Overall meaning : Allah has indeed heard the words of the woman who pleads with you, Muhammad, concerning her husband who said to her, ‘You are to me like my mother,’ (which was a common form of divorce among Arabs before Islam), and complained to Allah about what her husband had done. Allah has indeed heard what you two said to each other. Allah hears everything and sees everything.
Those of you, men, who use this form of divorce by declaring their wives to be to them like their mothers should know that their wives do not become their mothers simply by so saying. Their mothers are only those who gave them birth. By declaring their wives like their mothers, such men utter words that are both iniquitous and false. Yet surely Allah is All-pardoning, All-Forgiving.
Those men who divorce their wives by declaring that they will thereafter regard them as their mothers, and afterwards intend to retract their words and resume their intimate relations with them, must free a slave before they may engage in intimate relations again. Such is your Lord’s admonition to you. Allah is fully aware of everything that you do.
However, those who cannot find a slave to free must observe a fast of two consecutive months before they may resume intimate relations with their wives. If they are unable to do so, then they must feed sixty needy people. This has been enjoined on you, so that you may believe in Allah and His Messenger. Such are the bounds Allah has set for you. Those who disbelieve in Allah and His Messenger will suffer an agonizing punishment.