94وَما مَنَعَ النّاسَ أَن يُؤمِنوا إِذ جاءَهُمُ الهُدىٰ إِلّا أَن قالوا أَبَعَثَ اللَّهُ بَشَرًا رَسولًاMuhammad AsadYet whenever [God's] guidance came to them [through a prophet,] nothing has ever kept people from believing [in him] save this their objection:1 "Would God have sent a [mere] mortal man as His apostle?"Lit., "save that they said". The verb qala (as also the noun qawl) is often used tropically in the sense of holding or asserting an opinion or a belief; in the above case it obviously implies a conceptual objection.