M4:68 — زهر مار آن مار را باشد حیات / نسبتش با آدمی باشد ممات

This couplet is the central, most vivid example in a philosophical passage about the relativity of good and evil. Rumi has just argued that nothing in the world is an absolute poison or an absolute sugar (M4:66-67). To prove his point, he uses the powerful image of snake venom.

For the snake, its venom is a vital, life-sustaining substance—its means of hunting and self-defense. It is integral to its nature, its ḥayāt (life). For a human, however, that very same substance is mamāt (death). The venom itself has not changed; only its relationship to the recipient determines its effect.

This principle, Rumi insists, applies to all things, events, and even people. Just as the night watchman seemed a terrible threat to the lover but ultimately led him to his beloved, what one person experiences as a destructive poison, another may experience as a life-giving elixir. The universe is not composed of fixed good and bad things, but of relationships.