29/15-23 — After Noah, Abraham: "you are fabricating a lie"
Wa Ibrāhīma idh qāla li-qawmihi'ʿbudu'llāha wa'ttaqūh · Innamā taʿbudūna min dūni'llāhi awthānan wa takhluqūna ifkā · Inna'lladhīna taʿbudūna min dūni'llāhi lā yamlikūna lakum rizqan fa'btaghū ʿinda'llāhi'r-rizqa wa'ʿbudūhu wa'shkurū lah
"Abraham too said to his people: 'Serve God and guard yourselves against Him… You serve idols apart from God, and you are fabricating a lie. Those you serve apart from God have no power to provide for you. Seek provision with God, serve Him and give thanks to Him.'"
That the root carries the senses "to create" and "to fabricate" together is recorded by the lexicographers: ikhtilāq — fabrication. The shared core is the shaping of something and bringing it forth.
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the word order of the verse itself: the people serve what they cannot create; but the verse says that they do "create" something — a fabricated lie. That is, the verb is not taken out of their hands; its object is changed.
إِفْك — root أ-ف-ك: to turn something from its direction. The root was treated at al-Aḥqāf 46/11 and 46/28.
The proof is built by way of provision — and this will come round again in the sixtieth verse of the sūra (the creatures that cannot carry their own provision). The link between the two verses can be verified from the text.
And the answer of Abraham's people will come in verse 24: uqtulūhu aw ḥarriqūh. That is, what is given in return for a proof is not a proof.
فَـَٔامَنَ لَهُۥ لُوطٌ (26) — and at the end of this long narrative it is recorded that a single person believed.
I record this as an observation: the sūra gives the outcome as a number, and the number is one. Since the subject of the sūra is patience and trial, this figure serves as a measure — just as Noah's nine hundred and fifty years did the same work in the fourteenth verse.