A great deal of nonsense is sometimes talked in religious circles about the evil eye. As a consequence, it has come to mean something quite different in everyday English from the way it is used in the Bible.
Dictionaries generally define it like this: “EVIL EYE, a supposed power to cause harm by a look” (Chambers). There is no clear biblical instance, however, of the expression ever being used in that way.
Consider the following extract from Matthew 6.
- Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:
- But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth or rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:
- For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
- The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.
- But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!
- No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
Verses 22 and 23 have been indented to draw attention to the apparent break in thought. If we read verse 24 immediately after verse 21, and remember that “mammon” is the ordinary Aramaic word for “riches,” then the thought flows smoothly throughout. Why, then, does the Lord break it up by inserting this strange warning about the evil eye?
Old Testament precedent
The answer is surprisingly simple. To his Jewish listeners there was no break in thought there at all; they knew that verses 22 and 23 fit the context beautifully.
To see that this is so, we only need to look at the way the phrases “evil eye” and “good eye” were used in the Old Testament. The earliest example is this:
“Beware that there be not a thought in thy wicked heart, saying, The seventh year, the year of release, is at hand; and thine eye be evil against thy poor brother, and thou givest him nought” (Deut. 15:9).
It is rather obvious that in this place to have an evil eye means to be tight-fisted at a time when one ought to be generous. The expression means much the same in the book of Proverbs:
“He that hasteth to be rich hath an evil eye” (28:22).
The NIV leaves us in no doubt because here, unlike in Deuteronomy 15, it translates the Hebrew for “him that hath an evil eye” by “a stingy man.” It also uses the term “stingy man” in the following Proverb, and in this one the NKJV reinforces it by calling the evil-eyed man “a miser.” The KJV, though, is, as usual, the closest to the Hebrew, thus:
“Eat not the bread of him that hath an evil eye, neither desire thou his dainty meats. For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he. Eat and drink, saith he to thee, but his heart is not with thee” (23:7).
Evidently there was, even in Solomon’s day, something rather similar to the modern business lunch, where the host puts on a great show of generous hospitality, while his only real concern is to earn money for himself by selling you something!
The opposite
Since in ancient Israel “evil eye” evidently denoted meanness, we might expect that the opposite, a “good eye,” would indicate generosity. That this is indeed so is made clear in another of Solomon’s proverbs:
“He that hath a bountiful (generous) eye shall be blessed, for he giveth of his bread to the poor” (22:9).
This time the KJV interprets the Hebrew for us, just as modern translations do. But unlike them, it does not keep us guessing. A marginal note tells us that the Hebrew word translated “bountiful” is actually the ordinary Hebrew word for “good.” Thus the person who gives food to the hungry is, in Hebrew idiom, one with a “good eye.”
Knowing this background, we are now in a position to understand the use of these phrases in Matthew — a gospel which was always regarded as being of particular use to Jewish Christians, and makes more use of Hebrew idiom than Mark or Luke.
Let’s look first at the parable of the laborers in the vineyard in Matthew 20. One of those men had agreed to do 12 hours work for the going rate of one denarius, but when he saw other workers getting the same pay for a mere one hour’s work, he went to the boss and complained. (It seems that another modern phenomenon, the shop-steward mentality, also existed in ancient Israel!) Part of the employer’s response (v.14) went like this:
“Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil because I am good? (or as in the NIV, Are you envious because I am generous?)”
Blending in a Greek idiom
It is time to return to those enigmatic verses in Matthew 6. Now that we know, to the Jews, the phrases “good eye” and “evil eye” referred to generosity and meanness respectively, it is clear that the whole passage from v.19 to v.24 (and beyond) is uniform, being all about the Christian attitude to riches.
If only v.22 had said, “If thine eye be good,” then everything would be parceled-up tidily, with no loose ends. But life is rarely that simple. We are left with a vital question: why did the Lord actually say, “If thine eye be single?”
The answer lies in the way the Greeks used this expression to mean “generous.” Apart from the parallel in Luke 11:34, which also speaks of the eye being either single or evil, this is the only occurrence in the New Testament of the Greek adjective haplous, “single.” However, the noun derived from it, haplotees, “singleness,” occurs eight times, including the three following, where the KW translation of haplotees is given in underscored:
“Their deep poverty abounded unto the riches of their liberality” (II Cor. 8:2).
“Enriched in everything to all bountifulness” (II Cor. 9:11).
“They glorify God for…your liberal distribution” (II Cor. 9:13).
It is clear from this that Greek-speakers as well as Hebrew-speakers would have known that Jesus was exhorting them to be generous in those powerful words of Matt. 6:22 and 23.
Paraphrasing Matthew 6:22-23
Now that we understand the idioms involved, it is possible to extract the meaning from Matthew 6:22-23 that its original hearers would have taken from it. The following paraphrase is an attempt to present this meaning in plain language, and it shows how the verses fit perfectly into their context. Compare these words with the actual text of Matthew 6:22-23 and see how they truly represent the Lord’s teaching here.
“A thing that throws light on your whole character is your attitude to your material possessions. If you are outgoing and generous, then your character will shine. But if you are mean and selfish with your wealth, your character will be dark. And if you, as one called to be a child of light, are actually possessed of inward darkness, how terrible this darkness must be!”
It is difficult not to be stirred deeply by this powerful exhortation from the mouth of our Master.
Acknowledgement
My own eye would be “evil” if I failed to acknowledge that the credit for first drawing the attention of the brotherhood to these facts belongs to Bro. L.G. Sargent. After wearily digging it all out for myself I found a broadly similar exposition in his excellent book, The Teaching of the Master.
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