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MATTHEW 6:23 — KING JAMES VERSION 0
Matt 6:22Matt 6:24
“But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!”
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 that darkness! The bad eye (ponērós, evil or diseased) is the eye that is divided in its vision, that tries to see two things at once — treasure in heaven and treasure on earth simultaneously. The darkness that results from the diseased eye is not merely the absence of light but the condition in which what you think is light is actually darkness: if the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness! The most dangerous blindness is the blindness that does not know it is blind — the person who thinks they are seeing clearly while walking in the darkness of divided loyalty. Isaiah 5:20 warns those who call evil good and darkness light.

Church Fathers on Matthew 6:23

Having spoken of the bringing the understanding into captivity because it was not easy to be understood of many, He transfers it to a sensible instance, saying, 'The light of thy body is thy eye.' As though He had said, If you do not know what is meant by the loss of the understanding, learn a parable of the bodily members; for what the eye is to the body, that the understanding is to the soul. As by the loss of the eyes we lose much of the use of the other limbs, so when the…

Chrysostom · 4th century

That is an illustration drawn from the senses. As the whole body is in darkness, where the eye is not single, so if the soul has lost her original brightness, every sense, or that whole part of the soul to which sensation belongs, will abide in darkness.

Jerome · 4th century

It seems that He is not here speaking of the bodily eye, or of the outward body that is seen, or He would have said, If thine eye be sound, or weak; but He says, 'single,' and, 'evil.' But if one have a benign yet diseased eye, is his body therefore in light? Or if an evil yet a sound, is his body therefore in darkness?

Pseudo-Chrysostom · 5th century
Read all 10 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain
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Matthew 6:23 — Community Reflections | HolyStudy