Semiotics is an emerging discipline in the humanities that, by discovering signs and the manner of their employment in the text, opens wide horizons between the reader and the text, viewing the text not merely as a linear message but as a network of hidden and manifest significations whose understanding requires going beyond surface reading. Among theorists of the semiotics of poetry, Michael Riffaterre occupies a special place. He believes that two types of reading can be extracted from any literary text: exploratory reading (surface and referential) and semiotic reading (deep and non-referential). To achieve this goal, Riffaterre mentions elements such as ungrammaticality, accumulation, descriptive systems, hypogram, and matrix. Using a descriptive-analytical method and relying on Riffaterre's complete model, the present study seeks to examine the extent of this theory's applicability to Sermon 193 of Nahj al-Balagha in describing the pious. The findings indicate that this sermon enjoys complete applicability to Riffaterre's model; five main accumulations were identified around the sememes of humility and submission, worship and night vigil, detachment and disinterest in the world, trustworthiness and keeping covenants, and certainty and preparedness for the Hereafter. Additionally, five descriptive systems were identified: night and worship, the world and the Hereafter, ethics and social behavior, fear and hope, and light and guidance. The hypogram of the sermon is the visage of the pious as the model of the perfect human being, and its matrix is piety as the path of salvation and divine proximity. The semiotic reading extracts four main secondary meanings: piety as a comprehensive program of life, balance between the world and the Hereafter, the connection of worship with ethics and society, and piety as a conscious and dynamic choice.