أَسْكِنُوهُنَّ مِنْ حَيْثُ سَكَنتُم مِّن وُجْدِكُمْ وَلَا تُضَآرُّوهُنَّ لِتُضَيِّقُوا۟ عَلَيْهِنَّ ۚ وَإِن كُنَّ أُو۟لَٰتِ حَمْلٍۢ فَأَنفِقُوا۟ عَلَيْهِنَّ حَتَّىٰ يَضَعْنَ حَمْلَهُنَّ ۚ فَإِنْ أَرْضَعْنَ لَكُمْ فَـَٔاتُوهُنَّ أُجُورَهُنَّ ۖ وَأْتَمِرُوا۟ بَيْنَكُم بِمَعْرُوفٍۢ ۖ وَإِن تَعَاسَرْتُمْ فَسَتُرْضِعُ لَهُۥٓ أُخْرَىٰ
House them where you live, in accordance with your means, and do not harass them to put them in straits, and should they be pregnant, maintain them until they deliver. Then, if they suckle [the baby] for you, give them their wages and consult together honourably. But if you make things difficult for each other, then another woman will suckle [the baby] for him.
لِيُنفِقْ ذُو سَعَةٍۢ مِّن سَعَتِهِۦ ۖ وَمَن قُدِرَ عَلَيْهِ رِزْقُهُۥ فَلْيُنفِقْ مِمَّآ ءَاتَىٰهُ ٱللَّهُ ۚ لَا يُكَلِّفُ ٱللَّهُ نَفْسًا إِلَّا مَآ ءَاتَىٰهَا ۚ سَيَجْعَلُ ٱللَّهُ بَعْدَ عُسْرٍۢ يُسْرًۭا
Let the affluent man spend out of his affluence, and let he whose provision has been tightened spend out of what Allah has given him. Allah does not task any soul except [according to] what He has given it. Allah will bring about ease after hardship.
English translation: Ali Quli Qarai
The passage turns to the material duties owed the divorced woman: lodge her where you yourselves live, to your means; do not harass her into leaving by straitening her; maintain the pregnant divorcée until delivery; pay the wage of a mother who suckles the child, settling the arrangement by mutual consultation, and hiring another woman only if the parents cannot agree. Spending is calibrated to capacity — the affluent generously, the straitened to what God has given — for God burdens no soul beyond what He has given it, sealing the section with God will bring ease after hardship.
al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī (al-Mīzān) reads the pronoun 'them' as the divorcées, glosses min wujdikum (via al-Rāghib) as 'to your capacity', and treats iʾtimār as a genuine mutual consultation protecting man, woman and child alike from harm; the closing clauses, he notes, lift all ḥaraj from the divine obligations and end on consolation. His appended baḥth riwāʾī supplies the sura's occasion-material: Abū Saʿīd's report that this 'shorter Sūra of Women' (al-Nisāʾ al-quṣrā) came seven years after al-Baqara; the Ibn ʿUmar menstrual-divorce incident with its fī qubuli ʿiddatihinna reading; Ibn Sīrīn's note tying 'a new thing' to the Prophet's taking back Ḥafṣa; and a chain of Imāmī reports (Zurāra on the two divorces; al-Ṣādiq that maintenance failing 'what sustains her back with clothing' warrants separation; the wide-attested 'whoever fears God…' consolation-tradition of Abū Dharr).
al-Ṭabarsī and al-Ṭūsī concentrate the fiqh. Both affirm that lodging and maintenance are unconditionally due to the revocably divorced, and both adopt the Imāmī/Ḥasan al-Baṣrī position that the finally-separated (mabtūta/bāʾin) woman gets neither — grounding it in Fāṭima bint Qays, who testified before the Prophet (al-Shaʿbī's and al-Zuhrī's reports; cf. Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim) that he assigned her neither lodging nor maintenance and sent her to keep her ʿidda in the blind Ibn Umm Maktūm's house — against the Iraqis (ʿUmar, Ibn Masʿūd) and al-Shāfiʿī/Mālik who grant her one or both. On suckling they agree the mother has the prior right at the going rate, is not to be undercut except by a genuinely cheaper wet-nurse, and may be compelled only where the infant will take no other breast. al-Ṭabarsī reads sa-yajʿalu Allāhu baʿda ʿusrin yusran as historically fulfilled consolation to the largely poor Companions before the conquests.
al-Baḥrānī and al-Qummī contribute the Imāmī hadith on maintenance: al-Ṣādiq (via Abū al-Ṣabbāḥ) on paying the pregnant woman through delivery and honouring the mother's prior claim to nurse; al-Ḥalabī that straitening her to force a move is the forbidden muḍārra; and the shared Rabʿī/al-Fuḍayl and Abū Baṣīr report — the centre of al-Qummī's short note — that a husband who fails to provide 'what sustains her back with clothing' is to be separated from his wife. al-Baḥrānī adds rulings on miscarriage and twins ending (or not ending) the ʿidda, closing back on Zurāra's principle that lodging and maintenance in revocable divorce fall on the husband throughout the term.
The Enlightening Commentary presents the same provisions as a balance of duty and mercy — the man's means set the ceiling, God's justice forbids using want as a weapon, and the child's welfare governs the nursing arrangement.