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Was Noah driven out? "Before them *the people of Noah* rejected (their messenger): They rejected Our servant and said, 'Here is One possessed!' And he was driven out." [Sura 54:9] Now, if he is driven out [expelled from their country] how come they can scoff at him while he is buiding the ark since we read "Forthwith he (starts) constructing the Ark: Every time that the Chiefs of *his people* passed by him, they threw ridicule on him." [Sura 11:38] He cannot be both: Driven out and near enough that they can regularly pass by. 

No, he wasn't driven out. I am assuming that you got the impression that prophet Noah (pbuh) was "driven out" from the Abdullah Yusuf Ali translation, which is known to be faulty in a number of places. The original Arabic uses the word "Wazdujir" meaning "and he was rebuked/threatened" not that "he was driven out." The word is derived from the root word "za-ja-ra" which means "to reprimand and threaten with such force as to repulse." The respected Abdullah Yusuf appears to have understood this to mean "drive out" which is incorrect. Indeed, he himself appears to have realized the true meaning of the word in his translation, for example, of Al-Naziat(79):13 where he translates "zajratun wahidah" as "a single compelling cry" in his translation of how on the Day of Judgment a single forceful cry will "awaken" the dead to judgment. A derivation of this word, "Zajiran" used to be used to describe fortune tellers because they used to raise their voices in warning of impending peril to their clients, by rising their voices in grim foreboding of terrible danger. In this manner they would "rebuke" their clients into taking preventative measures in order to avoid the claimed foreseen fate. In a similar manner the people of Noah (pbuh) would raise their voices against him in threats of terrible retribution and bodily harm to him if he did not immediately cease and desist from his preaching.


 

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