5.41 – Messenger! Do not let those who are quick to disbelief cause you sorrow
The Quran directly addresses the messenger here, as well as at verses 48–49, 67, and 82. Such verses seem worded as if to comfort the messenger and to claim that his recitations have been “sent down” by Allah.
This verse begins a remarkable extended passage much concerned with the “People of the Book,” particularly Jews (vv. 41, 44, 51, 64, 69, 82) and Christians (vv. 47, 69, 82). One of the key issues is acceptance of the authority of the messenger (vv. 41–43).

5.41 – They alter words from their positions
This is the last of four verses in the Quran that contain the Arabic verb ḥarrafa – often translated as “distort” or “alter” (as here) but understood by the earliest Muslim commentators on the Quran to mean “tampering with” or “mishandling” (also 2.75; 4.46; 5.13).
Though some Muslim polemicists have cited this verse to accuse the Bible of corruption, the Islamic interpretive tradition for a thousand years associated this verse with a curious story of Jewish concealment (e.g., Sīra, 266–67). According to this story, a group of Jews brings an adulterous couple to Muhammad for a judgment, hoping that he would not know the Torah punishment and would therefore give a more lenient ruling. Islam’s messenger asks the Jews to bring a copy of the Torah. The Jews do so, but a rabbi holds his hand over the “verse of stoning” until a Jewish convert to Islam strikes the rabbi’s hand away from the verse. With the Torah “verse of stoning” now exposed, the messenger commands the stoning of the adulterous couple.
See the comments on the Quran’s punishment for adultery at 24.2.