Matthew 6:22,23 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

The light of the body is the eye—single—evil— The eye is the lamp of the body;—clear or pure;—bad or vitiated. Heylin. Mr. Locke has observed, that the modes of thinking, as he speaks, that is to say, the several operations of the human mind, are in all languages expressed by figurative terms, which belong to sensible ideas in their primary signification. Now, if all languages used the same figures, this would bring no additional obscurity to our translations; but it is well known that the oriental tongues have, upon these subjects, quite a different set of metaphors from those in use among the Greeks and Romans, and consequently among us, who so generally follow their phraseology: many difficulties in Scripture are to be imputed to this cause; and to solve those difficulties we must have recourse to the context, and collect the meaning of this unusual dialect from the occasion upon which it is spoken. It was upon this account that we made the general review of the tenor of our Lord's discourse in the preceding note, and particularly of the context, which distinctly leads us to the meaning of the difficult passage now before us. The eye is the lamp of the body: body here signifies, as it sometimes does in our own language, the person, the man himself; and eye, in the Hebrew idiom, signifies, as we observed on ch. Matthew 5:29 the intention, which casts a light upon whatever it aims at; like a microscope, it magnifies its object, it illustrates it, and renders the minutest part of it conspicuous: for having made it its treasure, it treats it as such, and counts upon it as a fund for happiness; and although the object be void of real worth, yet the intention imputes to it all the advantages which a credulous desire and active fancy can suggest. Thus the intention is the force of the mind turned one way; and therefore our Lord compares it to a lamp, which, when directed to one particular object, greatly enlightens that, and makes other things visible only in proportion to their nearness. In like manner, whatever is the direct object of the intention receives from it a lustre, which shews it to the greatest advantage, and shews other things in a good or bad light, as they seem favourable or prejudicial to the execution of our design. Now, when this intention is right, our Lord calls it the single or simple eye, απλους, and with good reason; for as only one straight line can pass between two givenpoints, and as the truth upon every stated question is but one, while error and mistake are almost infinitelyvarious; so there is, there can be, but one such right intention. What that is, our Lord had just before declared, when he directed us to make for ourselves treasures in heaven, that we might be induced to collect and unite all our desires in that one thing necessary. He here calls the intention to do so the single eye; on the contrary, every other intention an evil eye; for every other deliberate purpose, which does not coincide with, or become subordinate to, the right intention, though we could suppose it innocent in itself, yet will prove an obstacle to that right intention, because the right intention cannot succeed but by a perfect renunciation of all other projects and designs; and therefore our Lord immediately subjoins, no man can serve two masters. See Heylin and Calmet. Several commentators have explained this as if our Lord intended here to urge the practice of liberality, as what would have a great influence on the whole of a man's character and conduct; and they suppose it illustrated by all those passages, where an evil eye signifies a grudging temper, and a good eye a bountiful disposition; and also by those texts in which simplicity is put for liberality. See Hammond, Whitby, Beausobre and Lenfant, &c. See the Reflections, where the passage is considered chiefly in this last point of view. See Doddridge, Olearius, and Mr. Law's Serious Call, ch. 2 for the former view of the passage.