وَلَٰكِن شُبِّهَ لَهُمْ
Rather, the matter was made to appear so to them.
The clause presents the people concerned as mistaken about what had happened. It does not, by itself, settle every historical detail: exactly who saw what, who reported which claim, and precisely how the appearance arose. Those questions require separate evidence.
An interpretive safeguard follows: affirm what the revealed words expressly say, but do not invent incidental details that the words do not supply. Additional narrative claims must stand on their own reliable sources.
The same discipline applies to disputation generally. A valid proof supports the conclusion it actually entails, not all imaginable extensions of that conclusion.