al-Baqara 2:245 — "A good loan"

"Who is it that will lend God a good loan, that He may multiply it for him many times over?"

قَرْض — root ق-ر-ض: to cut, to cut off and set apart. Miqrāḍ — scissors. The lexicographers connect a loan with this root thus: the lender cuts a piece from his property and sets it apart.

The choice of the word is worth recording. The verse does not say "give" or "spend"; it says "lend". A loan is what is given in order to be taken back. Spending, that is, is described not as something lost but as something entered in the column of what is owed to one.

وَٱللَّهُ يَقْبِضُ وَيَبْصُۜطُ — "God straitens and enlarges." That this sentence is placed here is an answer to the anxiety about diminution felt in giving.