As we can see, the contradiction was identified by the critics of Muhammad on the very day the verse was uttered. And God surely knew that verse 98 by itself would be contradicting both reality and the other passages of the Qur'an. But as it is, and ackowledged in al-Sirat, Muhammad was caught in this contradiction first and then in response to it he brings another verse. Obviously he claims that this is just the next part of revelation from God. But I hope you can see that this looks awefully like Muhammad patching up the faulty text.
Humans make errors.
And if these humans are reasonable they will acknowledge they were wrong and correct their errors. They certainly could. And they clearly did. But such a response could be used to cover anything, even the worst nonsense. The above story could be part of the test and one indication that something is wrong here.