4:34

I. A wide range, not a single meaning

The root ض ر ب is not limited, in the Quran, to the sense of striking. It covers a wide range, attested verse by verse:

Here, ضَرَبْتُمْ carries no trace of violence: it means to depart, to move. We also find:

Daraba applied to a path means to open, to trace — not to strike a path. And the very frequent expression ضَرَبَ مَثَلًۭا ("he presented a parable") shows a third usage, also far from the sense of a physical blow. The root thus has, within the text itself, a range running from physical impact (2:60, the staff striking the rock) to travel, by way of presenting an example.

II. A unifying reading: to multiply/reproduce

Amine proposes to read, beneath this apparently disparate range of senses, a single underlying idea: that of a force or a quantity applied repeatedly or reproduced — striking multiplies impact on a point; traveling multiplies one's steps; presenting a parable reproduces an image to make it understood. One verse is central to this reading:

We must be honest here: the unanimous classical tafsirs we consulted (Ibn 'Abbas, Mujahid, Qatada, Al-Kisa'i, Al-Tabari, Al-Baghawi) read this verse in the opposite sense — "shall We turn away from you, withhold the Reminder" — a withdrawal, not a multiplication. Amine holds a different reading, relying on the following verse, which stresses the multiplicity of prophets sent to earlier peoples:

The link between 43:5 and 43:6 — the question of "multiplying/withdrawing" the Reminder, immediately followed by an emphasis on the great number of prophets already sent — supports, for Amine, a reading of continuity around the idea of multiplying/repeating revelation, rather than a simple withdrawal. This is a minority reading, held as such, not a lexical certainty we claim to impose.

III. 4:34 in context: the polygamy of 4:3

The passage containing 4:34 opens, a few verses earlier, with a prescription tied to the care of orphans:

This verse explicitly ties polygamy to a specific social crisis: the fate of orphans and widows (4:2-3 as a whole). The surah containing 4:34 has thus already established, a few lines earlier, polygamy as an authorized response to a family and social difficulty — not as an end in itself.

IV. The reading adopted for ٱضْرِبُوهُنَّ

The verse describes a graduated set of responses to a situation of نُشُوز (nushuz, discord/breakdown of the marital bond): first admonition (فَعِظُوهُنَّ), then withdrawal from the shared bed (وَٱهْجُرُوهُنَّ فِى ٱلْمَضَاجِعِ), then ٱضْرِبُوهُنَّ. On the basis of the unifying reading in section II, and the contextual link to 4:3, Amine reads this last step as "multiply them" — that is: take another wife, rather than resorting to physical violence. This reading presents polygamy as the ultimate response, already authorized by 4:3, to a discord that has not yielded to the earlier steps — an alternative to divorce and to violence, rather than an invitation to either.

✦ Scope of this reading

What is solidly attested: the wide range of the root ض ر ب, which unquestionably includes travel (4:101) and presenting an example (daraba mathalan), alongside the sense of striking. What is Amine's own reading, held as a minority position: the idea of "multiplication" as the root's unifying sense, supported by a reading of 43:5 that departs from the unanimous classical tafsir. What follows for 4:34: reading ٱضْرِبُوهُنَّ as "take another wife" rather than "strike them," in keeping with the polygamy already authorized by 4:3 in the same surah, and with the non-violent graduation preceding it in the same verse (admonition, withdrawal). This reading does not claim to close the debate on this verse — it offers an internal, textual and contextual coherence to a reading that refuses to see in it an authorization of marital violence.