Transliteration:( Fawailul lillazeena yaktuboonal kitaaba bi aidihim summa yaqooloona haazaa min 'indil laahi liyashtaroo bihee samanan qaleelan fawailul lahum mimmaa katabat aydeehim wa wailul lahum mimmaa yaksiboon )
"So woe to those who write out the Book (Scripture) with their own hands and then say: 'This is from Allah' [140], so that they may gain [141] therewith. So woe to them for what their hands have written and woe to them for what they earn. [142]"
Unlike the Holy Qur'an, which is accessible and recited by all, the Tawrat was not widely available to the common Jews.
Its reading and interpretation were restricted to the priests, giving them the power to manipulate the text for personal and political gain.
When wealthy individuals committed crimes that carried severe punishments in the Tawrat, these priests altered the rulings to lighter penalties in exchange for money.
For example, the punishment for adultery, originally stoning to death, was replaced with blackening of the face—an act of symbolic disgrace.
Due to the Mercy of Allah, the Holy Qur’an is protected from such alterations and distortions, and will remain unchanged for all time.
To distort verses for bribery or worldly gain is akin to selling Allah’s revelations, and is condemned in this verse.
However, printing or selling the Qur’an for distribution, or receiving a salary for Imamat, teaching, or writing Taweez, is not included in this prohibition.
These payments are not for altering the Qur’an, but for providing religious service—a distinction recognized even during the time of the Khulafāʾ-e-Rāshidīn, who accepted compensation for their administrative responsibilities.
This verse highlights several critical rulings:
Earnings from illegal activities are unlawful and impure.
Publishing misleading or false religious literature is strictly forbidden.
All commentary, explanations, and structural markings (like rukūʿs) must be clearly separated from the Qur’anic text, so that man-made content is not confused with divine revelation.
The tafsir of Surah Baqarah verse 79 by Ibn Kathir is unavailable here.
Please refer to Surah Baqarah ayat 78 which provides the complete commentary from verse 78 through 79.
(2:79) Woe, then, to those who write out the Scriptures with their own hands and then, in order to make a trifling gain, claim: “This is from Allah.”[90] Woe to them for what their hands have written and woe to them for what they thus earn.
90. These observations relate to their rabbis. They were not content with misinterpreting the Word of God. They also interjected into it their readings of the Scriptures and their explanatory comments thereof, stories from their national history, superstitious ideas and fancies, philosophical doctrines and legal rules. The result was that the Divine and the human became inextricably mixed. They claimed, nevertheless, that the entire thing was divine! Every historical anecdote, the interpretation of every commentator, the doctrine of every theologian, and the legal deduction of every jurist that managed to find its way into the Bible became the ‘Word of God’. It was thus obligatory to believe in all that, and every deviation from it became tantamount to deviation from the true faith.
[32]- i.e., death and destruction.
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