Surah Al-Waaqia 56:55 — Meaning, Translation & Reflection

فَشَٰرِبُونَ شُرْبَ ٱلْهِيمِ

English: lapping it like thirsty camels.’

Bengali: পান করবে পিপাসিত উটের ন্যায়।

Meaning & 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.

Reflect with the Five Lenses

Maani's framework for Tadabbur (heart-centred reflection) on Surah Al-Waaqia 56:55:

• Wording. Look closely at the specific words and structure. Which word stands out, and why might Allah have chosen it here?
• Quranic Worlds. Place the verse in its context — what is happening around it, and what world does it open up?
• Personal Experience. Ask not just what this means, but what it means TO me and FOR me, right now in my life.
• Connections. How does this verse connect to other verses, to the Sunnah, or to themes across the Quran?
• General Lessons. What timeless lesson or action point can I carry away and live by?