Surah Al-Waqi'ah 56:55
سُورَةُ الوَاقِعَةِ · Meccan · Verse 55 of 96
فَشَٰرِبُونَ شُرْبَ ٱلْهِيمِ
Translation
lapping it like thirsty camels.’
English translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem.
Meaning and reflection
'Drinking as the thirst-stricken camel drinks.' Ibn Ashur and al-Saadi note the vivid, humbling comparison, 'shurb al-him': 'him' is the camel afflicted with a disease that gives it an unquenchable, mad thirst, so it drinks and drinks and is never satisfied, until it perishes. Ask yourself: this is the image of an appetite become a sickness, thirst that drinking cannot cure, hunger that feeding only inflames, a craving with no floor. I know its shadow in this life: the pursuit that never satisfies, the more that only makes me want more. The verse names it as the disease it is. It presses me to ask which of my thirsts are healthy and quenchable, and which have become the diseased kind, that no amount of the thing I crave will ever fill, because the craving itself has become the illness.
Grounded in classical tafsir: Ibn Ashur, al-Saadi, al-Biqa'i.
Topics that discuss this verse
Surah Al-Waqi'ah 56:55 is discussed in 6 study guides on Maani. Each guide gathers the key verses, Arabic words and lessons of one Quranic topic.
Reflect on this verse
Open Surah Al-Waqi'ah 56:55 in Maani to reflect on it through the Five Lenses: its wording, its context, what it means for you, its connections across the Quran and its lessons, grounded in classical tafsir.