Zechariah 9:17 · World English Bible
Zechariah 9:17 Meaning For How Great Is His Goodness
For how great is his goodness, and how great is his beauty! Grain will make the young men flourish, and new wine the virgins.
What does Zechariah 9:17 mean?
Jamāl: Beauty Jamāl names beauty as it belongs to God. Al-Ghazali held that whoever knows God cannot help loving him, because goodness and beauty in God are one and the same.
From the Sufism reading below.
Zechariah 9:17 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
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Sufism
Jamāl: Beauty Jamāl names beauty as it belongs to God. Al-Ghazali held that whoever knows God cannot help loving him, because goodness and beauty in God are one and the same. A person who meets that responds the way anyone responds to something lovely: the praise comes out before any explanation of it.
Tajallī: Self-disclosure Tajallī is God showing himself in what he has made. Ibn Arabi taught that every lovely thing carries a trace of that showing, however small. Someone who sees this stops sorting life into holy parts and ordinary parts. Good food and good company stop competing with God and start pointing back toward him.
Dhawq: Tasting Dhawq is knowing something by tasting it rather than hearing about it. Al-Ghazali compared knowing the definition of drunkenness with being drunk, and called the gap between them enormous. Someone can hold every correct belief about God's goodness and still feel nothing. Wonder shows up only once a person has had some of it firsthand.
Rizq: Provision Rizq is the supply that reaches a person day by day. Sufi teachers keep pointing out that it comes from God even when it arrives through work, weather, and other people. A person who loses sight of that starts treating a good year as payment earned, and the thanks quietly drain away. With the giver in view, an ordinary meal keeps feeling like a gift.
Shukr: Gratitude Shukr is thanks carried out in how a person lives. Al-Ghazali described it as using each gift for what it was given for, so strength gets spent well and plenty gets shared. Abundance tests people harder than shortage does, because comfort makes the giver easy to forget. Gratitude keeps a person connected to him while the good times last.
Basṭ: Expansion Basṭ names the open, roomy gladness of the heart, and the tradition pairs it with qabḍ, the shut and heavy state. Both arrive as weather that God sends, not moods a person manufactures. In the open state a person feels light and generous; months later the same person may feel closed. Knowing the gladness came as a gift keeps someone steady when it lifts.
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Live Zechariah 9:17 today
- Eat one thing today slowly enough to actually taste it, and let the fact that it came to you at all be the thought you hold while you eat.
- Tell someone a specific good thing you saw today, the light on a building on your commute, how a stranger helped someone, instead of defaulting to how busy you are.
- On a good day, when the money is fine and the work is going well, pause long enough to admit it was given rather than simply earned, because comfort makes that easy to forget.
When did I last enjoy something instead of just getting through it?
The same truth in other traditions
Zen
The teaching is to taste the tea rather than discuss it. Knowing the description of sweetness and having it on your tongue are not the same knowledge.
Taoism · Zhuangzi
He pointed at ordinary things, a butterfly, a cook's knife, a gourd, and found the whole of it there. Nothing is too plain to be a window.
Stoicism · Marcus Aurelius
He trained himself to see the beauty in a cracked loaf of bread and the bent stalks of ripe wheat, the parts that come as a side effect of nature doing its work.
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