toil and heavy labour when you [attempt to] secure goods and and store them away eagerly and expectantly, and [when] you organise your sources of nourishment and clothing and other things for which the eager among the children of this world toil; enslaving you by making you think of and concern yourselves [only] with the supervision of such [matters], while they are concerned in securing their pleasures, which [in fact] is [their] chastisement, since these [pleasures] prevent you from your [own] pleasures, slaughtering your sons, namely, those spiritual powers, [severing them] from the speculative rational [faculties] and the practical rational [faculties], the two that constitute the two eyes of the heart, the speculative right one and the practical left one, as well [slaughtering your] understanding which is the hearing [faculty] of the heart, and the mystery that is the heart of the heart and reflection and remembrance; and sparing your women, the above-mentioned natural powers, by preventing the former group from acts specific to subjugation and seizure, veiling it from the life and support of the light of the spirit; and by enabling and giving stability to the second group over its acts; and therein, [in that] deliverance, for you was a tremendous trial, a tremendous favour, from your Lord, namely the grace of being able to inspect the attributes of His majesty and beauty; or [it means] in that chastisement there is for you a tremendous affliction, namely, the affliction of being veiled, of privation and removal, for a trial, which is a test, ensues from these. God, exalted be He, says: And We tried them with good things and evil things [Q. 7:168].
