The Prophet ﷺ passed by a Jew whose face had been blackened with soot and who had been flogged. He called them and asked, "Is this how you find the punishment for the adulterer in your book?"They replied, "Yes."He then summoned one of their scholars and said, "I adjure you by Allah, who revealed the Torah to Musa, is this how you find the punishment for the adulterer?"He answered, "No. Had you not adjured me, I would not have told you. We find the punishment for the adulterer in our book to be stoning. But it became frequent among our nobility, so whenever we caught a noble person we let him go, and whenever we caught a weak person we carried out the punishment on him. So we said, 'Come, let us agree on something we can apply to both the noble and the lowly.' So we agreed on blackening the face and flogging in place of stoning."The Prophet ﷺ then said, "O Allah, I am the first to revive Your command when they had let it die." He then ordered that the man be stoned, and he was stoned.
حدثنا علي بن محمد حدثنا أبو معاوية عن الأعمش عن عبد الله بن مرة
مر النبي ﷺ بيهودي محمم مجلود فدعاهم فقال هكذا تجدون في كتابكم حد الزاني قالوا نعم فدعا رجلا من علمائهم فقال أنشدك بالله الذي أنزل التوراة على موسى أهكذا تجدون حد الزاني قال لا ولولا أنك نشدتني لم أخبرك نجد حد الزاني في كتابنا الرجم ولكنه كثر في أشرافنا الرجم فكنا إذا أخذنا الشريف تركناه وكنا إذا أخذنا الضعيف أقمنا عليه الحد فقلنا تعالوا فلنجتمع على شيء نقيمه على الشريف والوضيع فاجتمعنا على التحميم والجلد مكان الرجم فقال النبي ﷺ اللهم إني أول من أحيا أمرك إذ أماتوه وأمر به فرجم