Moses Against Pharaoh, and a Calf Made While He Was Away

Hizb 17 opens with the conclusion of Shuaib's warning to Midian, then turns to the sura's longest single narrative, Moses's mission to Pharaoh. His staff becomes a serpent before Pharaoh's court, and the magicians Pharaoh gathers to oppose him instead recognize the sign as genuine and fall into prostration despite the threat of execution for doing so. A sequence of afflictions follows, sent to press Pharaoh toward release of the Israelites, and the sura describes the crossing of the sea that ends his pursuit.

While Moses is away receiving the tablets, his people fashion a calf from their jewelry and worship it, provoking his anger on his return and a demand that those responsible seek forgiveness. Seventy of the community's elders are chosen to accompany Moses before God and experience a violent shaking as a consequence of the calf, and the hizb also recalls again the provision of manna and quails and the instruction to enter a town speaking a word of humility and seeking pardon, a command the text says a group among them deliberately altered.

The hizb closes with the episode of the Sabbath breakers, a coastal community warned against fishing on the Sabbath who circumvent the prohibition and are transformed, in the sura's account, into apes as a punishment for their evasion.