Nūḥ

قَالَ نُوحٌ رَّبِّ إِنَّهُمْ عَصَوْنِي وَاتَّبَعُوا مَن لَّمْ يَزِدْهُ مَالُهُ وَوَلَدُهُ إِلَّا خَسَارًا

وَمَكَرُوا مَكْرًا كُبَّارًا

21. [Having despaired of guiding them] Noah said: "My Lord! They have disobeyed me and followed those whose wealth and children availed them of no increase but loss.
22. "And they have plotted a mighty plot.

Having made his utmost efforts for hundreds of years, he noticed that his people, except for a few, persisted in polytheism, idolatry, error, and corruption. Thus, he despaired of providing them with guidance and turned toward Divine Threshold invoking God Almighty to chastise them. As reflected in the blessed Verses in question, Prophet Noah (as) said:

"O Lord! They disobeyed me and followed one whose affluence and offspring availed him of no increase but loss."

Reference is here made of the leaders of his people whose only privileges consisted of affluence and offspring, though they rendered no service to the community, failed to be humble against their Creator, and employed their means to further plunge into corruption, error, vanity, and disobedience. Taking a glance at the history of mankind, we witness that many a leader of different peoples were like them whose sole privileges rested in amassing unlawful possessions and fathering unworthy offspring and left no stone unturned to disobey God Almighty and His Messengers (as) and to impose their false beliefs upon the deprived who led their lives in bondage.

The blessed Verse 22 is saying that such leaders who were in error and led others astray employed vile stratagems. The Arabic intensified adjectival form kubbar, cognate with kibr ("arrogance, vanity"), is here in employed indefinitely and implies that they had planned satanic stratagems and ploys to lead people astray and impede them from acknowledging Noah’s (as) Prophetic call. The nature of such stratagems and ploys is unknown, but they seemingly concerned idolatry, since as per certain traditions, idolatry was unprecedented before Noah (as) and his people were its progenitors.

It is reported that between the times of Adam (as) and Noah (as), there were righteous people in whom people were interested. Satan and his followers took advantage of such interest and urged them to fashion sculptures of those righteous men. The prospective generations consigned to oblivion the historical context of sculpturing such figures and imagined that such righteous figures were supposed to serve as objects of worship. Thus, they preoccupied themselves with worshipping them and the wrong doing arrogant thereby led them to servitude and bondage and aforesaid vile ploys worked.