Isaiah 33:17 · World English Bible
Isaiah 33:17 Meaning Your Eyes Will See the King
Your eyes will see the king in his beauty. They will see a distant land.
What does Isaiah 33:17 mean?
Qabḍ and basṭ: Contraction and expansion The heart squeezed shut and the heart opened wide, both handed out by God. Under threat a person's world shrinks to the size of the danger, and thinking rarely reaches past the next hour.
From the Sufism reading below.
Isaiah 33:17 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Sufism
SUFISM
Sufism
Qabḍ and basṭ: Contraction and expansion The heart squeezed shut and the heart opened wide, both handed out by God. Under threat a person's world shrinks to the size of the danger, and thinking rarely reaches past the next hour. From inside, that tightness feels permanent, so hearing it named as a season with an end is often what keeps someone breathing.
With hardship comes ease: relief is tied to this trouble A line the Quran states twice over, which Sufis hear as insistence. People in a long bad stretch picture relief as a door far off in time, and the waiting wears on them more than the trouble. Hearing that the ease belongs to this hardship, and arrives with it, lets a person stop measuring the distance and stay in the day.
Tajallī: Self-disclosure Ibn Arabi's word for God showing himself in a form a person can take in. Waiting eyes tend to assume the change depends on them, as if sight were earned by trying harder. Ibn Arabi puts the movement on God's side, so a long stretch of seeing nothing counts as a wait, not a verdict on the one waiting.
Jamāl and Jalāl: Beauty and majesty Two sides of God that al-Ghazali and Ibn Arabi hold together, one that overwhelms and one that draws. A person afraid for a long time knows mainly the overwhelming side, so even good news lands as something to brace for. The Prophet said that God is beautiful and loves beauty. Both sides belong to one God, and long fear has shown someone only half of him.
Mushāhada: Witnessing The Sufi name for firsthand seeing. Long trouble teaches people to live on reports: someone else's promise, an old memory, a hope held at second hand. Witnessing is the moment the thing stands in front of you, fear stops filling the whole field of view, and the world looks wide again.
Sufism lensGo deeper in the app
Sufism lens
Live Isaiah 33:17 today
- Name what has your chest tight, out loud or on paper, and add the plain words "this is a season." You are not pretending it is small, you are refusing to call it permanent.
- Ask someone in a hard stretch what they are afraid of, then stay with them in it instead of hurrying them toward the bright side. Being seen in the narrow place is often what widens it.
- In the worst hour of the day, put down the phone and look for one beautiful thing in front of you, light on a wall, somebody's face, the shape of a tree. Fear had taken the whole screen, and this is you taking a corner back.
What have you been treating as permanent that might turn out to be weather?
The same truth in other traditions
Tao Te Ching 23
No storm blows all day; the fiercest wind spends itself. What feels permanent from inside is weather, and weather moves.
Stoicism · Marcus Aurelius
Fear narrows a person to the size of the thing they fear, and then they take that narrow view for the whole world. Step back and the same day looks wide.
Buddhism
Every state of mind, the tight ones included, arises and passes. Fear lies chiefly in telling you it will not.
Free · No account needed
Read all of Isaiah 33 through 17 lenses
Lensightful opens every verse of the Bible through the traditions you choose. Save readings, ask a follow-up question, and get one verse a day.
Get Lensightful on the App Store