Matthew 5:29,  “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.”

I remember hearing this verse read as a child and being very disturbed over it.  Not the idea of plucking out your eye, because even at an early age I had sense enough to know it was just a figure of speech and not to be taken literally. What really bothered me was the idea that if you didn’t deal with this eye problem you would be cast into hell. I mean that sounds like we have to do more than just trust in the saving grace of Jesus to avoid hell, we actually have to take matters into our own hands and deal with our sins.  That was scary but even more disturbing is that it sounds like a real contradiction.  On the one hand I am told that it is by grace we are saved, through faith, that not of ourselves it is a gift of God, Ephesians 2:8-9.  On the other hand Jesus is commanding us to deal with the lust of the eye lest we end up in hell.

I think I was just twelve years old when I asked my pastor about this.  I even set up an appointment to meet with him in his office to discuss this disturbing contradiction in the Bible. I mean I had to know, am I saved by grace alone and not by any works I do, or am I required keep my eye and hand from offending lest I go to hell.  My pastor, a Bible college and seminary graduate patted me on the head and said, “Oh, you are saved by grace alright, trust me that is what the church teaches so don’t worry about Matthew 5:29 there are many difficult passages in the Bible and you are too young to understand and you need a lot of education to understand such things.  Great men of God have studied the Bible and clearly the Bible teaches you are saved just by the grace of God.”

Well, sorry my man, I was not about to trust in him or the church. My only trust would be in Jesus Christ and if I could understand a contradiction at the age of twelve then I should be able to understand an explanation. I suspected that even with his Bible College and seminary education he did to understand.  So I set out on a life long journey to get that education.  I went to what I believed to be the best evangelical Bible College and Seminary I could find and they did not give me an answer.

I finally went to a Jewish rabbi who was born and raised in the Middle East and he had an answer.  He simply asked me, “When you say, ‘dog gone it’ do you really mean a dog has gone?  Gone where?  You Western people don’t make a lick of sense.  What do you mean ‘lick of sense?’ How do you lick sense?”   Then he leaned forward and said, “Just as you have you’re idioms in English, we have ours in the Eastern world.  In Semitic culture the eye is the symbol of envy and desire.  People in the Eastern world will often say, ‘cut your eye from my ten camels.’ To us in the Western world that phrase makes no sense like dog gone it or lick of sense does to the Eastern culture.  What they are saying is don’t envy my ten camels over your one camel.

Ok, I always knew pluck your eye out was just an idiomatic expression and the good rabbi clarified that this expression referred to envy.  But, even Christian’s commentators have waxed lyrical on this in many ways. They talk of the  mention of the right eye as a reference to that which is most dear to you.  They speak of the concept of the evil eye, or they it is the eye that excites thoughts of lust and envy etc. All good explanations and clearly you do not literally pluck out your eye.

Ok, we all understand this, what my concern was that if we do not control the eye we end up in hell.   What the rabbi said next might may be misleading, so let me just say right here that I am still an evangelical and I believe the Bible teaches that there is an afterlife and that we will spend it either in a place called heaven or a place called hell.  Nor am I saying hell is not a place of eternal fires. I believe the Bible does teach this.  However, I do not believe every time the word hell is use in the Bible that it is a reference to the afterlife.  We must carefully look at the context to determine if the word hell is a reference to the afterlife and being used in a real literal sense or if it is just a reference to our physical life and is used in a metaphoric sense.

The word hell that is used in the Greek in Matthew 5:29 is the word geennan which is just a transliteration of the Hebrew word gehinnom.  We call this Gehenna which we all know is a reference to the garbage dump outside Jerusalem which is constantly burning.  Jesus was speaking in Aramaic and the word he used was gehana’ which has no Hebrew root equivalent and in the Aramaic is a reference to the  metaphoric Valley of sorrow and lamentations or the Valley of Baka’ (weeping) from Psalms 84:6.   In Near Eastern culture people do not take the word hell as literally as we do in the West.  Most often when the word falls on the Semitic ears they are hearing a metaphor as a reference to mental suffering, anguish, regret or a burning desire and passion.

Let’s back up to that word offend as in your eye offending you.  The word used in Aramaic for offend is keshal used in a hiphal form and means to cause to stumble. Thus, if your right eye is in the habit of lusting or envying stop or break that habit before you suffering mental anguish and regret.  I believe the context that Jesus is making a reference to is one of our life here on earth and not the afterlife, hence we need to view hell, in this verse, in a metaphoric sense as mental anguish or a burning desire.

Just an afterthought here.  Let’s suppose eternal hell is a place of mental anguish and burning lustful desires.  Suppose someone life’s passion was alcohol, drugs, sex, material things?  He spent no time building on eternal things such as a love for God, a desire for the presence of God. When we die we get what we craved here on earth. If our craving was for alcohol, drugs or sex we need a physical body to satisfy that caving.  But you will have no physical body like that on earth after death thus you will spend eternity tormented over a desire that can never by quenched in a spiritual state or spiritual body. That can be a hell more tormenting than fire. You will spend eternity just crying out for a drop of water on your tongue, but alas, you have no tongue.  However, if you desires and passions were on a spiritual level, a desire to love God with all your heart, soul and strength, a desire for the overwhelming presence of God.  In eternity that desire will be even greater only you will finally have that desire fulfilled and satisfied because you no longer have a physical body getting in the way with its physical desires.

As my grandpa used to say, it is like two dogs inside of you fighting, one evil or in this case one that is physical and the other one good or in this case the one that is spiritual.  Which one wins out after we no longer have a physical earthly body?  It will be the one we have fed the most.