[A Man Divorcing His Wife, Then Revoking It, Then Divorcing Again]

Answer: This is an important question. What appears to me—and Allah knows best—is that the husband’s revocation of his wife after divorcing her, as described in the question, is an invalid revocation; and if it is invalid, then any divorce that follows upon it does not take effect. The reason is:
— The revocation (rujūʿ) that Allah Most High has legislated and intended is that whose motive and driver is the desire to resume conjugal life with the divorced wife: either because the husband loves her, or for the sake of her children, or due to friendship with her family, or due to people’s reproach, or the like.
— But if what is intended by the revocation is what is mentioned in the question—namely, the aim of preventing the husband from taking his wife back—then it is not valid. This is when it is known from the husband’s situation, or he states it explicitly, or the intermediary compels him to revoke and divorce, then revoke and divorce, and he complies with their command.
— Moreover, if the divorce occurs from the husband by compulsion from arbiters (muḥakkamūn), or by compulsion from a judge, or by compulsion from those acting in the capacity of ḥisbah to set right the spouses’ affair and look into what is between them of discord and dispute—then it is an irrevocable (bāʾin) divorce. For the two arbiters whom Allah Most High has ordered to be sent to judge between disputing spouses—when they look into what is between the spouses and see that there is no path to reform except separation and divorce—they judge accordingly. If they judge so and the husband divorces, he may not thereafter revoke; for the ruling has obliged the husband to separate from her so long as their condition remains as it was before the divorce. In that case, the husband’s revocation would be a nullification and invalidation of the ruling, due to the incompatibility between a ruling of divorce/separation and a revocation.
Likewise is the ruling when it is the judge who has ruled for separation between the spouses—or a judge-arbiter.
Those intermediaries who intervene as an act of ḥisbah are analogous to them: their compelling the husband to divorce stands in the place of a judicial ruling. The people of the madhhab have said: “Whoever is qualified for a function, and there is no Imām, may carry it out.”
By what we have set forth, it becomes clear that a husband’s revocation after being ruled to divorce is invalid—likewise whatever divorces are purported to follow it.
— As for when a husband divorces his wife without there being any serious cause between them, then revokes in the session of divorce, then follows it with a divorce, then revokes, then follows the revocation with a divorce, intending by this procedure to block himself from being able to take his wife back—we say: the revocation is invalid. Its clarification, in addition to what has preceded, is:
There is in the ḥadīth: “No deed [is valid] except with intention,” and, “Actions are only by intentions.” There is no disagreement about this. There is no doubt that the person we have described has no intention to take his wife back, no aim toward that, no inner motive to her return; rather, he “revokes” his wife after divorce with wording empty of the meaning of revocation—by his own admission and acknowledgment.
If it be said: The scholars have not stipulated intention and purpose for the validity of revocation; they have attached it to the wording without considering any qualification.
We say: That is so. Revocation is established by wording without qualification, and judgment is made accordingly without looking to anything else.
This is based on the outward; for one who bears witness to his revocation and effects it by wording—his revocation is valid, because his outward state indicates his desire and intention for his wife’s return and his truthfulness in reversing his divorce.
However, what we have stated pertains to the case in which we know of the man divorcing his wife that he does not wish to take her back at all, has no desire for her whatsoever, and—by his own admission—only intends by the wording of revocation another matter, namely major irrevocability (al-baynūnah al-kubrā) alone. When we know and ascertain that regarding the husband’s condition, it is not valid for us to judge the revocation sound.
— This is in addition to the fact that such conduct nullifies what Allah Most High intends from revocation and entails trifling with His rulings and making light of them.
This is what appears to me regarding that. Allah knows best. All praise is due to Allah, Lord of the worlds. And may Allah bless prophet Muhammad and his family and grant them peace.
Source : Min Thimār al-ʿIlm wa al-Ḥikmah vol.1