(Revealed after Hijrah)
The Surah was revealed at Medina, sometime in the fifth or sixth year of the Hijrah. The immediate cause of its revelation seems to be the divorce pronounced by ‘Abdullah bin ‘Umar against his wife during her monthly course, a procedure which the Surah is intended to prohibit (Bukhari). In the preceding Surah a note of warning was sounded against some of the wives and children of believers, as sometimes they tend to become an impediment in the way of men wishing to make monetary sacrifice in the cause of Truth. This may possibly lead to estrangement between the husband and the wife and ultimately to divorce, or the divorce may result from incompatibility of dispositions, or from some other cause. It was, therefore, necessary to lay down the correct procedure for divorce. This may be regarded as the immediate connection of this Surah with the preceding one. But there also runs a deeper connection in the subject-matter of the Qur’an as a whole. It is characteristic of the style of the Qur’an that when any of its Surahs deals with a particular subject in its opening verses, then in order to emphasize its importance it briefly, but pointedly, reverts to the same subject in its closing verses. The same procedure has been adopted in the Qur’an as regards the whole Surahs. Thus some of the social and political problems which were dealt with in detail in the opening Medinite Chapters such as Al-Baqarah, Al-e-‘Imran, An-Nisa’, have again been briefly treated in the last ten Medinite Chapters. The subject of divorce with which this Surah briefly deals has already been dealt with in detail in Surah Al-Baqarah.
The Surah opens with the procedure to be adopted when a man intends to divorce his wife, and also with the treatment to be extended to her after the divorce has been pronounced and she is waiting for her ‘Iddah (period of waiting) to expire. It is enjoined that during this period she should be provided with all the necessities of life, commensurate with the financial means of the husband. It is significant that four times in the course of five brief verses of the Surah believers have been exhorted to observe fear of God in their dealings. This shows that in the matter of divorce husbands are generally tempted to treat their divorced wives unjustly. Hence the repeated injunction to observe fear of God.