Regarding His saying, the Most High: "For those who swear off their wives," meaning: those who swear an oath, "is a waiting period of four months," up to the end of the verse. In the Pre-Islamic era and at the beginning of Islam, a man would become angry with his wife and would swear by God not to approach her for such and such a time, leaving her neither as an unmarried woman nor as a woman with a husband. God wished to protect the believers from that by setting a limit for them; so He set for them four months. "But if they return," Al-Hasan explained: meaning by the return, the resumption of sexual intercourse, "then indeed, God is Forgiving and Merciful." [Verse 228]