ṭôḇ ʿayin: Looking with Good Eyes
“The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” (Matthew 6:22-23)
In Ancient Jewish culture, the eyes represented one’s primary and initial mental, physical, and spiritual input from the external world.
Before you reach for a piece of bread with your hand, smell a blooming flower with your nose, sing a song with your mouth or listen to a friend with your ears… you look with your eyes.
What you see, how you see it, and why you look for it in the first place reveals a lot about your deepest desires, beliefs, and motives.
The eye, as it is written, “is the lamp of the body” because it illuminates the character and substance inside you.
As he is teaching, Yeshua is expanding upon the wisdom reflected in different parts of the Tanakh.
For instance, in Proverbs 22:9 it says, “Whoever has a bountiful eye will be blessed, for he shares his bread with the poor,” and later Proverbs 28:22 reads, “A stingy man hastens after wealth and does not know that poverty will come upon him.”
The two phrases in these passages are ṭôḇ ʿayin (tov ayin) and raʿ ʿayin (rah ayin), which translate to a “good eye” and “bad eye” (in the latter passage, the translators took the liberty of interpreting the idiom for us as “stingy,” although the text actually says “A man with a bad eye”).
Walking in the footsteps of Rabbi Yeshua includes taking upon ṭôḇ ʿayin - good eyes that are filled with empathy and kindness.
It’s to look upon someone or something and both extend generosity and welcome with hospitality.
While bad eyes look at others with subtle glimpses of judgment and malice, presumption and disgust, envy and greed, contempt and ill-will, good eyes have no place for such scarcity of compassion.
Good eyes see the divinity in and seek the dignity of all creation. Good eyes don’t assume that they see the whole picture but pursue greater understanding, anticipating the need for further repentance and upholding a posture of humility and mercy, knowing that “mercy triumphs over judgment” (James 2:13).
A wonderful practice for taking on ṭôḇ ʿayin in your daily life is making a habit of filling every judgment, frustration and inconvenience with gratitude, not at the expense of naming the truth of hurt or grief, but in an effort to dignify every person and thing before you that has come from God.
Good eyes can appreciate doing the dishes and laundry; find patience in traffic; see the esteem of small bugs in the house by taking them outside rather than smashing them; search curiously for the underlying experience or truth of another person’s worldview; hold every dollar loosely; consistently consider how their own life might further intertwine with the lives of the poor and oppressed.
Good eyes see all of life as a praiseworthy gift, blessing the Lord as he both gives and takes away.
Lord, give us good eyes today, to acknowledge the endless goodness that surrounds us and to overflow goodness into the lives of others.
