Al-Mumtahana sets out the specific content of a pledge taken from believing women: not to associate anything with God, not to steal, not to commit adultery, not to kill their children, not to bring forth slander they have invented, and not to disobey the Prophet in what is right (60:12). Classical and later Islamic sources connect this pledge to a distinct, separately administered oath of allegiance taken from women converts, generally treated in the biographical tradition as parallel to, but administered differently from, the pledges of allegiance taken from men, since the verse itself, unlike parallel material addressed to men elsewhere, specifies content directly rather than leaving the terms to be inferred.
The prohibition against killing children is read by commentators as a direct reference to the pre-Islamic practice of female infanticide, connecting this pledge to similar condemnations elsewhere in the Quran, while the requirement not to invent slander is read by some exegetes as addressing a specific concern about children of uncertain or disputed paternity being falsely attributed within a household. The pledge's inclusion of ordinary moral prohibitions alongside the specifically religious one, association of partners with God, is read as treating basic personal ethics and correct belief as a single, integrated commitment rather than as separable categories.