وَلَا تَقُولُوا۟ لِمَا تَصِفُ أَلْسِنَتُكُمُ ٱلْكَذِبَ هَٰذَا حَلَٰلٌ وَهَٰذَا حَرَامٌ لِّتَفْتَرُوا۟ عَلَى ٱللَّهِ ٱلْكَذِبَ إِنَّ ٱلَّذِينَ يَفْتَرُونَ عَلَى ٱللَّهِ ٱلْكَذِبَ لَا يُفْلِحُونَ · مَتَٰعٌ قَلِيلٌ وَلَهُمْ عَذَابٌ أَلِيمٌ
Wa lā taqūlū li-mā taṣifu alsinatukumu'l-kadhiba hādhā ḥalālun wa hādhā ḥarāmun li-taftarū ʿala'llāhi'l-kadhib, inna'lladhīna yaftarūna ʿala'llāhi'l-kadhiba lā yufliḥūn · Matāʿun qalīlun wa lahum ʿadhābun alīm
"And do not say, of what your tongues falsely describe, 'this is lawful and this is forbidden', so as to invent lies against God. Those who invent lies against God do not prosper. · A brief enjoyment; and for them there is a painful punishment."
The construction must be recorded, and the same one occurred in the sixty-second verse: wa taṣifu alsinatuhumu'l-kadhib. This is a repetition verifiable within the sūra, and the person changes: there "their tongues", here "your tongues".
And the agent must be recorded: the subject of the verb is alsinatukum — the tongues, not the persons.
I record this as an observation about the word order: the verse does not say "do not lie". It says "your tongues describe a lie". The act is thus detached from the person and ascribed to the organ — as though the tongue produced a ruling of its own.
The root و-ص-ف: to describe a thing by qualifying it. And the work of the word here: the ruling rests not upon a piece of knowledge but upon a description.
A note required by the method (Method)
This verse lays down a principle of method, and it bears directly on the limit this commentary sets itself.
What is forbidden is the pronouncing of a ruling of lawful and forbidden without ground. And the verse says what that amounts to: li-taftarū ʿala'llāhi'l-kadhib — to invent a lie against God.
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is that clause: the verse names a ruling laid down on one's own authority not as an error but as an attribution. The matter, then, is not the correctness of the ruling; it is to whom it is ascribed.
And this line was treated at al-Baqara, 2/169 (wa an taqūlū ʿala'llāhi mā lā taʿlamūn); I rely on that treatment.
One of the reasons no legal ruling is issued in this commentary is the clause written in the method. This verse is one of the textual grounds of that clause.