When some of them said: "Why do ye preach to a people whom Allah will destroy or visit with a terrible punishment?"- said the preachers:" To discharge our duty to your Lord, and perchance they may fear Him." Al-A'raf 7:164 ⧉
Tafsir:
It is a sin to do anything which God has prohibited. But to perform a prohibited act by attempting to legalize it through some trick amounts to adding insult to injury. By violating the rule of the Sabbath, the Jews had committed a double sin. Such people must suffer divine retribution; that is, they are deprived of the bounties which God has set apart for human beings alone. In this world such people fall from the level of humanity to the level of the animals.