وَقَالَ رَبُّكُمُ ٱدْعُونِىٓ أَسْتَجِبْ لَكُمْ إِنَّ ٱلَّذِينَ يَسْتَكْبِرُونَ عَنْ عِبَادَتِى سَيَدْخُلُونَ جَهَنَّمَ دَاخِرِينَ
"Your Lord has said: 'Call upon Me, and I shall answer you. Those who are too proud to serve Me will enter Hell with their necks bowed.'"
The transition between the two halves of the sentence must be recorded: in the first half prayer is spoken of; in the second half the same thing is named service.
That is, the verse counts prayer as service itself. This follows directly from the construction of the sentence.
And the object of the pride is worth recording: yastakbirūna ʿan ʿibādatī — to be too proud for service. In verse 56 of the sūra the thing lying beneath the dispute was named kibr; here the same root occurs as the reason for not praying.
I record this as my own reading: the sūra positions asking not as a weakness but as the sign of not being proud. To ask is to admit a need.
دَاخِرِين — root د-خ-ر: to be made small, to bow the neck, to be brought low. The word is the exact opposite of kibr, and it has been set against it in the same sentence.
The same matter was treated at al-Baqara 2/186 (fa-innī qarīb ujību daʿwata'd-dāʿi idhā daʿān), and there the absence of the "say" formula was recorded. The difference here: there it was the nearness of the answer, here it is the commanding of the prayer.