M6:2172 — تا شود بر تنت این جبهٔ شگرف / سرد هم‌چون یخ گزنده هم‌چو برف

Translation: So that this magnificent robe upon your body / Becomes cold like ice, biting like snow. Meaning: This verse illustrates how, under divine displeasure, even a warm, protective garment can transform into something intensely cold, piercing, and agonizing.

I hold that Rumi, here, points to one of the deepest truths of existence: the absolute power of God to transform the very nature of things. This couplet continues Rumi's earlier discussion of divine naker (turning something upside down, a form of punitive transformation); that is, when divine decree is set upon torment or retribution, all matters are utterly overturned. As we have seen, if divine wrath settles upon a person's bread, that same life-sustaining bread can seize his throat like diphtheria, choking him. In this couplet, Rumi applies precisely this principle to clothing. This "magnificent robe" (jebbeh-yi shegarf), which is valuable, warm, and intended to protect a person from cold (to be a mojir), can, by virtue of God's overwhelming will, acquire the "temperament of Zahrir" (mezāj-i zahrir). This means, instead of warmth, it produces cold; a biting, lethal cold, "cold like ice, biting like snow." This Zahrir, which in the Quran is used to describe the moderation of Paradise ("they will see therein neither sun nor zahrir"), is here interpreted in the Sufi sense of torment and suffering; a kind of icy hell, which, unlike the fiery hell, afflicts humanity with its bone-chilling cold. This astonishing metamorphosis demonstrates that nothing in the world is inherently good or bad for us; rather, it is God's will that dictates its quality and effect upon us. This arises from our state of being subject to contraries, which are perpetually in flux and transition. Rumi goes on to say that sometimes, even from vashq (soft, delicate fur) and harīr (silk), one becomes so afflicted and heated that one seeks refuge in Zahrir! That is, the very instruments of comfort and ease can become sources of suffering. This is not solely due to divine decree; sometimes, "our own conduct brings us into these difficulties and dualities." This means that human actions and intentions also play a role in this transformation. This illustrates the truth that our happiness and misery are tied not so much to the outward appearance of things as to our relationship with the truth of existence and, indeed, with divine will.

Key takeaways

• God's absolute power can transform the nature of objects, turning blessings into curses.
• Divine displeasure can convert a source of comfort (like a warm coat) into a source of torment (biting cold).
• What appears outwardly as a means of ease can, by divine decree, become a source of affliction.
• Our experience of the world depends less on objects themselves and more on divine will and our relationship to it.
• Our actions and intentions also play a role in the transformation of boons into calamities.