Matthew 6:19-24: "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 nor 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."
In these verses we have Yeshua speaking about money. Notice that He begins speaking about money, then says something about "an evil eye," then finishes His statement about money.
If this were penned originally in Greek, you wouldn't have "evil eye". So why is there this odd verse about an "evil eye" in the midst of a money topic? "Evil eye" is a Hebrew idiom of that time for "being stingy with your money." Now the passage makes sense.
This looks like the Lord coming to save somebody.
Zechariah 11:17
17"Woe to the worthless shepherd Who leaves the flock! A sword will be on his arm And on his right eye! His arm will be totally withered And his right eye will be blind."
What part of you pertains to the right eye?
Adultery
28but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29"If your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. 30"If your right hand makes you stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to go into hell.
There we saw a person lusting in his right eye, and what it shows is that the right eye is of the woman, of the flesh, what that eye sees, it sees in a physical sense, and it speaks to the whole body, and it is the desire of the body.
If the right eye is taken out, it would mean that you have eliminated the lust out of your life. So if God comes to put your right eye out, wouldn't it mean that he came and took sin out of your thoughts?
Here is an interesting story about a right eye.
1 Samuel 11
2But Nahash the Ammonite replied, I will make a treaty with you only on the condition that I gouge out the right eye of every one of you and so bring disgrace on all Israel.
1 Samuel 12:12
"But when you saw that Nahash king of the Ammonites was moving against you, you said to me, 'No, we want a king to rule over us'--even though the LORD your God was your king.
Nahash, king of the Ammonites, had been grievously oppressing the people of Gad and Reuben who lived east of the Jordan River. He gouged out the right eye of each of the Israelites living there, and he didn't allow anyone to come and rescue them. In fact, of all the Israelites east of the Jordan, there wasn't a single one whose right eye Nahash had not gouged out. But there were 7,000 men who had escaped from the Ammonites, and they had settled in Jabesh-gilead.]
Meaning of Nahash
נחש
There are four separate roots נחש (nhs), but their meanings all seem to be in the same shady corner:
נחש I
The root נחש (nhsh I) isn't used in the Bible and we don't know what it means. BDB Theological Dictionary suggests it may be onomatopoeic, imitative of the hissing of a snake. Its sole derivative is the masculine noun נחש (nahash), the Bible's most common word for snake. Snakes bite (Ecclesiastes 10:11, Amos 5:19), and can be deadly (Numbers 21:6).
Snakes obviously made their way into various mythologies and even in the Bible snakes feature in some supernatural tellings: the conversing snake of Paradise (Genesis 3:1), the rod of Moses that became a serpent (Exodus 4:3), the bronze protector-serpent made by Moses (Numbers 21:9) and references to pagan mythological flying serpents (Job 26:13, Isaiah 27:1) or sea serpents (Amos 9:3).
These texts make it obvious, of course, that these pagan belief systems are either wholly defeated by the Living God, or else entirely at His disposal. See for a more extensive discussion of this our article on the name Leviathan.
נחש II
It's not clear whether the verb נחש (nahash) is a root-verb yielding the masculine noun נחש (nahash), or that the verb is denominative, formed from the noun. But the verb means to conduct divination or read omen, which was apparently common practice in ancient times (Genesis 30:27, Genesis 44:5), yet strongly condemned by the various Biblical legislators (Deuteronomy 18:10, 2 Kings 21:6).
The noun נחש (nahash) means divination or enchantment and occurs only in the Balaam cycle (Numbers 23:23 and 24:1).
נחש III
The root-verb נחש (nahash) isn't used in the Bible and its meaning is unknown. Its derivations, however, all have to do with bronze and copper, and the mastery of manufacturing bronze rang in a new age: the bronze age, which ended around the time of David.
Perhaps this root-verb has something in common with the previous one and reflects (an almost magical) craftiness. When Moses made the bronze serpent (Numbers 21:9), it basically reads twice nahash; perhaps the effect of this was that people understood that knowledge of nature's treasures could protect them from nature's dangers.
But bronze also somehow became a symbol of worthlessness (less than silver and gold; Isaiah 61:17, Jeremiah 6:28), so perhaps the faith in technology that people developed in reaction to the bronze industry became equalized with the faith that the same people had in divination and soothsaying.
Note that there is nothing wrong with knowledge of any kind. The Tree of Knowledge Of Good And Evil, from where the snake addresses Eve, was created before the fall and was as perfect as the rest of Paradise. The tree was good for food and was a delight to the eyes and it was desirable to make one wise (Genesis 3:6). The trouble started when Eve and Adam began to draw food from the tree for sustenance.
Also note that the word אפעה ('ep'a) means viper (Isaiah 30:6, 59:5, Job 20:16), and the highly similar word אפע ('epa') means worthless (Isaiah 41:24 - BDB Theological Dictionary deems this a text error and HAW Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament finds the derivation uncertain, but here at Abarim Publications we're more convinced by Isaiah's excellent track record and the consistency of the synonyms).
Bronze became utilized to create fetters and bind prisoners with, so it also began to symbolize oppression (Judges 16:21, Jeremiah 39:7) and mercilessness (Deuteronomy 28:23).
This mysterious root's derivations are:
The masculine noun נחשת (nehoshet), meaning copper or bronze (Genesis 4:22, Deuteronomy 8:9), or items made from bronze, such as fetters (2 Samuel 3:34, 2 Chronicles 36:6) or armor (1 Samuel 17:5). HAW Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament notes that more than half of the 140 times this word is used in the Bible, occur in references to the tabernacle and its utensils. This word is identical to the derivation of nahash IV.
The adjective נחוש (nahush), meaning bronze (Job 6:12 only).
The feminine noun נחושה (nehusha) or נחשה (nehusha), meaning copper (Job 28:2) or bronze (Isaiah 45:2, Micah 4:13).
נחש IV
Root נחש (nahash IV) may not even exists, but it's been called into existence due to a single obscure occurrence of the noun נחשת (nehoshet - see root III). The prophet Ezekiel writes about Israel's acts of bronze shamefulness, and scholars have concluded that (a) that must mean harlotries then, and (b) it must come from a completely separate root that means just that.
