Transliteration:( Wa lan tastatee'ooo an ta'diloo bainan nisaaa'i wa law harastum falaa tameeloo kullal maili fatazaroohaa kalmu'al laqah; wa in tuslihoo wa tattaqoo fa innal laaha kaana Ghafoorar Raheema )
389.No matter how pious a person may be and treats every wife equally, with full justice, it is just human to be inclined to one more than the other. If this happens there will be no blame on you. But if you are harsh in their treatment, you will be held accountable.
390. Do not administer justice superficially or one-sidedly.
391. By "to leave the other hanging" is meant either to give her divorce, not to put her back on sound footing, not to treat her well, or to deprive her of her maintenance and conjugal rights.
392. From this we learn that to bring about reconciliation between the husband and his wife is an act of great reward.
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The tafsir of Surah Nisa verse 129 by Ibn Kathir is unavailable here.
Please refer to Surah Nisa ayat 128 which provides the complete commentary from verse 128 through 130.
(4:129) You will not be able to treat your wives with absolute justice not even when you keenly desire to do so. (It suffices in order to follow the Law of Allah that) you incline not wholly to one, leaving the other in suspense.[161] If you act rightly and remain God-fearing, surely Allah is All-Forgiving, All-Compassionate.[162]
161. This means that it is not possible for a man to accord complete equality of treatment to two or more wives under all circumstances and in all respects. It is possible that one is ugly, the other beautiful; one is old, the other young; one is permanently sick, the other healthy; one is irritable, the other good-tempered. These and other differences are likely to make a person less attracted to one and more to the other. In such circumstances, the Law does not demand that one should necessarily maintain absolute equality between the wives in respect of love, emotional attachment and sexual relationship. What it does demand is that if a husband does not repudiate the marriage despite aversion for his wife, either because of his own desire or out of consideration for the desire of his wife, he should at least maintain a good relationship short of which his wife begins to feel as if she is without a husband. In such circumstances, while it is natural that a person should prefer one wife to the other, this should not go to the extent that the woman remains, as it were, in a state of suspension, as if she were without a husband at all.
Some people point out that in this verse the Qur’an in one breath stipulates justice as the necessary condition for plurality of wives and in the other breath declares it to be impossible. On this ground they conclude that the Qur’an has itself revoked the permission to marry more than one wife. There is, however, absolutely no justification for such an inference. Such an inference would have been justified had the Qur’an merely said that ‘You will not be able to treat your wives with (absolute) justice.’ But this statement has been followed by the directive: ‘ … do not allow yourselves to incline wholly to one, leaving the other in suspense.’ This leaves no grounds at all for the blind followers of Christian Europe to force an interpretation of their liking on the verse.
162. If a man does not deliberately inflict any wrong and tries earnestly to be just in his dealings God will pardon whatever minor shortcomings take place.
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