When Pride Meets Love: Rumi’s Tale of the Hodja (Divan-e-Kabir, Verse 18)

A cautionary parable on pride, fate, and the purifying fire of Love

In this powerful passage from Rumi’s Divan-e-Kabir (Verse 18), we witness a timeless lesson about pride, arrogance, and the humbling power of Divine Love. Rumi tells the story of a hodja (religious teacher) who mocked lovers and walked with arrogance, only to be struck down by fate and transformed by Love itself. It is a reminder that wealth, status, and applause are illusions— only God’s Love endures. This verse speaks not just to Sufis and seekers of the spiritual path, but to anyone struggling with ego, loss, or the search for true meaning.

Divan-e-Kabir • Verse 18

Chat hodja's[7] feet got stuck in the mud

In our neighborhood. Let me tell you his story.

Do you remember the proverb, "The eye becomes blind when fate comes?"

He used to boast cruelly,

Tuck up his trousers

So they wouldn't touch the ground.

He used to walk pompously.

He made fun of Lovers

And used to accept Love as a plaything or toy.

There are so many birds unaware of the trap,

Flying without knowing that an arrow of trouble

Is coming from the hand of fate.

That man was also dead drunk.

Passed out of himself,

Clapping his hands, making fun of Lovers,

And, with the illusion of his greatness,

He attempted to wrestle with God.

He wasn't aware of what was coming to him.

He used to raise his head to the sky.

Gold and silver were in his pockets.

Bravo, bravo sounded in his ears.

He was exalted by the people's applause,

By those who knelt down in front of him,

By those poets who praised him

And gave foolish talks.

Nobility has its own disaster,

Because kindness appears as greatness in man.

The ones who fawn create illusion

And make the person ill.

Hodja gave money thinking he was doing favors.

Actually, he didn't create that money.

How could someone be generous

With someone else's money?

He turned into a pharaoh and a Sheddad.[8]

He became a sack filled with air.

He was an ant, then changed into a snake,

And finally into a dragon.

Love is like the staff of Moses.

With the Divine secret,

Love threw an arrow from ambush.

Our hodja was bent like a bow

From the wound of that arrow.

He fell suddenly to the ground

Like a man with a seizure,

Started growling and convulsing.

He lost everything,

Became naked and disreputable.

Even his enemies felt sorry for him.

His relatives cried

As if there were a death in the family.

He was turned into a pharaoh like Nemrud.[9]

Really, he kept saying, "I am God."

When his neck was broken,

He realized his state

And started crying and calling out,

"O our God. O our God."

His face became pale like saffron.

He had no wound but the one opened

By the eyes of a beautiful face with sugar lips.

Shall we be more amazed

By the arrow of that beauty or by her bow?

Are her eyes more beautiful than her lips?

Is she more disloyal than the world?

Is she more concealed, or is the phoenix?

Let me tell you the secret of how to test Lovers.

Come back to your senses, free yourself

From this secret lock and chain.

Open your ears. Listen.

But how can a person open his ears

If he's out of himself

And doesn't know where his ears are?

"God does whatever He desires"[10]

Is the only rule that restores the mind.

Hodja's wings were broken like a mosquito's.

He yelled and screamed in torment

And started to cry from Ayse's[11] love-telling.

"A curtain has been drawn over my eyes,"

Said the hodja.

"Since you've gone, we've been ruined.

We're separated from you.

Alas, alas!

Without you,

Life is death.

Please come back to us of your own will."

"My mind has been pawned to you.

Is there anyone to help me in my grief?"

My Heart is subject to your trials.

It has fallen in the middle of death's hell

And keeps burning."

O yelling, crying hodja,

Your hands and feet were safe before

Whenever fate and accident hit them.

But you broke so many Hearts

Before this moment

That now their punishment has found your feet.

Be thankful to God that your punishment

Came from the side of Love.

But leave temporary Love,

Because real Love is God's Love.

The experienced veteran puts a wooden sword

In the hand of his son

Simply as a tool for training.

To Love another human

Is like that wooden sword.

When it ends in disaster,

Love turns toward a merciful God.

At first, Joseph, son of Jacob,

Was in love with Zeliha.

This lasted for years.

In the end, he experienced God's Love,

And it was then

That Zeliha fell in love with Joseph.

At first, she stayed away from Joseph,

Who had tried to touch her shirt.

In the end, Zeliha tried to tear Joseph's shirt.

"That's my retaliation," she said, "I got even."

Joseph said, "God's Love makes this

Such a funny kind of thing."

The one who desires becomes the desired one.

The one at the bottom rises to the top.

With His blessing, He makes many people

The Kible[12] to their prayer.

Here, words become thinner.

Breath doesn't fit in the mouth.

Now I want to use tongue-twisting words,

Because it's the right place.

He said, "Who am I? I'm a figure made out of dust."

The one who casts Remil[13]

Tell these words to our hodja, then listen.

Hodja said, "Love set fire to my beard and burnt me.

Why have you left me?"

"O noble hodja, I left, but I came back quickly

To tell your situation to the people."

What could a silly man possibly tell?

How could a particle from the sun

Or a drop from the ocean

Explain this endless adventure?

When He shows you a small piece,

You'll understand the rest,

Just as you do when merchants show you

A handful of wheat from the barn

For buying and selling the grain in the silo.

When you see the sample,

You'll know the rest;

You'll know what kind of flour you'll get.

You're also like an old barn.

Dip in your hand

And pick up a handful of wheat from the pile.

See what kind of wheat you are,

Then dike it to the mill.

That world looks like a mill.

This one is like a threshing floor.

Whatever you are here, bran or wheat,

That's what you are there.

Go on. Leave this obstinacy.

O obstinate one.

Look. That hodja is waiting.

The one who has done his work halfway

Is rushing. He says, "Come on now."

"O hodja, tell us, how are you?

Why did you stay in this land of troubles?

You're tired and afflicted with incurable pains,

Covered with blood and dirt."

The hodja answered, "Help, O Moslems.

Watch your Hearts.

I've been wounded.

Be careful that something like this

Doesn't happen to you.

"I used to blame lovers

When I saw them suffering.

I laughed at them with a Heart full of malice

And called them names, using bad words."

"Woe to the one

Who slanders and ridicules people.

The one who says bad things,

He will get back exactly what he says.

[14]

Is this the mouth of a human

Or the hole of a snake, a scorpion?

Close this hole with mud and straw.

Don't let friends be bitten.

Fall in Love.

Forget names and titles.

Leave the grains, leave the trap.

Name the stone 'gold.'

Name sugar 'grief and suffering.'