What Does Luke 11:34 Mean?
The lamp of the body is the eye. When your eye is single, your whole body also is full of light, but when your eye is evil, your body also is full of darkness.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
The light of the body is the eye: therefore when thine eye is single, thy whole body also is full of light; but when thine eye is evil, thy body also is full of darkness.THE KEY
The Greek word for “single” belongs to a word family also used for generosity, so the eye’s wholeness can mean an undivided way of seeing that gives.
THE MEANING
Your eye is the lamp of your body: your way of seeing reaches through your whole embodied life. A single regard fills you with light; an evil regard fills you with darkness.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that how you see is neutral and has no effect beyond your eyes: the eye’s condition can fill the whole body with light or darkness.
THE ROOT
ἁπλοῦς
haplous
GROWS FROM
ἁπλ-
hapl-
Single, simple, undivided; the related word family also carries the sense of generosity.
ἁπλοῦς (haplous, single or simple) describes an undivided eye, while its close relative ἁπλότης (haplotēs, singleness or generosity) is used for giving freely. Set against the “evil eye,” which can express envy or stinginess, the contrast can hold clear sight and openhanded regard together.
ALSO GROWS
haplotēs: Singleness; also generosity or liberality.
ἁπλότης
This word family appears in descriptions of generous giving, revealing a possible connection between a single eye and an openhanded way of seeing.
haplōs: Simply; generously or liberally.
ἁπλῶς
James uses this related word for God’s generous giving, showing how the family of “single” reaches into the act of giving.
THE PATTERN
A generous, undivided regard spreads through the whole person and becomes visible in what is given.
The one with a good eye is blessed, for he does give of his bread to the emptied.The lamp of the body is the eye. So if your eye is single, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is evil, your whole body will be full of darkness. So if the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!Being enriched in everything unto all singleness, which is worked out through us thanks to God.THE THREAD
Being enriched in everything unto all singleness, which is worked out through us thanks to God.The word translated “bountifulness” belongs to the same Greek word family as “single” in Luke. That link lets the single eye carry the sense of an undivided, generous regard whose light reaches beyond seeing and into giving.
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