This verse contains a number of wisdoms, subtleties, and benefits for the servant:
When a servant comes to realize that what he dislikes may lead to what he loves, and what he loves may lead to what he dislikes, he can neither feel secure that harm will not come to him from the direction of delight, nor despair that delight will not come to him from the direction of hardship. That is because he does not know the outcomes, whereas Allah knows about them what the servant does not. This awareness obliges him to adopt several attitudes:
First: nothing is more beneficial to him than obeying the command, even if at the outset it feels burdensome, for every one of its consequences is goodness, happiness, pleasure, and joy. Even though his soul may resent it, it is in fact better and more advantageous for it.
Likewise, nothing is more harmful to him than committing what is prohibited, even if his soul desires and inclines toward it, for all of its consequences are pain, sorrow, evil, and calamity.
A mark of sound reason is to endure a small discomfort for the immense pleasure and abundant good that follows it, and to forgo a trifling pleasure because of the grave pain and lasting evil that will ensue.
The ignorant person’s gaze does not pass beyond the beginnings to their ends, whereas the intelligent and discerning one always looks to the ends that lie behind the veils of their beginnings. He sees, beyond those curtains, the praiseworthy and blameworthy outcomes. He regards the prohibitions as a delicious food mixed with a lethal poison: whenever its sweetness invites him, the poison it contains restrains him. And he views the commands as a bitter-tasting medicine that leads to health and cure: whenever the bitterness of its taste deters him, its benefit urges him to take it.
Yet this requires an additional share of knowledge by which one can discern the ends from their beginnings, and a strong patience with which he trains his soul to bear the hardship of the path for the sake of what he hopes to attain at the goal. If certainty and patience are lost, this becomes impossible; but when his certainty and patience are strong, every hardship he bears in pursuit of lasting good and enduring delight becomes light.
Among the secrets of this verse is that it calls the servant to entrust the matter to the One who knows