The Evil Eye

The Assyrian Kingdom was cruel and brutal. They destroyed Israel in 722 BC, and the ten northern tribes were lost into oblivion.  The Assyrian capital, Nineveh, was the largest city in the world. The prophet Nahum declared God’s judgment on Nineveh for all her evils—quoting from Exodus 34:6-7, “the Lord is slow to anger and of great power, but He does not clear the guilty.” In 621 BC the world’s largest city was totally leveled.

 The book of Jonah however, turns Nahum on its head. The only prophetic book with no oracles, Jonah is really a story where the pagans do the right thing and the prophet is unfaithful. Like the parable of the Good Samaritan, it shatters our expectations as we ask: “What is going on here?” Nineveh can be a metaphor for the enemies we despise. Like Jonah, we are resistant to engage in our ministry. God is just, He delivers the oppressed. His wrath of God is manifest against the oppressor, but God prefers that the sinner repent. Too often, like Jonah, we prefer that they perish.

 Like Nahum, Jonah also quotes Exodus 34:6 “the Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and full of kindness," but he reviles God's mercy. The story ends with God’s question, “Should I not care about Nineveh?” That question is not for Jonah, it is for us.

 Our Lord’s parable also ends with a question. The parable is a simple story about day laborers. The daily wage, or a denarius, was a just wage which allowed a worker to survive another day. The owner pays everyone the same amount because he has compassion on these impoverished men. Some men resented the kindness, focusing on themselves. In Greek, the parable ends with the question, “Do you have an evil eye because I am good?”

 An evil eye is malignant and curses the other. It fails to see that we have more in common with the Ninevites and the later arrivers than we think. An evil eye disdains God’s kindness to others, for it is concerned only with its own wants and needs.

 Jesus tells us to love our neighbor as ourselves. These two stories illustrate the seductive power of the evil eye and the failure to see the humanity of the other. We must answer the questions which we are being asked today in our own lives.

 But remember that, we are the Ninevites, we are the late arrivers.