- “If they separate, Allah will enrich each of them out of His abundance. Allah is All-Bountiful, All-Wise.”
This is the third situation between spouses. If agreement proves impossible, there is nothing wrong with separation. Thus He says, “If they separate”—whether through divorce, annulment, divorce at the wife’s request in return for compensation, or otherwise—“Allah will enrich each of them,” both husband and wife, “out of His abundance,” meaning His all-embracing and boundless grace and beneficence. He may enrich the husband with a wife who is better for him, and He will enrich the wife from His bounty even though what she received through her husband has ceased. Her provision rests with the One who guarantees the sustenance of all creation and attends to their welfare; and Allah may provide her with a husband better than him.
“Allah is All-Bountiful,” meaning abundant in grace and vast in mercy. His mercy and beneficence extend wherever His knowledge extends. Yet He is also “All-Wise”: He gives with wisdom and withholds with wisdom. If His wisdom requires that He withhold His beneficence from some of His servants because of something on their part that makes them undeserving of it, He deprives them of it in justice and wisdom.