Unfamiliar vocabulary:
– ʿAbd Allah ibn Salam: the lām is lightened. He is the son of al-Harith, an Israelite who embraced Islam when the Prophet ﷺ arrived in Madinah. The Prophet ﷺ testified that he would enter Paradise. He was one of the scholars of the Children of Israel versed in the Torah and its rulings.
– yajnaʾu ʿalā al-marʾah: with an initial yāʾ, a silent jīm, an open nūn, then a hamzah. It means “to lean over her and bend down.” Ibn Faris said, “It denotes inclining toward something out of affection and compassion for it.”
– Ṣūriyā: with ḍammah on the ṣād, a shortened wāw, kasrah on the rāʾ, followed by yāʾ then alif.

Overall meaning:
A Jewish man committed adultery with a Jewish woman during the lifetime of the Prophet ﷺ. The Jews knew full well that he was a true prophet and that his law brought ease and clemency, removing the burdens and fetters that had weighed upon them. Hoping to obtain from him a lighter sentence than that contained in their Torah—and thus an excuse before Allah for neglecting its prescribed penalty—they brought the two adulterers to the Prophet ﷺ for judgment.

The Prophet ﷺ already knew the Torah’s ruling for a married adulterer, either through revelation or through one of the Jewish scholars who had accepted Islam. He therefore asked them about the stoning ordinance in the Torah, challenging them and demonstrating that the Quran and the Torah agree on this ruling. True to form, they attempted to alter and distort it, replying, “We disgrace the adulterers publicly and flog them.”

ʿAbd Allah ibn Salam, a man of the Scripture, was present and said, “You are lying; the Torah contains the verse of stoning.” They brought out the Torah and spread it open to look for the verse. ʿAbd Allah ibn Ṣūriyā covered the passage with his hand and read what came before and after it. Ibn Salam said, “Lift your hand.” When he did so, they found the verse of stoning exactly as it appears in the Muhammadan law.

The Prophet ﷺ then ordered that the pair be stoned, acting on Allah’s command, “And judge between them according to what Allah has revealed.” In the severity of the ordeal the man’s compassion for the woman led him to bend over her, shielding her from the stones with his own body.

Lessons derived from the hadith:
1- The ḥadd must be carried out on a dhimmī who commits adultery, and the legal penalties apply to them with respect to what they themselves deem forbidden.
2- Islam is not a condition for the state of iḥṣān (being legally married and thus liable to the severer penalty). This is the view of al-Shafiʿī and Aḥmad. Therefore, if a non-Muslim consummates a marriage that is valid in his own law, he is regarded as muḥṣan, and when they litigate before us the same rulings that apply to Muslim muḥṣans apply to him.
3- Our law governs and abrogates all previous dispensations. Nevertheless, the Prophet ﷺ asked them about the Torah’s ruling on stoning in order to establish the proof against them from their own Scripture—which they claimed contained no such verse—and to show that Allah’s Books concur on this enduring ruling that deters corrupters.