Luke 11:34

Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eyes are good, your whole body also is full of light. But when they are bad, your body is full of darkness.

Berean Standard Bible

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Study note

Setting — Jesus addresses his disciples within a discourse on prayer and hypocrisy, positioned between the lamp-on-a-stand illustration (v. 33) and the warning "Be careful that the light within you is not darkness" (v. 35).

The words — ὀφθαλμός (ophthalmos), "eye," carries the verse: in Jewish usage it denotes the inner moral faculty rather than the organ, so the metaphor is about disposition, not optics.

The thread — Matthew 6:22 preserves the same saying in the Sermon on the Mount; the "open my eyes" motif recurs in Psalms 119:18 and the conversion language of Acts 26:18.

Why it lands — It asks you to audit your own disposition: whether your inner eye is generous or envious, because that single orientation determines whether your whole life is lit or dark.

Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.

The Greek words

King James Version

The light of the body is the eye: therefore when thine eye is single, thy whole body also is full of light; but when thine eye is evil, thy body also is full of darkness.

Cross-references

Matthew 6:22 The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light.
Acts 26:18 to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those sanctified by faith in Me.’
Psalms 119:18 Open my eyes that I may see wondrous things from Your law.
Jeremiah 5:21 “Hear this, O foolish and senseless people, who have eyes but do not see, who have ears but do not hear.
Romans 11:8 as it is written: “God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that could not see, and ears that could not hear, to this very day.”
2 Corinthians 4:4 The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
Colossians 3:22 Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything, not only to please them while they are watching, but with sincerity of heart and fear of the Lord.
2 Corinthians 11:3 I am afraid, however, that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may be led astray from your simple and pure devotion to Christ.
Mark 4:12 so that, ‘they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven.’”
Mark 8:18 ‘Having eyes, do you not see? And having ears, do you not hear?’ And do you not remember?