Matthew 6.22-23, Luke 11.34-36.
Some of Jesus’s teachings tend to get skipped entirely.
Let’s be honest: It’s because we don’t like them. Plenty of us hate the idea
Today’s lesson from
But because people nowadays are unfamiliar with the Hebrew idioms “good eye” and “evil eye”—and will even mix ’em up with the European idioms, and think they have to do with all-purpose blessings and curses—we’ll interpret this passage all kinds of wrong. Or claim, “Well it’s obscure,” and skip it. Usually skip it, and focus on the verses we can understand. Verses we figure we’re already following.
So in Matthew, right after saying
Matthew 6.22-23 KWL - 22 “The body’s light is the eye. So when your eye is healthy, your whole body will be bright.
- 23 When your eye is ill, your whole body is dark.
- So if the light in you is dark, how dark are you?”
Luke 11.34-36 KWL - 34 “The body’s light is your eye. Whenever your eye is healthy, your whole body is bright too.
- Once it’s ill, your body is dark too. 35 So watch out so the light in you isn’t dark.
- 36 So if your whole body is bright, without having any parts dark,
- the whole will be bright—as if a lamp could shine lightning for you.”
In the King James Version, in both gospels, the words to describe the eye are thus:
Ἁπλοῦς /aplús, “healthy,” is translated “single.”Πονηρὸς /ponirós, “ill,” is translated “evil.”
Why? Well… ’cause that’s what the words literally mean. That’s the problem with idioms. Literal translations, and likewise
By aplús and ponirós Jesus meant a healthy eye, or a sick one. If your eyes aren’t well, vision’s gonna be a problem, and you’re gonna be in the dark. But if your eyes are healthy, you’ll see just fine: Light could enter your body “as if a lamp could shine lightning for you,”
Well, light could more or less get into us. Remember, Jesus is teaching religion, not anatomy. Only the truly dumbest of literalists are gonna insist since our eyes work, our doctors won’t need to use the lights on the laryngoscope. Or colonoscope.
But okey: When the eyes work, our bodies have light; when they don’t, things are so dark. And that’s as far as way too many Christians go: Okay, working eyes are good; light is good; kinda stating the obvious there Jesus. Maybe it has to do with keeping our eyes open. Only looking at good things. Receiving revelation from God. Or “Be careful little eyes what you see” and all that. Shun evil. And all sorts of other things we can drag from our culture, and overlay upon the verse.
As the Expositor’s Bible Commentary initially puts it—getting it wrong, as usual—
“The eye is the lamp of the body”
Mt 6.22 in the sense that through the eye the body finds its way. The eye lets in light, and so the whole body is illuminated. But bad eyes let in no light, and the body is in darkness.Mt 6.23 The “light within you” seems ironic; those with bad eyes, who walk in darkness, think they have light, but this light is in reality darkness. The darkness is all the more terrible for failure to recognize it for what it is.cf. Jn 9.41 This fairly straightforward description has metaphorical implications. The “eye” can be equivalent to the “heart.” The heart set on God so as to hold to his commands
Ps 119.10 is equivalent to the eye fastened on God’s law.Ps 119.18, 119.148, 119.36-37 Similarly Jesus moves from “heart”Mt 6.21 to “eye.”Mt 6.22-23 Moreover the text moves between physical description and metaphor by the words chosen for “good” and “bad.”
D.A. Carson, EBC at Matthew 6.22-23
The
But the proper way to interpret it isn’t to assume it’s a common metaphor which our culture can easily sort out. How might Jesus’s culture understand this verse? What would a first-century Jew think he meant by a “single/healthy eye” and an “evil/ill eye”?
Glad I asked. I’ll explain.
The context: Generosity.
Remember, in Matthew this comes right after treasures in heaven,
In Luke it’s not. It’s preceded by Jesus’s statement that
In first-century Jewish culture, and for centuries thereafter, good eyes and bad eyes had to do with generosity versus stinginess. A “single eye” possibly had to do with the single-mindedness of people who aren’t double-minded;
The Mishna refers to the
In this context, we realize Jesus’s talk about how those with healthy eyes are full of light, and those with ill eyes are full of darkness, as wordplay.
Wordplay tends to evade the literal-minded. Some of ’em even insist wordplay’s a form of darkness—why can’t Jesus just say what he means, and mean what he says? Why’s he gotta be so clever and subtle? Why’s he gotta make us think? That’s some of the reason they struggle with this interpretation: They couldn’t deduce it with their own wit. They had to look at history books and commentaries, like any good scholar would; but they’d like to think they’d never need any of those reference materials, ’cause they have the Holy Spirit. That, folks, would be Balaam-style pride talking.
Another reason the meaning of this lesson evades people: They’re not generous. They’re not gracious. They believe the needy oughta merit grace. Give to the needy only if it’s gonna pay off for them in the long run; say, the needy will stop being needy, and start contributing right back. But if the needy are a lost cause, give ’em just enough to keep them alive (if that), and give up. It’s not even close to storing up treasure in heaven. It’s venture capitalism, disguised as charity.
The economic system of God’s kingdom.
Because of our fixation on money, we totally miss the fact in God’s kingdom, money doesn’t work like it does in our kingdom. At all.
Too often, Christians attempt to apply human economics to God’s kingdom. Sometimes it’s capitalism, which is about wealth creation. Sometimes socialism, i.e. wealth redistribution. Or communism, which shares the wealth; or Marxism, where the government wholly owns and dispenses it.
Because Christians claim we base our beliefs on the scriptures, we try to defend our existing favorite systems
Here’s why they’re all wrong: Earthly economies are based on scarcity. There are limited number of resources. We must create wealth. We must conserve and defend it once we’ve got it (or, if you’re not capitalist, spread it around). Government must keep its greedy little mitts off it (or, if you’re not capitalist, spread it around) and let it work on its own.
But God’s kingdom doesn’t function like any of our earthly economies. Because it runs on grace. It has no scarcity. It has unlimited resources, run by an almighty king. Nothing runs out. Not even time. Nobody even dies.
In the kingdom, wealth doesn’t come from us. Comes entirely from God. Farmers nowadays figure their crop yields are the result of diligent hard work; farmers in ancient Israel put the seed in the ground, then went home. Didn’t water; that’s what rain was for. Didn’t use pesticides; didn’t think to, but expected God to keep the bugs away. Wealth grew entirely without their input.
The crowd of 5,000 could’ve gleaned their own food, but Jesus fed ’em anyway. The folks at the Cana wedding could’ve begged more wine from the neighbors (probably unsuccessfully), but Jesus created some anyway. He gave ’em free healthcare, and inspired Christians to make it one of our most common forms of charity. Yet in the United States not only is it big business, but if it’s not profitable, hospitals won’t bother to treat you. You can go ahead and die.
Mammon has screwed with a lot of American Christians’ thinking. That’s why our eyes are ill: We’ve replaced God’s grace and generosity with,
(Of course, offer these same folks a tax break so they can afford college, childcare, healthcare, to buy a house, to give to charity, to mitigate business expenses… and all this “handout” talk evaporates. Nothing about how other people are gonna have to compensate for the tax dollars they no longer have to pay. “Handout” is in the eye of the beholder.)
The kingdom, I repeat, runs on grace. An attitude of generosity is just
Sadly, we don’t see it as often as we should. Christians love and trust their money more. We’ve been trained to from very young ages. We’d much prefer to think of this passage as nothing more than a metaphor for having a heart set on God… not a rebuke of those who have a heart set on their money.
