“Is this how you find the prescribed penalty for the adulterer in your Scripture?”
They replied, “Yes.”
So he summoned one of their scholars and said:

“I adjure you by Allah who sent down the Torah to Moses: do you really find the punishment for the adulterer in your Scripture to be like this?”

He answered, “No—and had you not adjured me by Allah I would not have told you. What we find is stoning. Yet it became widespread among our nobles, so when we caught a nobleman we let him go, but if we caught someone weak we carried out the penalty on him. (1) We therefore said, ‘Come, let us agree (2) on something we can apply to both the noble and the lowly,’ and we substituted blackening with tar and flogging for stoning.”

The Prophet ﷺ then declared, “O Allah, I am the first to revive Your command after (3) they had allowed it to die.” He thereupon ordered that the man be stoned.

Allah the Exalted then revealed:

“O Messenger, do not let those who hasten into disbelief grieve you …”
[al-Māʾidah 5:41]

to His words (4):

“If you are given this, accept it.”
[al-Māʾidah 5:41] (5)

They would say, “Go to Muḥammad; if he rules for you with blackening (6) and flogging, accept it, but if he gives a verdict of stoning, beware.”

So Allah Most High revealed:

“Whoever does not judge by what Allah has sent down—it is they who are the disbelievers.”
[al-Māʾidah 5:44] (7)

and

“Whoever does not judge by what Allah has sent down—it is they who are the wrongdoers.”
[al-Māʾidah 5:45] (8)

and

“Whoever does not judge by what Allah has sent down—it is they who are the defiantly disobedient.”
[al-Māʾidah 5:47] (9)

—all of these, he said, were revealed concerning the disbelievers (10).