فَقَالَ لَهُمْ رَسُولُ ٱللَّهِ نَاقَةَ ٱللَّهِ وَسُقْيَٰهَا
Fa-qāla lahum rasūlu'llāhi nāqata'llāhi wa suqyāhā "Then the messenger of God said to them: 'The she-camel of God, and her turn at the water!'"
The sūra does not name the messenger. That he is Ṣāliḥ is known from the other sūras of the Qurʾān (al-Aʿrāf 7/73; Hūd 11/61; al-Shuʿarāʾ 26/142; al-Naml 27/45).
The omission of the name is not a lack but a choice. What matters here is not the person but the attribute: "the messenger of God". The work of the sentence is to show whom the other side is standing against. For the same reason the she-camel too is named not "the she-camel" but "the she-camel of God".
The name الله occurs twice in the verse: rasūlu'llāh and nāqatu'llāh. This name occurs nowhere else in the sūra; only in this verse, and twice. This concentration does not look like coincidence: the verse is making the parties to the event plain. On one side a people, on the other two things ascribed to God.
This part of the sentence looks at first incomplete: "the she-camel of God and her turn at the water" — there is no verb.
The word نَاقَةَ is in the accusative. Why? Because there is here a structure the lexicographers call taḥdhīr: warning, putting on guard. It is the Arabic counterpart of what English does in "Mind the dog!" or "Mind the train!" A verb is concealed in the sentence; it is supplied thus: "Dharū nāqata'llāh" (Leave the she-camel of God alone) or "Iḥdharū nāqata'llāh" (Beware of the she-camel of God).
The dropping of the verb is not accidental; it is the sign of haste. Sentences of warning are shortened because a warning must be given fast. The verse conveys the messenger's word not as a complete sentence but as a shout.
Note further: the whole of the messenger's speech has been compressed into one verse, indeed into half a verse. In other sūras the Qurʾān conveys long conversations of Ṣāliḥ with his people. Here there is a single warning. The economy of the sūra requires this — the subject is not the history of Thamūd but the consequence of a choice.
Root: ن-و-ق. Nāqa means a female camel. The male camel is jamal. Arabic has dozens of words for the camel, each distinguished by age, sex and function; nāqa denotes in particular the adult female.
This carries a weight of meaning. The female camel is the animal that gives milk and bears young — that is, for a community she is productive capital. What was cut down is not a mount or a source of meat; it is a means of production.
What does it mean that the she-camel is "the she-camel of God"? The camel does not have to be biologically different from other camels. What sets her apart is to whom she is ascribed. The Qurʾān says this plainly: "This is the she-camel of God, a sign for you" (al-Aʿrāf 7/73).
The she-camel is a sign, that is; and what makes her a sign is not her own properties but the ruling laid upon her. This says something about the Qurʾān's understanding of a sign: what is sacred is not the object but the command attached to the object. When the she-camel was hamstrung, the crime committed was not the killing of an animal but the trampling of a boundary.
Root: س-ق-ي. Saqā — he gave to drink, he watered. From the same root come siqāya (the office of distributing water — it occurs at al-Tawba 9/19), sharāb/mashrūb, and suqyā — the water given to drink, the share of drinking.
And here is the real matter. The verse does not merely say "do not touch the she-camel"; it says "do not touch her share of the water". The prohibition is in two layers, that is: the animal herself and the animal's right.
"This is a she-camel; she has a turn at drinking (shirb), and you have a turn at drinking on a known day" (al-Shuʿarāʾ 26/155).
"And tell them that the water is divided between them; each turn at drinking shall be attended" (al-Qamar 54/28).
This changes the core of the account. The trial is not a trial of mercy in the form "do not harm an animal". The trial is a trial of sharing: giving up a certain portion of a scarce resource.
One has to consider what water meant in the arid geography of north-west Arabia. A source of water is the reason for a settlement's existing. What was asked of Thamūd was to leave one of that source's days to a creature not their own.
And in telling this the sūra is speaking within a text that two verses earlier had spoken of a man's making his own soul grow. The link is this — and I say it as my own reading: purification is giving up a portion of what is in your hand. The word itself was saying this too; zakāt is the share taken out of wealth. What Thamūd cut away was precisely that share.
The next sūra (al-Layl) will make this link far more plainly: there the man who purifies his soul will be described as "he who gives his wealth" (92/18).