2/216 — "Though you dislike it"
"Fighting has been written for you, though you dislike it. It may be that you dislike a thing and it is good for you; and it may be that you love a thing and it is bad for you. God knows, and you do not know."
The most striking side of the verse is that in laying down the ruling it does not deny the dislike: wa huwa kurhun lakum — "and it is heavy upon you".
The ruling is laid down without discounting the hearer's feeling. There are other instances of this in the sūra: at verse 183 a ground was given when fasting was written, and at 185 the clause of ease was entered.
عَسَىٰٓ — "it may be that". This particle states no certainty. The verse, that is, does not say "everything you dislike is good for you"; it says that the bond between the two is not necessary. It is built in both directions: what you love may also be bad.
وَٱللَّهُ يَعْلَمُ وَأَنتُمْ لَا تَعْلَمُونَ — the sentence is not a claim about knowledge but a statement of a limit. What a decision rests on is not what a person sees at that moment.