The hadith is well known and often quoted crookedly, reduced to a formula about obedience. It says both more and something else.
What the text says
Sheikh Abd as-Salam ash-Shuwayir recalls the hadith: this world is an enjoyment, and its best enjoyment is the righteous wife.
And he notes that the Prophet himself described her: when he looks at her she pleases him, and when he asks of her she obeys.
The sheikh concludes that what a woman does best for her married life to be good is to obey her husband in what he commands of good, and to abstain from what he forbids.
The clause about good is not an ornament. It is the limit. No obedience is owed in disobedience to the Creator, and that reservation is constant among the people of knowledge.
What it is worth
Sheikh Muhammad Said Raslan describes what a man receives when he has at home a wife who is believing, pious, raised on the principles of Islam, and who preserves his honour and her religion. He calls it the supreme attainment.
That vocabulary is deliberate. It places the righteous wife above what most men spend their lives pursuing.
Loyalty put to the test
The same sheikh then names the opposite, and he does not spare it. He describes the woman who fulfils her duty only so long as her husband is healthy, young, wealthy and well placed, and who turns away as soon as misfortune strikes: ill after health, poor after wealth, old after youth.
He concludes that this is not the character of noble women, and that remaining faithful with sincerity is one of the finest qualities of a woman.
That demand has its exact mirror on the husbands' side, and we cover it in the mistakes that wear a couple down.
Fatima bint Abd al-Malik
Sheikh Raslan offers an example, and it is striking.
Fatima bint Abd al-Malik was the daughter of a caliph, sister of caliphs, and wife of the caliph Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz. She entered her husband's house laden with considerable jewels. When he decided his household would spend only a few dirhams a day, she sent all of her jewels to the Muslim treasury.
He died shortly after, leaving nothing. Her brother, by then caliph, offered to return her property, which was lawful and still held. She refused, with this sentence: never would she obey him in his lifetime only to disobey him after his death.
She and her children were then in the greatest need.
The sheikh concludes that this is how Allah inscribed a kind of immortality for her, since the nobility of her soul is still spoken of centuries later.
What this example teaches
It asks no one to give up a fortune. It shows what loyalty is when no one is watching it any more, and when it genuinely costs something.