﴿ فَقَالَ ٱلْمَلَؤُا۟ ٱلَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا۟ مِن قَوْمِهِۦ مَا هَٰذَآ إِلَّا بَشَرٌۭ مِّثْلُكُمْ يُرِيدُ أَن يَتَفَضَّلَ عَلَيْكُمْ وَلَوْ شَآءَ ٱللَّهُ لَأَنزَلَ مَلَٰٓئِكَةًۭ مَّا سَمِعْنَا بِهَٰذَا فِىٓ ءَابَآئِنَا ٱلْأَوَّلِينَ ﴾

“But the great ones among his people, who refused to acknowledge the truth, replied: “This [man] is nothing but a mortal like yourselves who wants to make himself superior to you! For, if God had willed [to convey a message unto us], He would surely have sent down angels; [moreover,] we have never heard [any­thing like] this from our forebears of old!”

The community into which Noah was born was not one made up of unbelievers in the common sense of the term. It consisted of the followers of Adam who were believers in God and prophethood. In spite of this, why did its members refuse to accept Noah as the prophet of God? It was because the Prophet Noah appeared to them as an ordinary man like themselves. A prophet is a man born of human parents. Therefore, to the people of his age, he always seemed to be a man like themselves. It is in later history that a prophet appears to them as glorious, invested as he then is with legendary greatness. That is why a prophet’s contemporaries fail to recognize him. To them the prophet appears to be a man who makes false claims to prophethood in order to be taken as a great man. They presume him to be a madman and ignore him. It has been the story of every community that, as time has gone on, it has started following the traditions of its forefathers instead of following the real teachings of God. Whenever a prophet appeared and again preached genuine religion, they felt that the prophet’s religion was different from the traditions of its forefathers. Given the mindset of these people, their forefathers appeared to be greater and the prophet appeared to be a comparatively lesser person. This is the main reason why the call of the prophets of every period seemed a strange cry to their contemporaries.