And that was ‘Ād — this is an allusion to their remains; in other words go forth in the land and look at these remains. God then describes their case saying they knowingly denied the signs of their Lord and disobeyed His messengers rusulahu is in the plural because when a person disobeys a messenger he has effectively disobeyed all of them since they share a common principle in that Message with which they come namely the principle of God’s Oneness; and they that is the riffraff followed the command of every rebellious tyrant every leader of theirs who is obstinate with regard to the truth.
