The Quran

وَقالَتِ اليَهودُ يَدُ اللَّهِ مَغلولَةٌ ۚ غُلَّت أَيديهِم وَلُعِنوا بِما قالوا ۘ بَل يَداهُ مَبسوطَتانِ يُنفِقُ كَيفَ يَشاءُ ۚ وَلَيَزيدَنَّ كَثيرًا مِنهُم ما أُنزِلَ إِلَيكَ مِن رَبِّكَ طُغيانًا وَكُفرًا ۚ وَأَلقَينا بَينَهُمُ العَداوَةَ وَالبَغضاءَ إِلىٰ يَومِ القِيامَةِ ۚ كُلَّما أَوقَدوا نارًا لِلحَربِ أَطفَأَهَا اللَّهُ ۚ وَيَسعَونَ فِي الأَرضِ فَسادًا ۚ وَاللَّهُ لا يُحِبُّ المُفسِدينَ

Muhammad Asad

And the Jews say, "God's hand is shackled!" It is their own hands that are shackled; and rejected [by God] are they because of this their assertion.¹ Nay, but wide are His hands stretched out: He dispenses [bounty] as He wills. But all that has been bestowed from on high upon thee [O Prophet] by thy Sustainer is bound to make many of them yet more stubborn in their overweening arrogance and in their denial of the truth. And so We have cast enmity and hatred among the followers of the Bible,² [to last] until Resurrection Day; every time they light the fires of war, God extinguishes them;³ and they labour hard to spread corruption on earth: and God does not love the spreaders of corruption.

The phrase "one's hand is shackled" is a metaphorical expression denoting niggardliness, just as its opposite - "his hand is stretched out wide" - signifies generosity (Zamakhshari). However, these two phrases have a wider meaning as well, namely, "lack of power" and "unlimited power", respectively (Razi). It would appear that the Jews of Medina, seeing the poverty of the Muslims, derided the latters' conviction that they were struggling in God's cause and that the Qur'an was divinely revealed. Thus, the "saying" of the Jews mentioned in this verse, "God's hand is shackled", as well as the parallel one in 3:181, "God is poor while we are rich", is an elliptical description of their attitude towards Islam and the Muslims - an attitude of disbelief and sarcasm which could be thus paraphrased: "If it were true that you Muslims are doing God's will, He would have bestowed upon you power and riches; but your poverty and your weakness contradict your claim - or else this claim of yours amounts, in effect, to saying that God cannot help you." This outstanding example of the elliptic mode of expression (ijaz) so often employed in the Qur'an has, however, a meaning that goes far beyond the historical circumstances to which it refers: it illustrates an attitude of mind which mistakenly identifies worldly riches or power with one's being, spiritually, "on the right way". In the next sentence the Qur'an takes issue with this attitude and declares, in an equally elliptical manner, that all who see in material success an alleged evidence of God's approval are blind to spiritual truths and, therefore, morally powerless and utterly self-condemned in the sight of God.
Lit., "among them". The personal pronoun refers to the hypocritical followers of the Bible - both the Jews and the Christians - spoken of in verses 57-63 (Tabari); cf. verse 14 of this surah, which makes a similar statement with regard to such of the Christians as "have forgotten much of what they had been told to bear in mind".
I.e., He does not allow any of the warring parties to resolve their conflicts through a final victory, with the result that they continue to live in a state of "enmity and hatred".