Tag Archives: apple of the eye

Fruit and Nuts – Apples and Solomon

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This edition of Fruit and Nuts pairs apples and Solomon; this works well because most of the mentions of apples was made by Solomon in Proverbs and the Song of Songs. Just for the record, I do not think the medieval artists were right in making the forbidden fruit in the Garden an apple.

Apples – Yes, there were apples in the Levant during Bible times, they seem to have come from the Persia area. I have read several references that suggest that term has more to do with the shape of the fruit than a specific species. No, they were not like what we think of as apples in this modern era. This reference mentions that the pome order of plants may have also been given that title. Strong’s Hebrew: 8598. תַּפּ֫וּחַ (tappuach) — apple tree, apples The smell of the blossoms was important and highly prized in gardens.

The phrase ‘apple of the eye’ is used several times in the Bible and refers to the bulging, rounded shape of our eye. It is connected to how sensitive the eye is and how we protect it by blinking to keep it moist and closing our eye lids when something flies at it.

Apples and apple trees are connected to God’s protection for His people and His love towards them (Song of Songs). Even the verse of Joel 1:12 has that idea when it talks about those trees drying up, when they were doing good it was a blessing. This is one reason I do not think the forbidden fruit was an apple.

Solomon – The fruits of his life are a mixed bushel of apples. Some were very good and he made some so bad that they should/could not be eaten; like the figs in Jeremiah 24. His behavior after a good start is what got him the nut portion of this post.

Honestly, Solomon has always puzzled me. He had parents who loved him. God loved him, 2 Samuel 12:24, and gave him wisdom and wealth, he built the temple that was used for several hundred years, plus he wrote books of the Bible. But he went off base and angered God.

His journey is recorded in 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, and 1 and 2 Chronicles; the Books of Proverbs and Song of Songs also give us insight to his life. He had some of his many psalms be used in the Book of Psalm; he wrote more but we do not know where they went. He started strong, but his decline is well documented and references several times.

His legacy is seen in a few other spots in the Bible. Hezekiah’s men collected some of his proverbs and included them with the others. Any mention of the temple should bring him to mind; that may be one reason Herod named part of the temple he built as Solomon’s Colonnade. Most of the times you find his named used is in connection to things he made for the temple or families of people he had serving in the temple. Jesus is quoted by Matthew and Luke about the wisdom given him; plus, there are references to Proverbs in prophetic books and in the New Testament. So, it is not like he was forgotten, but he sure does not compare with the memory of David. You may have noticed I did not mention Ecclesiastes; he only identified himself as ‘the Teacher son of David’. I hope that this book was written at the end of his life and maybe he returned to the Lord.

As I pondered all of this, I came up with this idea; please humor an old man as he straddles the edge of ‘the box’. David is a Messiah-figure in the beautiful song I call the Old Testament. Solomon was the favored child of David and was given many things and did many things for God and still went bad. Jesus is the Messiah and ‘birthed’ the Church. Have we ‘The Church’ followed in the footsteps of Solomon? We have acquired wealth/gold and show it off, been consumed with wisdom and knowledge, and have married ourselves to 1,000 different things other than Jesus and His Gospel and the Father’s Kingdom that is to come.

In the early days of kings of Israel, the Levant and the Middle East had many things happening. International trade, international terrorism, and the weather created change in the region. One country that was always present was Egypt. One of the first things Solomon did was marry an Egyptian princess; that may have been good politics, but God had commanded not to go back to Egypt for help. That was the beginning of Solomon going off base.

These verses are from Bible Gateway and are in the NIV. They really are not in any order.

  •  2 Samuel 12:24 Then David comforted his wife Bathsheba, and he went to her and made love to her. She gave birth to a son, and they named him Solomon. The Lord loved him;
  • 1 Kings 10:23 King Solomon was greater in riches and wisdom than all the other kings of the earth.
  • 1 Kings 3:3 Solomon showed his love for the Lord by walking according to the instructions given him by his father David, except that he offered sacrifices and burned incense on the high places.
  • 1 Kings 9:24 After Pharaoh’s daughter had come up from the City of David to the palace Solomon had built for her, he constructed the terraces.
  • 2 Chronicles 30:26 There was great joy in Jerusalem, for since the days of Solomon son of David king of Israel there had been nothing like this in Jerusalem.
  • 1 Kings 11:11  and 14  So the Lord said to Solomon, “Since this is your attitude and you have not kept my covenant and my decrees, which I commanded you, I will most certainly tear the kingdom away from you and give it to one of your subordinates.
  • 1 Kings 11:1 all of chapter 11 is a list problems
  • 2 Kings 23:13 The king also desecrated the high places that were east of Jerusalem on the south of the Hill of Corruption—the ones Solomon king of Israel had built for Ashtoreth the vile goddess of the Sidonians, for Chemosh the vile god of Moab, and for Molek the detestable god of the people of Ammon.
  • Nehemiah 13:26 Was it not because of marriages like these that Solomon king of Israel sinned? Among the many nations there was no king like him. He was loved by his God, and God made him king over all Israel, but even he was led into sin by foreign women.

