In September 1859, Abraham Lincoln stood in front of the farmers of the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society and told them a story. An Eastern monarch, he said, once asked his wise men for a sentence that would be true in every time and situation, and they gave him “And this, too, shall pass away.”
It is not in the Bible. It is not in Proverbs, and it is not anywhere else in Scripture. Lincoln was retelling an old Eastern story that other versions set on a king’s ring, and some of them put Solomon in the king’s place, which helps it sound like Scripture.
A saying built for both directions
Lincoln admired the sentence, “how chastening in the hour of pride,” and “how consoling in the depths of affliction.” Then he added, “And yet let us hope it is not quite true.”
The story is usually traced to medieval Persian poetry, where a king’s ring is meant to steady him when he is sad and humble him when he is happy. It was made to cut both ways: your hard year will pass, and so will your good one.
People use it now almost only in the hard direction, and grip it the way you grip a handrail on a staircase in the dark. Said that way, it becomes a promise that life returns to normal on some unnamed date. If someone handed it to you on a card, they meant well, and you are allowed to set it down: it is not Scripture, and Isaiah gives something better to hold.
The grass and the word
The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the LORD bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever.
Isaiah 40:6-8 (KJV)
Isaiah is honest that everything in the field passes, all its goodliness with it. And he names one thing that stands, the word of our God.
Jesus says it in nearly the words of the saying: “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” John says, “the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.” In both sentences, what passes is set beside what stays.
Isaiah is not given this message to crush anyone. The chapter opens with “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.” The word that stands is a word of comfort, spoken to people who had lost a great deal.
Paul’s two columns
Paul calls his trouble “our light affliction, which is but for a moment,” and he sorts the world into two columns: “the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.” The house, the job and the healthy year are things which are seen, so they go in the temporal column along with the trouble. What he sets against all of it is unseen, and lasting.
Doesn’t the Bible promise that trouble ends?
The verse people reach for is Psalm 30: “weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.” It is a man giving thanks after his own night and telling the congregation what he learned there, with no date set for anyone else’s. Ecclesiastes gives “a season” for everything, and at 3:11, after the list of seasons, says “no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.”
One sentence in the Bible comes close in wording, and Job’s friend Zophar speaks it: Job will “remember it as waters that pass away,” he says. It is part of a speech that makes Job’s relief depend on putting away his sin, “If iniquity be in thine hand, put it far away.” Everything happens for a reason is another sentence people bring to a sickbed, and Scripture does not say that one either.
The Bible does promise an end, in Revelation 21:4, where God wipes away all tears when he makes all things new, and no verse sets a date for anyone’s grief before then. Grief does not pass on a schedule. What Isaiah offers in its place is better than a return to normal.
Carried
Isaiah does not leave the field bare. A few verses after the grass withers, the God whose word stands comes for his people, and the prophet says what he does with the weakest of them.
He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young.
Isaiah 40:11 (KJV)