Exegesis of the saying of Allah the Exalted: “And [recall] when We saved you from the family of Pharaoh, who used to subject you to the worst of torment, slaughtering your sons and keeping your women alive.”

Then He the Exalted said: To whom is this address directed? To the Children of Israel, as evidenced by His saying: meaning, We delivered you from them and saved you from their aggression and their dominion.
And His saying: means his followers, his courtiers, and his executioners, who carry out his orders by killing the sons of the Children of Israel and keeping their women alive.
Is the meaning all of his followers? Or his followers who treat him with the treatment of a close relative?
The apparent view, and Allah knows best, is that it refers to all of his followers, and that the men of Pharaoh do this, and likewise the family of Pharaoh, his followers, who aggress against the Children of Israel in Egypt.
Then He said: meaning, they inflict it upon you. “The worst of torment” is an example of adding the described to its attribute, meaning the bad torment or the worst torment. Then He clarified this general statement by saying: and in another verse: and in a third verse: so the punishments, or rather the aggression of the family of Pharaoh against the Children of Israel, are in three ways:
The first way: killing by any means, such as throwing a stone, strangling, breaking the back, or the like.
The second: slaughtering, where they bring a person from the Children of Israel and slaughter him with a knife, just as a sheep is slaughtered.
The third: combining the worst of torment with slaughtering, meaning, for example, they beat them, squeeze their bellies, cut their lips, and the like, and then slaughter them, thus combining two things for them. Do not be surprised by this; it happened in this Ummah, and I mean the Ummah of the Call, in a greater and worse form than this. But the important point is that the torment and crime committed by the family of Pharaoh against the Children of Israel are these three things: slaughtering, killing, and combining slaughtering with the worst of torment.
And His saying: Why did they target the sons and leave the women? means they keep them alive, otherwise their life already existed, but they keep them alive, meaning they preserve their lives. As for the sons, they kill them. Why? Some of the Israelites said that it was said to the family of Pharaoh that a child might be born from the Children of Israel through whom your kingdom would be destroyed. So they killed the sons out of fear that this child would appear. Then Allah the Mighty and Majestic said, in His decree, that this child would be raised in the lap of Pharaoh. For when his mother gave birth to him, Allah inspired her to nurse him, so she nursed him the colostrum, which every newborn must nurse. He said to her, “When you fear for him, cast him into the sea.” Her son, he was inspired… When she feared for him, she obeyed the command of Allah, placed him in a chest, and cast it into the sea, meaning into the ocean. This was part of the perfection of her faith. But Allah said: so he fell into the hands of the family of Pharaoh. The lam here indicates the outcome, not the cause, because the family of Pharaoh did not pick him up for this purpose; rather, they picked him up and he became an enemy and a cause of sorrow. Then Allah the Mighty and Majestic mentioned the story, and we are in the process of narrating its context because it is well known and not with us on this night. The important point is that this is what some scholars said based on reports transmitted from the Children of Israel. Why? What did they say? Why do they slaughter their sons and keep their women alive?
They said, “We kill the sons so that this son does not emerge.” But there is another opinion that may have a stronger impact, which is that they slaughter the sons and keep the women alive in order to have complete control, so that the nation weakens and the women are forced to turn to the family of Pharaoh. This is the ultimate humiliation: that one who is your enemy makes your women’s honor lawful. This is the ultimate humiliation. If what was said about the Children of Israel were true, we would say that it is possible that the meaning is both this and that; it would be possible that both this and that are intended.