بِسْمِ اللّهِ الرَّحْمـَنِ الرَّحِيمِ
The explanation: (In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.)
When Jews associated idols with their God in the worship, and they served idols and did not obey the orders and instructions of their prophets; God-be exalted- gave the king of Babylon a power over them; he attacked Palestine with his army, killed the Jews, tore up their Torah, destroyed their towns and took
the rest of them captive to the land of Babylon where they stayed there seventy years. When they returned back to Palestine, the priests of Jews started to collect the torn up gazelle skins[: the parchment] of the “Torah Collection”[ that is included in the Old Testament .] Any one among them who knew by heart any of it, would write it down and write down what others also knew by heart , until every one of them collect a book and gave it to their chiefs ,saying : “This is the Torah that God revealed to Moses .” They were four of their priests, but the Jews refused to accept those books from those priests because of some additions or abstractions they noticed in them.
Then Ezra( or Esdras), the son of Siraeh, one of their priests and a clever scribe, came and did a trick that succeeded. He wrote a book, checked and revised it, and left every word “God” as a blank space in the book. After having completed the book he started to write in that space with a secret writing, that could not be seen by the eye-sight, and which color would not appear unless after exposure to sun light. At that time, they were ignorant about that secret writing, but Esdras had learned it at Babylon, where the king of Babylon had given him a power over the Jews and brought him close. The secret writing is by using the silver nitrate solution so that if you write with it on a paper, its writing will not appear until after exposing it to sunlight.
After completing the book, he presented it to the chiefs of the Jews, saying: “ This is the original Torah that God revealed to Moses without any additional or missing word.” They said: “ How can you prove that?” He said: “I left every ‘God’ as a blank space in the book, and after forty days you will find it written down, that God-be exalted- will write it by the pen of Ability in order to be an indication to my truthfulness.” They said: “It could be that you will write it and say that God have written it, so we don’t accept that from you unless we keep this Torah with us forty days, and that you will not come near to it, so that if we find it-after this period of time- written as you say then you are truthful, but if we find it unwritten, then we shall not accept it from you.”
Esdras agree about this condition and said: “You must put it exposed under the sky.”
They agree and took the book from him and put it on a high place and appointed guards in charge of it forty days in order that none might touch it and write in it what he wants. After the period had elapsed, they gathered and opened the book and found it written as Esdras had told them because it was made of gazelle skin so the sunlight affected it and the writings, which he had written with silver nitrate solution (1),became blackened.
Therefore, they believed him and accepted the book from him, and started respecting him, and he became the chief of their priests. At that time, they said Esdras (or Ezra) is the son of God! And Jews believe, till now, that God wrote that blank space in his Torah, and they did not realize his trickery.
But God-be exalted- told us about his trickery, when He said in the Quran 2: 79
فَوَيْلٌ لِّلَّذِينَ يَكْتُبُونَ الْكِتَابَ بِأَيْدِيهِمْ ثُمَّ يَقُولُونَ هَذَا مِنْ عِندِ اللّهِ لِيَشْتَرُواْ بِهِ ثَمَناً قَلِيلاً فَوَيْلٌ لَّهُم مِّمَّا كَتَبَتْ أَيْدِيهِمْ وَوَيْلٌ لَّهُمْ مِّمَّا يَكْسِبُونَ
The explanation:
(Therefore, woe be to those who write the scripture with their hands and say, “ This is from God”, that they may purchase a small gain therewith. Woe to them for that their hands have written, and woe to them for that their hands have written, and woe to them for that they have earned 2[thereby])
God promised him with the torment because he said that that book was from God; while he omitted many things which he did not write, and one of them was the description of Mohammed- peace be on
Him- which he did not write, and he added much of his own words to the Torah and altered some of the instructions and changed some of the religious duties; and that was a cause of their unfaithfulness and disbelieving in Jesus prophecy and Mohammed’s mission.
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1-This trick can be tested by putting a drop of potassium fer-cyanide solution on that writing which will abolish it. It is an orange crystalline substance.
2-It means :the wealth that they earn unlawfully.
From the book of
The Conflict
between the Torah and the Quran
on this link
_of_Ezra_]http://quran-ayat.com/conflicts/index.htm#The_Torah_[or_Hebrew_Bible]_of_Ezra_