Did Pharaoh drown or was he saved?

The Holy Qur’an says that Pharaoh was overwhelmed by the water, and also that God would save his body. A well founded reading is that he escaped with his life but without any spiritual life, and fell back into his old disbelief.

The Arabic word the Holy Qur’an uses here means that a person is overwhelmed by water and goes under. It does not necessarily mean that he dies. Even today people are pulled from the water after going under, and they survive. So the real question is not whether Pharaoh drowned, but whether he lost his life.

The Holy Qur’an is the only scripture that records a dialogue at that very moment. Pharaoh cried out that he now believed in the God of the Children of Israel. Yet he had seen many great signs before and rejected them one after another. A confession made out of sheer fear of death does not save the soul. That is why God promised him only the rescue of his body.

This can be understood in two ways. Either only his dead body was recovered, or his body stayed alive while his soul remained unsaved. There is much in favour of the second reading. The mummies of the Pharaohs that have been examined show no signs of drowning. It was also the custom in Egypt not to record the defeats of its rulers. The silence of Egyptian history therefore fits well with a Pharaoh who survived and hid his disgrace.

If he survived, he did not survive as a believer. Once the danger had passed, he could tell himself that he had been saved by chance. His confession was an attempt to save his life, not true repentance. So he went back to his old disbelief. His body was saved, but not his soul. In exactly this way he became a sign for all who came after him.