And when he called them to the truth and established for them from the evidence what they were acknowledging, and reminded them of His blessings, alluding to the warning from His punishments, and made easy for them the path to reach Him, their response was nothing but to strip him of the state of humanity due to mere imitation. Therefore, he began to inform about their response by saying: ﴿They said﴾, meaning: Thamud ﴿O Salih﴾, they called him by his name, showing a lack of manners and rudeness. ﴿Indeed, you were among us﴾, meaning: in what is between us when we discussed your matter ﴿hoping﴾, meaning: in the category of one who can be hoped that there is good, leadership, guidance, and righteousness in him. They wasted time, so they omitted the preposition and said: ﴿Before this﴾, meaning: what you called us to, but after this, you have stripped yourself of this classification. Then they clarified what necessitated his fall in their eyes by their saying, denying in a manner of a burning denial: ﴿Do you forbid us﴾, meaning: an absolute prohibition ﴿from worshipping﴾, meaning: always ﴿what our forefathers used to worship﴾. They expressed this in the present tense, depicting the state as if their fathers were present, so they could not oppose them out of respect for them. They postponed what they saw as a close cause in their existence and did not fear the One who created them and their fathers first from the earth and secondly from the sperm. Then He granted them what they were in, then they were alarmed - in the essence of religion after mentioning the one who incited them to disbelief, preventing them from abandoning it - to the astonishment that what necessitates the cutting off for every rational being from His manifest signs did not affect them except what is below the suspicion in abandoning their response to him. So they said, affirming that their doubt is real enough to be denied because it is in a matter that is very clear and does not allow for doubt at all: ﴿And indeed, we are in doubt﴾, and they increased the affirmation with the noon and the lam and by indicating with the circumstance to the encompassing of doubt around them ﴿of what﴾. And since the caller is one, and he is Salih, peace be upon him, he did not attach to the action other than one noon, which is their pronoun, unlike what is in the Surah of Ibrahim, peace be upon him. Therefore, they said: ﴿You call us to﴾ the worship of Allah alone ﴿a cause of doubt﴾, meaning: causing doubt, which is the anxiety of the soul and the absence of tranquility with certainty; and hope: the attachment of the soul to the coming of good based on the assumption; and its counterpart is desire and greed; and prohibition: the prevention from action in the form of 'do not do'.