"Whoever fears Allah, He will make a way out": At-Talaq 2-3
The promise read in the divorce ruling it is attached to — what the way out is a way out of, why the provision comes from where you do not expect, and how al-Muyassar, as-Safi and al-Mizan each read it.
One of the most forwarded lines in the Quran, and one of the least often read in place:
And when they have [nearly] fulfilled their term, either retain them according to acceptable terms or part with them according to acceptable terms. And bring to witness two just men from among you and establish the testimony for [the acceptance of] Allah. That is instructed to whoever should believe in Allah and the Last day. And whoever fears Allah - He will make for him a way out
The famous promise is the tail of that verse, and it runs on into the next:
And will provide for him from where he does not expect. And whoever relies upon Allah - then He is sufficient for him. Indeed, Allah will accomplish His purpose. Allah has already set for everything a [decreed] extent.
What it is attached to is not a passage of comfort. It is legislation: taking a wife back or parting from her properly, two upright witnesses, testimony given for God's sake. The promise comes after all of that, as its consequence.
This site serves three commentaries. The Sunni reading below is al-Tafsir al-Muyassar, from the King Fahd Complex. The Shia reading is Tafsir as-Safi by al-Fayd al-Kashani and Tafsir al-Mizan by al-Tabataba'i. All three are Arabic; the renderings into English are mine.
The question the half-verse hides
Two promises are joined: a way out, and provision from where one does not reckon. The reader who takes the clause alone never gets to the obvious question — a way out of what? And provision in what sense? The commentaries differ exactly there.
The Sunni reading: al-Muyassar
Al-Muyassar defines the condition by what it looks like in practice: whoever fears God, acting on what He commanded and avoiding what He forbade. For the promise, it gives a way out of every distress, and provision made easy from a direction that never crossed his mind and was not in his reckoning. It then carries on through the rest of the passage: whoever relies on God, He suffices him in all that weighs on him; God accomplishes His purpose, nothing escapes Him; and He has set for everything a term it reaches and a measure it does not pass.
The Shia reading: as-Safi and al-Mizan
As-Safi widens the way out past this world altogether. Al-Kashani reports that the Prophet recited the verse and said it means a way out of the ambiguities of this life, of the agonies of death, and of the terrors of the Day of Resurrection — three, not one, and only the first of them is the worldly relief the verse is usually quoted for. He also records a saying about the verse's standing: were people to take hold of it, it would be enough for them — repeated over and over. And from Nahj al-Balagha, a way out of trials, and a light out of darkness. On the provision, he reports from Imam as-Sadiq a reading that is not about quantity at all: that God blesses what He has already given.
Al-Mizan asks why the provision is described as coming from where one does not reckon, and answers by splitting provision in two. As for material provision, a person used to see it as the yield of his own effort and of the visible causes he trusted — and he knew only a little of those causes out of many, like a brand of fire that lights up the spot where his foot falls on a pitch-black night while he is heedless of everything beyond it. God encompasses the causes and orders them as He wills, and permits effects from among them that the man has no knowledge of. As for the inward provision — which al-Tabataba'i calls the real provision, the one the human soul lives and endures by — that is something he never reckoned on, nor reckoned the road by which it would reach him.
So the phrase restricts the servant's knowledge, not the working of cause and effect.
Where the three agree
- The sentence is conditional: its condition is fear of God, its answer is the way out and the provision.
- That fear is conduct, not feeling — obeying a command and avoiding a prohibition, as al-Muyassar puts it.
- "From where he does not reckon" qualifies what the servant knows, not whether causes operate.
- The passage ends by saying God accomplishes His purpose and has set a measure for everything, which rules out reading it as a guarantee of speed.
Where each goes its own way
- Al-Muyassar makes it a way out "of every distress" and stays within this world and the means of provision.
- As-Safi extends it to death and the Resurrection, lifting the promise out of the narrow sense of immediate relief — and reads the provision as blessing in what is already given.
- Al-Mizan explains why it comes unreckoned, and separates material from inward provision.
The same condition, three times, in one short surah
Counted on the site's own text, the construction "and whoever fears Allah" occurs in the whole Quran three times, all of them in Surah At-Talaq. This verse is the first. Then:
And those who no longer expect menstruation among your women - if you doubt, then their period is three months, and [also for] those who have not menstruated. And for those who are pregnant, their term is until they give birth. And whoever fears Allah - He will make for him of his matter ease.
That is the command of Allah, which He has sent down to you; and whoever fears Allah - He will remove for him his misdeeds and make great for him his reward.
The surah states the condition three times and hangs a different answer on it each time: a way out and provision; then ease in his affair; then sins remitted and reward magnified. That repetition inside one short surah is the strongest evidence that the line is not a floating maxim but a deliberate structure, attached to rulings that are hard on the people keeping them.
What the verse claims, and what it does not
- It makes the way out and the provision conditional on fear of God, and leaves their manner to Him.
- It fixes no time. The close of the verse — that God accomplishes His purpose and has set a measure for everything — forbids guessing at a term.
- It does not say that fear of God replaces taking the ordinary means. Al-Mizan is explicit that the causes stand and that it is the servant's knowledge of them that falls short.
- Its setting is a ruling on one of the hardest things people pass through — the breaking up of a household — and not a general consolation, however general its wording.
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