Home > Torah - Exodus Stories in the Quran
There were other signs that Moses had to be able to prove to Pharaoh that he's speaking from God's authority is throwing his staff onto the ground. It would turn into a serpent. If he picked it up, it would turn back into a staff. And it speaks about how Pharaoh's magicians were able to do the same thing with their staffs, throwing onto the ground.
Exodus 7:12: For each man cast down his staff, and they became serpents. But Aaron’s staff swallowed up their staffs.
It is very clear here that they actually became serpents. But the Quran gets this detail wrong by saying that they were just pulling their ropes and it looks like they were moving, but they didn't actually turn into serpents.
Surah 20:66: He said, “You throw.” And suddenly, their ropes and sticks appeared to him, because of their magic, to be crawling swiftly.
The Quran is saying that magicians used illusionary magic (not real transformation) to make it appear as if their ropes and sticks were alive and slithering like snakes. The Bible does say they became serpents and this is denying that fact. This contradicts the biblical account that was documented and preserved thousands of years before the 7th century.
By reducing the magicians' work to "ropes and sticks" and "trickery," the Quran actually diminishes the victory of God. If the magicians were just using stage magic and sleight of hand, Moses’s miracle is less a victory over the "gods of Egypt" and more just a "better trick" than the locals.
The Quranic account appears to be an anachronistic 7th-century attempt to make the story "make sense" to a skeptical audience, thereby losing the historical truth of the event.