Al-Baqarah · Madani · ayah 226 of 286

Al-Baqarah 2:226

لِّلَّذِينَ يُؤْلُونَ مِن نِّسَآئِهِمْ تَرَبُّصُ أَرْبَعَةِ أَشْهُرٍ ۖ فَإِن فَآءُو فَإِنَّ ٱللَّهَ غَفُورٌ رَّحِيمٌ

“For those who swear not to have sexual relations with their wives[85] is a waiting time of four months, but if they return [to normal relations] - then indeed, Allāh is Forgiving and Merciful.”

Saheeh International

Essence

An oath to withhold oneself from a wife is given a limit, not a licence: four months, then Allah's forgiveness for the one who returns.

A reflection

He turns back to the one who turns back

After a bad argument, a husband takes his pillow to the sofa. 'Just for tonight', he tells himself. Three weeks later he is still there. Each night it gets harder to walk back down the hall. Going back would mean admitting something.

The ayah speaks to exactly this hardness. Some men swore an oath to keep away from their wives, often in anger. Then it says: if they return, Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.

A classical scholar of the heart noticed why those two names come here. The return in this ayah, fayʾ, is a return to the wife's goodwill and to treating her well. It ends with Allah's forgiveness and mercy, he says, because Allah returns to His servant with forgiveness when the servant returns. The reward is of the same kind as the deed.

This is majesty with a door in it. The One who could hold the oath against you, who heard it sworn, is the One who meets your return halfway.

The ego makes returning feel like losing. I said I would not. She should come to me first. The longer the stand-off, the more the ego invests in it. The ayah cuts underneath all of that. Turning back is not defeat. It is the very thing Allah answers with mercy.

Does He need our return? He is the Free of need (35:15). The return is for us, and for the people we have shut out.

The hallway is only a few steps long. The ayah says Allah's mercy is waiting at the end of it.

The full entry has 6 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.