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﴿ فَاسْأَلُوا أَهْلَ الذِّكْرِ إِن كُنتُمْ لَا تَعْلَمُونَ ﴾

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What is the wisdom behind the abrogation of the wording of a verse while its ruling remains?

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Question : What is the wisdom behind the abrogation of the wording while the ruling remains? Listen, he said: The wisdom of abrogating the wording but not the ruling is to test the community in acting upon what they do not find in the wording of the Qur'an.

Answer : Correct. Meaning, now there are those who say there is no stoning because it is not in the Qur'an.
So in it is a test to act upon a text whose wording has been abrogated, which people do not read, but whose ruling remains, and we act upon it. Also, it is to verify faith in what Allah the Exalted has revealed, for the more a person verifies his faith, the more he complies with the command of his Lord, the Exalted. Unlike the Jews; the Jews are the opposite of these. What did the Jews do?
It is said that those who tried to conceal the text of stoning in the Torah did not abrogate the text in the Torah; rather, its wording and ruling remained. They tried to conceal it because fornication became widespread among the nobles of the Children of Israel. Fornication became widespread among their nobles. They said, how can we stone the nobles? This is not possible. They said, if they commit it, we will impose a punishment: the face of the fornicator and the fornicatress is blackened, and they ride on a donkey, one with his face toward the donkey's face and the other with his face toward the donkey's rear, and they are paraded around the city, and it is said, "These are two fornicators." When they are paraded around the market and return to the house, he washes with soap and a remover of the blackness, then returns to his state, walks on this donkey, then returns and washes the blackness that affected them, and the matter ends. But despite that, they were in anxiety; they were in anxiety, they were not at peace. So when the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) migrated and fornication occurred between a man from them and a woman, they said, "Go to this man who follows dispensations; he is not religious, nor does he draw near to Allah, nor does he have faith in Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him). Go to this man, perhaps you will find a limit in his law less than stoning." So they came to the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), and he ruled upon them with what is in the Torah. So they brought the Torah and recited it, and the man placed his hand over the verse of stoning. But they had the scholar, Abdullah ibn Salam, a scholar among the scholars of the Jews. He said to him, "Lift your hand." When he lifted his hand, there was the verse of stoning appearing clearly. So the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) ordered their stoning, and they were stoned. And this man...
...bent his back over the woman so that the stones would not hit her. I seek refuge in Allah. The point is that the Jews tried to conceal a text that exists in the Torah, and this community, praise be to Allah, acted upon a text whose wording is missing but whose ruling is established, so it was executed. And by this, the virtue of this community is made clear, or not? The virtue of this community is made clear, and praise be to Allah.
Source قناة «فضيلة الشيخ محمد بن صالح العثيمين»، 250 - 270 ما الحكمة من نسخ لفظ الآية وبقاء حكمها - شرح الأصول من علم الأصول - ابن عثيمين — youtube.com

The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.

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