Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Matthew 6:22-24

Parable of the eye. A difficult passage; connection obscure, and the evangelic report apparently imperfect. The parallel passage in Luke (Luke 11:33-36) gives little help. The figure and its ethical meaning seem to be mixed up, moral attributes ascribed to the physical eye, which with these still gives light to the body. This confusion may be due to the fact that the eye, besides being the organ of vision, is the seat of expression, revealing inward dispositions. Physically the qualities on which vision depends are health and disease. The healthy eye gives light for all bodily functions, walking, working, etc.; the diseased eye more or less fails in this service. If the moral is to be found only in last clause of Matthew 6:23, all going before being parable, then ἁπλοῦς must mean sound and πονηρὸς diseased, meanings which, if not inadmissible, one yet does not expect to find expressed by these words. They seem to be chosen because of their applicability to the moral sphere, in which they might suitably to the connection mean “liberal” and “niggardly”. ἁπλότης occurs in this sense in Romans 12:8, and Hatch (Essays in [41]. G., p. 80) has shown that πονηρός occurs several times in Sept [42] (Sirach) in the sense of niggardly, grudging. He accordingly renders: “The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore thine eye be liberal thy whole body shall be full of light; but if thine eye be grudging, thy whole body shall be full of darkness.” Of course this leaves the difficulty of the mixing of natural and moral untouched. The passage is elliptical, and might be paraphrased thus: The eye is the lamp of the body: when it is healthy we see to do our daily work, when diseased we are in darkness. So with the eye of the soul, the heart, seat of desire: when it is free from covetousness, not anxious to hoard, all goes well with our spiritual functions we choose and act wisely. When sordid passions possess it there is darkness within deeper than that which afflicts the blind man. We mistake the relative value of things, choose the worse, neglect the better, or flatter ourselves that we can have both.

[41] Codex Vaticanus (sæc. iv.), published in photographic facsimile in 1889 under the care of the Abbate Cozza-Luzi.

[42] Septuagint.

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Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Matthew 6:22-24

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