Articles
An Evil Eye
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"From within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within and defile a man." (Mk. 7:21-23)
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In the New King James Version, "an evil eye" is a literal translation of two Greek words. The expression is meaningless to the modern English reader, but to the original Jewish audience, it made perfect sense, because an "evil eye" is a Hebrew idiom for envy. The same idiom is used in Matt. 20:15, where the master explains his reason for giving his eleventh-hour hires the same wages as the those who labored all day: "Is your eye evil because I am good?' In other words, "Are you envious because I was generous to those who were hired late?" For the sake of clarity, most modern translations simply drop the idiom and substitute the word "envy" in these passages (ESV, NASV, NIV, RSV, NLT).
Curiously, the Hebrew figure of speech is not all that different from the etymology of our English equivalent. "Envy" comes from the Latin word invidia, "to look against"; that is, "to look with ill will at another person because of what he is or has" (Hendrickson). To envy another is to view him with suspicion, ascribing dark motives to his good fortune.
Envy, to put it simply, describes a harmful way of looking at those who are doing better than us. With little or no evidence, we view their favored position as the result of some kind of sinister motive. We see them as a threat to our own wellbeing. If we are suffering some misfortune, then those who are doing better must be to blame somehow. The problem, of course, is that envy invents malevolence where none exists, and turns others into caricatures of who they really are. Our opinions of others are often lies that we make up in our own minds.
Both in our personal lives and in the broader culture, envy is the unspoken cause behind so many of our current social problems. Entire demographic groups are turning against one another because of a manufactured rage rooted in envy. Others have unfair advantages over me/us, so they must pay for their villainy! The end result is mutual destruction.
Jesus called envy an "evil thing" that defiles us. If we're serious about eliminating it from our character, we must replace it with something else. Paul gave the cure in 1 Cor. 13:4--"Love does not envy." Learn to look at others with eyes full of love, and envy will not corrupt your soul.
--David
