a tilth for you.’ In al-Muḥīṭ it is explained: that is, a place of cultivation for you. Their women are likened to farmland, for what is deposited in their wombs of seminal fluid resembles seeds sown in the earth.
Lessons derived from the ḥadith
1 The Jews imposed strictures on the manner of marital relations without any sound knowledge. The clans of Aws and Khazraj adopted their statements and practices because the Jews were People of the Scripture. Among the Jewish fabrications was the claim that if a man approached his wife from the rear while still penetrating her front, any child conceived would be cross-eyed. Allah the Exalted therefore revealed: “Your wives are a tilth for you, so approach your tilth as you wish” (al-Baqarah 2:223).
2 The ḥadith is evidence of the Jews’ fabrications, their ancient and modern lies, and their distortion of the Books of Allah and alteration of His words; Allah Most High says: “They distort the words from their [proper] places” (al-Nisāʾ 4:46).
3 About their ignorance and false claims Allah also says: “Among them are the unlettered who know nothing of the Scripture except wishful fancies; they do nothing but guess. So woe to those who write the Scripture with their own hands and then say, ‘This is from Allah,’ in order to gain a small price thereby. Woe to them for what their hands have written and woe to them for what they earn” (al-Baqarah 2:78-79).
4 The ḥadith lays bare the Jews’ lie and invalidates their calumny. It affirms that a man may have intercourse with his wife in any posture or orientation—facing her or from behind, standing or sitting—so long as it is in the vagina; and that this has no effect on the child’s appearance, form, or sex.
5 Modern medicine, founded on sound experimentation and established facts, has refuted the Jewish claim and thereby demonstrated a scientific miracle of the Prophet ﷺ and of his pure sunnah.
6 The ḥadith confines intercourse to the place of tilth from which offspring are sought and emerge, as Allah says: “Your wives are a tilth for you, so approach your tilth” (al-Baqarah 2:223); therefore, do not move beyond the place of tilth to any other location.