The chapter
Ten years were complete. Musa traveled with his family through the night country near the Mount, lost for direction and cold, and saw a fire on the mountainside. "Stay here; I have perceived a fire; perhaps I will bring you a torch from it, or find guidance at the fire." He went for an ember. He came back a messenger.
"When he came to it, he was called: O Musa, indeed I am your Lord, so remove your sandals; you are in the sacred valley of Tuwa. And I have chosen you, so listen to what is revealed." Then the address every muwahhid memorizes, the purest sentence of the mission: "Indeed, I am Allah, there is no god but Me, so worship Me, and establish prayer for My remembrance." Notice what the first command was. Not confrontation, not politics, not even the rescue of the enslaved: salah, for remembrance. The revolution began with worship.
Then two signs at the same fire. "What is that in your right hand, O Musa?" He answered with the fondness of a man describing an old tool, my staff; I lean on it, I bring down leaves for my sheep, and I have other uses for it. "Throw it down." The staff became a rushing serpent, and the shepherd fled. "Take it and do not fear, We will return it to its former state." And the hand, drawn from his side, came out white without blemish, light, not disease.
Then the assignment, in four words of terrifying economy: "Go to Pharaoh. Indeed, he has transgressed." From the sacred valley straight to the throne room of the man whose house had raised him and whose law still wanted him for murder.
Musa's response became the du'a of every believer facing a task beyond his size: "My Lord, expand for me my chest, and ease for me my affair, and untie the knot from my tongue, that they may understand my speech, and appoint for me a helper from my family: Harun, my brother." Allah granted all of it in one sentence: "You have been granted your request, O Musa." Two brothers, a staff, and the command Go, against the greatest tyranny on earth. The Path continues at the sea.