وإذ أخذ ربك من بني آدم من ظهورهم ذريتهم وأشهدهم على أنفسهم ألست بربكم قالوا بلى شهدنا أن تقولوا يوم القيامة إنا كنا عن هذا غافلين . أو تقولوا إنما أشرك آباؤنا من قبل وكنا ذرية من بعدهم أفتهلكنا بما فعل المبطلون
الأعراف:172-173
172. And (remember) when your Lord brought forth from the Children of Adam, from their loins, their seed (or from Adam's loin his offspring) and made them testify as to themselves (saying): "Am I not your Lord?" They said: "Yes! We testify," lest you should say on the Day of Resurrection: "Verily, we have been unaware of this."
173. Or lest you should say: "It was only our fathers afortime who took others as partners in worship along with Allah, and we were (merely their) descendants after them; will You then destroy us because of the deeds of men who practiced Al-Batil (i.e. polytheism and committing crimes and sins, invoking and worshiping others besides Allah)?" (Tafsir At-Tabari).
the words used here are that the children of Adam-humans- were brought out from the loins ,and their seed etc, this doe not capture what the qur'an actually says.
on the other hands if we take the words literally they mean: and as you lord took a vow from the children of Adam to testify to themselves from their appearance etc.
the word ظهورهم in Arabic has two meanings, 'appearance/emergence', and the 'back'. many translate it as 'their backs', or attempt to clarify by saying he meant their loins, since the seed of man comes from there and he's speaking about the children of Adam. and the back is connected to the loins etc.
but we needn't go far, by 'emergence' we can understand the verse to be talking about the history of mankind, note: the second part of the verse warns that the vow humans have made with their lord to testify amongst themselves prevents them from claiming ignorance by saying they didn't follow Allah's way since their fathers didn't either, and that they simply followed what they were taught.
now the words 'to testify' can also be seen in two lights, one: to testify verbally, the other: to testify by action, here the latter is meant. that is to say their own actions serve to testify to the matter.
the reason they can't use this as an excuse is that human history itself refutes it, or more clearly as Allah has sent the prophets to remind the people, no one who received revelation through them can claim ignorance. saying that their own ancestors or parents had refused it and not looking for themselves while being able to do so is again no excuse.