The Apple of the Eye

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“The Apple of the Eye” is a term for caring and protecting, it is usually reserved for a loved one but I have heard it used for objects and things. In the Bible it is used four times the first three is ison and the last time it is baba; it actually means “the little man or child of the eye.” The pupil or the dark circle of your eye can reflect the image of someone looking into the eye. We humans do really protect our eyes, it is automatic and that little bump called the cornea is very sensitive. We blink, have tear ducts and cry, shield our eyes from bright lights and things coming at those two little-indented light receptors.Schematic_of_the_human_eye_en

Deuteronomy 32:10 is part of a song Moses shared on the day that the Lord called him to Mt. Nebo to die. In this part of the song, Moses is talking about Jacob/Israel and how God found him and protected him. As the apple of God’s eye, Jacob is compared to a baby eagle that is being taught to fly. God says He will care for him, shield him, and spread His wings and catch Israel when they fall.

Psalm 17:8 – David is asking God to show him His love and answer his prays. David wants to be hidden under the wing of God (protected like the apple of the eye) and protected from mortal enemies.

Proverbs 7:2 – Here “the Father” is telling His son to guard the teachings and commands He has been taught as the “apple of your eye.”  This comes in the middle of a discourse about staying away from adultery and a wayward sexual lifestyle.

Zechariah 2:8 – This chapter is very interesting and may get its own study. Having read several translations and then the comments about verses 6 – 9 it is still a little cloudy as to who is speaking but it seems that the Godhead is referring to itself about the nations who have touched Jerusalem/Judah. The Lord is saying that since they touched the apple of His eye He will cause the downfall of Babylon.

In verse 12 the Lord says He will take Judah as His portion and choose Jerusalem again. This is very much like Deuteronomy 32:9 which was the first use of the apple of the eye. I need to note here that Zechariah and Haggai are written as the construction on the Temple in Jerusalem is about to begin again after being stopped in Ezra 4:24.

Translations read for Zechariah 2 – KJV, NIV, Living Bible, Knox, and Moffatt.

The Zondervan NIV Exhaustive Concordance was also used for definitions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Schematic_diagram_of_the_human_eye_en.svg

The Bible and Science – Light #2

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* Matthew 6:22b – If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. (NIV)

The only reason we see light is because of little receptors in our eyes called cones and rods. (They get their name from their shape.) The cones allow us to see colors while the Schematic_of_the_human_eye_enrods are responsible for black and white vision. Unless an object glows, the way we see it is by light reflecting off of it to our eyes. The light enters our eye, and the wavelengths of energy are focused on the receptors of our retina. The cones and rods are stimulated and pass the message to our brain by the optic nerve. In the brain, the message is decoded, and we “see” the image. The eye is designed to have the light hit the retina in the area of the eye called the Fovea; there is actually a higher concentration of cones in this area while the rods are more concentrated just outside of this area. The famous “apple of the eye” is the cornea.

The cones come in three types red, green, and blue. Now if that sounds familiar it should because they are the three colors that power our televisions and color monitors. RGB additive colorsNow, these three colors of light can be overlapped to produce all other colors of LIGHT in what is known as an additive process. (Light and color pigments do not combine the same way and yield different results.)

Visible (white) light is a combination of colors, but each individual color is its own particular wavelength, which translates into a specific energy. We depend on white light for many things, but the individual colors are also important. Our knowledge of colored light and pigments is expanding but we know that humans do react to colors.  There is evidence that they can affect our mood and how we feel while looking at various colors of light.

Interestingly, the triune of red, green, and blue light (energy) will give you white light while the same triune of colors in a physical material, like crayons, will give you a dark color. I have never really gotten black it is usually a dark brown color.

I like the comparison of light and the church; the church needs a blend of people (energy) to shine forth God’s glory. Just like it takes the colors of the rainbow to give you pure, white light.

Father, let us use our energies in Your Church so You will get the glory.