What Does Matthew 5:29 Mean?
And if your right eye trips you, tear it out and throw it from you. For it profits you that one of your members perish, and not that your whole body be thrown into Gehenna.
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
And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.THE KEY
The eye that becomes a snare puts the whole body at risk, so the verse weighs losing one member against the ruin of the whole.
THE MEANING
Your sight can become a point of entrapment that draws your whole self toward destruction. The command is bodily and severe: losing one member is called preferable to the whole body being cast into hell. The verse holds that danger in the present, refusing to treat a source of stumbling as trivial.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that you can preserve whatever repeatedly trips you and the rest of you will remain untouched.
THE ROOT
σκανδαλίζω
skandalizō
GROWS FROM
σκάνδαλον
skandalon
Trap, snare-trigger; something that catches and trips.
The verb carries the image of a trap being sprung, giving “offend” the force of something that catches and trips you. The eye is named as a possible snare, so its influence reaches beyond the single member to the whole body.
ALSO GROWS
skandalon: Trap, snare-trigger.
σκάνδαλον
The related noun holds the trap image behind the verb: a trigger catches and trips what passes over it.
skandalizō: Cause to stumble, ensnare.
σκανδαλίζω
This is the verb used here; the eye can become what catches the person and brings a fall.
ἀπόλλυμι
apollymi
GROWS FROM
ἀπόλλυμι
apollymi
To lose, ruin, destroy; to perish.
Here, “perish” carries the force of both loss and destruction. That gives the sentence its unsettling scale: the loss of one member is weighed against the whole body being cast into ruin.
ALSO GROWS
apolētai: May perish, may be lost.
ἀπόληται
This is the form used for the one member whose loss is weighed against the whole body.
apōleia: Loss, destruction.
ἀπώλεια
This related noun holds together the two dimensions of the warning: what is lost and what is destroyed.
THE PATTERN
What governs perception can shape the condition of the whole person.
And the woman saw that the tree was good for eating, and that it was a craving for the eyes, and a tree to be desired for making one wise. And she took of its fruit and ate, and gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.Above every watch you keep, guard your heart, for from it flow the springs of life.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.THE THREAD
But if your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it from you. It is better for you to enter into the life bent or limping than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into the fire of the ages.The same stumbling verb appears, while the image widens from the eye to the hand and foot. The parallel shows that the warning reaches any member that becomes a snare, with the fate of the whole body still in view.
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