The Quran

129

وَلَن تَستَطيعوا أَن تَعدِلوا بَينَ النِّساءِ وَلَو حَرَصتُم ۖ فَلا تَميلوا كُلَّ المَيلِ فَتَذَروها كَالمُعَلَّقَةِ ۚ وَإِن تُصلِحوا وَتَتَّقوا فَإِنَّ اللَّهَ كانَ غَفورًا رَحيمًا

Muhammad Asad

And it will not be within your power to treat your wives with equal fairness, however much you may desire it;¹ and so, do not allow yourselves to incline towards one to the exclusion of the other, leaving her in a state, as it were, of having and not having a husband.² But if you put things to rights and are conscious of Him - behold, God is indeed much-forgiving, a dispenser of grace.

This refers to cases where a man has more than one wife - a permission which is conditional upon his determination and ability to "treat them with equal fairness", as laid down in verse 3 of this surah. Since a man who is fully conscious of his moral responsibility might feel that he is committing a sin if he loves one of his wives more than the other (or others), the above verse provides a "judicial enlightenment" on this point by making it clear that feelings are beyond a human being's control: in other words, that the required equality of treatment relates only to outward behaviour towards and practical dealings with one's wives. However, in view of the fact that a man's behaviour towards another person is, in the long run, almost inevitably influenced by what he feels about that person, the above passage - read in conjunction with verse 3, and especially its concluding sentence - imposes a moral restriction on plural marriages.
Lit., "do not incline with all inclination" - i.e., towards one of the wives, implying thereby an exclusion of the other from all affection - "leaving her, as it were, in suspense (kal-mu'allaqah)". Regarding my rendering of this phrase, see Lane V, 2137.