He said: 'O Noah, lo! he is not of your family: in other words, that [the one who is of] your family in reality is the one with whom you share religious kinship, a spiritual relationship and a real connection not a formal one, as in the saying of the Commander of the Believers, peace be upon him: 'Verily the friend of Muḥammad is the one who obeys God, even if he should be distantly related and verily the enemy of Muḥammad is the one who disobeys God, even if he should be closely related'; lo! it is not a righteous deed: He makes clear that he is not of his family by [saying] that he is not righteous, pointing out that his family are the righteous ones, the followers of his religion and his law and that because of his [the son's] indulging in corruption and error his soul is as it were a unrighteous deed and that the cause of deliverance is only righteousness and not his kinship with you on the basis of form. Thus the one bereft of righteousness shall be denied deliverance. He [God] also intimated that he [his son] was a form of sin that issued from him [Noah], as in the saying, 'he is one of his father's secrets', according to what the Prophet, blessings and peace be upon him, said: 'The child is the secret of his father'. That is because when he [Noah] had done his utmost in his [prophetic] call [to his people] and expended all effort in the prolonged period without his people responding to him, he became wrathful and invoked [God] against them with his words: My Lord, do not leave from among the disbelievers a single dweller upon the earth. Assuredly if You leave them, they will lead Your servants astray, and will beget only disbelieving profligates [Q. 71:26-27]. In this way he was distracted from the presential vision of God's power and wisdom and [from the fact] that He brings forth the living from the dead and brings forth the dead from the living [Q. 10:31]. That invocation of his constituted the sin of his state at the error of his station. Consequently God tried him with the disbelieving profligate whom he claimed, during his state of wrath, was the only thing which they would beget, prejudging God this supposition of his, which is why He cleansed him of that sin with that punishment.
