Walking through Jeremiah
March 17, 2023 (four-minute read)
If you have been paying attention to this page, you know we’ve been snagging words of interest as we read through Jeremiah. There are a lot of words. So six days in, we are just in chapter 3. Slow and steady may win the race, but it also means we will be in Jeremiah for a long time at this pace.
“LOOK UP to the barren heights and see. Is there any place where you have not been ravished? By the roadside you sat waiting for lovers, sat like a nomad in the desert. You have defiled the land with your prostitution and wickedness. ”
Yesterday, we looked at the idiomatic phrase, “lift up your eyes”, which the NIV translates as “look up.” We discussed NASA, the multi-purpose word behind “lift up”. Today, the eyes have it…the eyes that are lifted up.
The Hebrew noun for “eye” is AYIN (עַיִן). It occurs in the Text 887 times. But if you think it’s simple, it’s not. Because this clever little Hebrew word does more than just see stuff. Of course, it does.
First, let’s talk about the simple use of the noun. In Genesis 3:5-7, the first time we meet the word, the Serpent is talking to Eve.
“‘For God knows that when you eat from it your EYES will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’ When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the EYE, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the EYES of both of them were opened, and they realised that they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.”
The final time we meet AYIN is in the last prophetic book of your Jewish text, which in the TaNaK is 2 Chronicles 36:5: “Jehoiakim was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem for eleven years. He did evil in the EYES of the Lord his God.” Of course, the Christian Bible has a different last book, the prophet Malachi, where we read in 2:17: “You have wearied the Lord with your words. ‘How have we wearied him?’ you ask. By saying, ‘All who do evil are good in the EYES of the LORD, and He is pleased with them’ or ‘Where is the God of justice?’”
Of course, it would not be Hebrew if a simple noun did not pull double duty in its use. AYIN is also used for “spring” and “fountain”. There are at least two explanations for why this is. The Hebrew word for “spring” is MAYAN (מַעְיָן). In the middle of that word is the word AYIN (עְיָן). The second reason we could perhaps call an aesthetic one. A spring reflects the sky and appears bright like an eye when seen from a distance.
In the Flood account, AYIN is translated as “springs” twice. Here is Genesis 7:11, “ In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month – on that day all the SPRINGS of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened.” And in 8:2, we read, “Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky.” It was by an AYIN in the wilderness where the LORD found Hagar when she fled from Sarah in Genesis 16. And it was by an AYIN that Abraham’s servant meets Isaac’s future wife, Rebekah.
AYIN is obviously an extremely important word in the Scripture, both literally and figuratively. But it is also important in Jewish tradition and in subsequent teaching from Jewish sages and mystics. It’s beyond the scope of this page (and your reading appetite) to discuss mysticism, Kabbalah, or Chasidism (all of which attach symbolic importance to AYIN). Instead, let us leave you with the words from our favorite Jewish sage, who taught in the Galilee 2000 years ago. This teaching has puzzled translators and readers alike because it hides a Hebraic idiom that our modern EYES have difficulty understanding (this is called “irony”). From the Gospel of Matthew:
“The EYE is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy (GRK: HAPLOUS (ἁπλοῦς) means sound or perfect), your whole body will be full of light. But if your EYES are unhealthy (GRK: PONÉROS (πονηρός) meaning evil or bad), your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!”
Matthew 6:22-23
Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Mount are challenging to translate into English because Greek does not render Hebrew idioms easily or smoothly. Jesus is talking about the widespread Hebrew idiomatic expressions of the AYIN TOVAH and the AYIN HARA: the good eye and the evil eye. In Hebraic thinking, these expressions describe generosity and greed or covetousness. To have a good eye is to be generous toward others. To have an evil eye is to be selfish or covetous toward others. If you are generous, “your whole body will be full of light”. If you are coveting, “your whole body will be full of darkness”. And thus, the Sage from Galilee ends this section with the summary: “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God (good eye) and Money (bad eye).”
May you have good eyes, serve G-d, and thus be filled with light.
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