Al-Mutaffifin · Makki · ayah 28 of 36

Al-Mutaffifin 83:28

عَيْنًا يَشْرَبُ بِهَا ٱلْمُقَرَّبُونَ

“A spring from which those near [to Allāh] drink.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The greed that was never satisfied meets its opposite: people who drink from the spring itself and are finally quenched.

A reflection

Quenched at last

The ayah says yashrabu bihā, they drink by it, not minhā, from it. A classical scholar of the heart lingers on that small preposition. The verb, he says, carries the sense of being fully quenched. They drink by the spring itself, satisfied by it, and by nothing else alongside it. The same wording appears in al-Insān: 'a spring by which the servants of Allah drink' (76:6).

The root sh-r-b has vivid pictures. A shirb was a camel's turn at the trough. A proverb said the last camels to arrive get the least. Cloth 'drank' dye until the colour became its own. And when a love soaked into someone's heart, the Arabs said the heart ushriba it: it had drunk it in.

Now think of the people this surah began with. The short-measurer was never quenched. Every extra handful only fed the craving for another. The Quran's word for the Fire, jaḥīm, even shares a picture with a man burning with greed.

Here is the opposite. Picture a boy of ten coming in from two hours of football on a hot afternoon. He grabs the garden hose, drinks straight from it for a long time, and then stops, completely satisfied. He does not want another drop. He runs back out.

That is what 'drinking by the spring' holds: a thirst that ends. Much of modern life feeds thirsts that never end. The ayah promises a satisfaction that is complete. The way there begins now, by letting love of Allah soak into the heart until, like dyed cloth, it becomes our own colour.

The full entry has 5 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.