Is 'This too shall pass' in the Bible? The real source

Where does 'This too shall pass' come from?

Here's the twist: one of the most biblical-sounding lines in English isn't in the Bible. It's not in the Torah, not in Psalms, not in the Talmud, not in any classical Jewish text.

It's usually traced to medieval Persian Sufi poetry (Sufis are Islamic mystics). In the story, a king asks his wise men for words that would make a sad man happy and a happy man sad. They come back with a ring engraved with one line: this too shall pass.

Later, Jewish folklore told the same ring story about King Solomon, the Bible's famously wise king, with the Hebrew phrase gam zeh ya'avor. That may be part of why people assume it's scripture. The line became widely known in English in the 1800s.

What does it actually mean?

'This' is whatever you're in right now. The breakup, the promotion, the flu, the best summer of your life.

'Too' is the quiet part. It puts this moment in line with everything else that already came and went. You've been somewhere like this before, and it ended.

'Shall pass' doesn't promise things will get better. It says they'll end. That's why the ring works on both men: the sad one hears hope, the happy one hears a warning.

So what does the Bible say instead?

The closest thing is Ecclesiastes, a short, blunt book of the Bible about time and what lasts. Its famous third chapter lists a time for everything, in pairs.

Read it next to the ring and it's the same idea, minus the jewelry. Crying doesn't get the last word, and neither does dancing. Each one gets its turn.

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The verse that goes one step further

Ecclesiastes opens with a bigger version of the same thought: generations come and go, and the earth stays, forever.

That's the half the ring leaves out. Your moment passes, but you're standing on something that doesn't. Whatever is eating at you this week is pretty small next to a very old planet.

Is it the same as 'gam zu l'tovah'?

No, though they sound alike. Gam zeh ya'avor means 'this too will pass.' Gam zu l'tovah means 'this too is for the good,' and that one really is from the Talmud, the huge ancient record of Jewish debates and stories.

They're very different moves. One says hang on, it'll end. The other says this might turn out to be good for you, even now.

What it looks like at 3 a.m.

Psalms, the Bible's book of songs and prayers, many credited to King David, puts it in one line: crying may stay the night, but morning brings joy.

The Hebrew verb for the crying literally means to spend the night, the way a guest does. It checks in. It also checks out.

So the 3 a.m. spiral about the email you sent, the test results, the text that still hasn't come back: it's real, and it's staying the night. It isn't moving in.

Same goes for the good stuff. The great week, the raise, the new-relationship glow. It's worth enjoying all the way, exactly because it won't hold still.