Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Lamp of the Body
Luke 11:33-36
33 “No one, when he has lit a lamp, puts it in a cellar or under a basket, but on a stand, that those who come in may see the light. · WEB
A short saying about the eye, and the unsettling possibility that what a person takes for light is not.
"No one, when he has lit a lamp, puts it in a cellar or under a basket, but on a stand, that those who come in may see the light" Luke 11:33.
The lamp saying has already appeared in this Gospel after the sower Luke 8:16. Here it introduces something different — not what to do with a light, but how a person receives one.
"The lamp of the body is the eye. Therefore when your eye is good, your whole body is also full of light; but when it is evil, your body also is full of darkness" Luke 11:34.
The saying is in Matthew's account as well Matthew 6:22–23, set among sayings about treasure and money — and that is worth carrying over here, because in ordinary Greek an evil eye was an idiom for grudging or envious, and a good one for generous. What a person does with their possessions is being described as an organ of perception.
The image works because the eye is not itself a source. It admits, and the whole body is lit or dark depending on what gets in. A man with a bad eye is not walking in a different room from everyone else; he is in the same room with the shutters closed.
"Therefore see whether the light that is in you isn't darkness" Luke 11:35.
This line belongs to this account and it is the sharpest sentence in the paragraph. The danger named is not darkness recognized as darkness — a man who knows he cannot see will ask for help. It is darkness that has been mistaken for illumination, which by definition cannot be noticed by the person carrying it, since it is the thing they are seeing by.
The warning is therefore addressed to the well-lit. It is placed, in this chapter, immediately before six woes on the most religiously careful people in the country, who could not see what was in front of them.
"If therefore your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly full of light, as when the lamp with its bright shining gives you light" Luke 11:36.
The positive is stated last, and it goes further than the warning. No part dark — the possibility held out is not managed shadow but a life with the shutters open, lit the way a room is lit when the lamp is out on its stand where it belongs.
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