Saba ('Sheba'), 54 Meccan verses, contrasts the gratitude commanded of David and Solomon with the ingratitude of the people of Sheba, whose prosperity ended when the great dam of Marib burst and their gardens turned to bitter fruit (34:15-17), a warning against taking blessings for granted.
The dam of Marib, whose collapse the surah reads as ending the prosperity of Sheba's 'two gardens, right and left' (34:15), corresponds to an actual ancient irrigation structure in Yemen whose failure, attested independently in South Arabian inscriptions and later Arabic historical memory, became proverbial in Arabic literature as sayl al-arim, the flood of the dam, a byword for catastrophic loss of settled prosperity that pre-dates and is absorbed into the Quranic account. David's Quranic gift of a softened iron he could shape by hand, and the command to 'work righteousness' in gratitude for it (34:10-11), together with Solomon's control of the wind and access to a spring of molten copper (34:12), are read by commentators as paired examples of extraordinary provision that nonetheless obligate gratitude rather than pride, setting up the contrast with Sheba's failure to respond to comparable blessing with anything but complacency. The surah's closing verses, addressing those who will one day wish for another chance once punishment has already begun (34:51-54), are read as a final restatement of its central warning that gratitude, not mere possession of blessing, determines whether prosperity endures.