and its reading by heart, rather than reading it from a written text. (1) It is also said that they know it by memorization and recitation, without knowing its meaning. Ibn ʿAbbās said: This means that they do not know the meanings of the Book. Mujāhid and Qatādah said: “Except lies and falsehood.” Al-Farrāʾ said: amāniyy means fabricated accounts. ʿUthmān, may Allah be pleased with him, said, “Since I accepted Islam, I have never lied.” (2) By this he meant the things which their scholars had written of their own invention—14/b—and then attributed to Allah, such as altering the description of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and other matters.
Al-Ḥasan and Abū al-ʿĀliyah said: It is derived from wishing; that is, their false wishes which they made concerning Allah, such as their saying, “None shall enter Paradise except one who is a Jew or a Christian” (2:111); their saying, “The Fire will not touch us except for a few numbered days” (2:80); and their saying, “We are Allah’s children and His beloved ones” (5:18). According to this view, “except” means “but”: they do not know the Book, but merely wish for things that will not come to pass for them.
“And they do nothing but conjecture”: they only speculate and imagine; they have no certainty. This was said by Qatādah and al-Rabīʿ. Mujāhid said: They lie.
His saying, exalted is He: “So woe.” Al-Zajjāj said: Woe is a word uttered by anyone who has fallen into destruction. It is also said to be a supplication by the disbelievers against themselves for woe and ruin. Ibn ʿAbbās said: It means the severity of punishment. Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyib said: Woe is a valley in Hell such that, were the mountains of this world made to pass through it, they would melt from the intensity of its heat.
Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Abī Tawbah informed us; Abū Ṭāhir Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥārith informed us; Abū al-Ḥasan Muḥammad ibn Yaʿqūb al-Kisāʾī informed us; ʿAbd Allāh ibn Maḥmūd informed us; Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Khallāl informed us; ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Mubārak informed us, from Rushdayn ibn Saʿd [from ʿAmr ibn al-Ḥārith, who narrated from Abū al-Samḥ, from Abū al-Haytham] (3), from Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī, may Allah be pleased with him, that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said: “Woe is a valley in Hell into which the disbeliever falls for forty years before reaching its bottom. The Steep Ascent is a mountain of fire which he climbs for seventy years, then falls down from it; and so it continues.” (4)
“For those who write the Book with their own hands, then say, ‘This is from Allah,’ in order to gain a small price thereby.” This was because the Jewish rabbis feared the loss of their livelihood and the end of their leadership when the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, came to Medina. So they devised a means to hinder the Jews from believing in him. They turned to his description in the Torah, which described him as handsome of face and hair, with darkly lined eyes and of medium stature. They altered it, writing instead: tall, blue-eyed, and with straight hair. When their common people asked them about his description, they read to them what they had written. Finding it contrary to his actual description, they declared him a liar and rejected him. Allah Most High said: “So woe to them for what their hands have written,” meaning, what they wrote