LOOKING AT EYES

Every once in a while I get curious about how often some particular word turns up in Scripture and I will use the search function on my Bible app to see what there is. Today I looked up the word "eyes" because I am trying to find a deeper understanding of what the Bible means when it talks of having "eyes to see and ears to hear". My curiosity is being sparked by You Are What You Love, which I am currently reading. 

Genesis alone has 29 references to eyes, with only a handful concerning literal physical eyes. There is a variety of uses of "eyes" starting with the serpent's words to Eve in chapter 3:

Open Eyes Representing a Realization that Wasn't There Before. "For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." (3:5)

Of course, this part of what the serpent says does turn out to be true: "Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves." (3:7)

Also, in 21:19, God "opened Hagar's eyes and she saw a well of water." Was it there before?

Eyes as a Place to Find Favor (Or Not). In 6:8, Noah finds "favor in the eyes of the LORD" while in 16:4 and 5, Hagar is "despised in Sarai's eyes", and in 39:21, God grants Joseph "favor in the eyes of the prison warden".  (Over half of Genesis' eye references are in this vein.)

Eyes as Representing Personal Judgment. Abram gives Sarai permission in 16:5 to "do to Hagar that which is good in your eyes".

Eyes as Being Vulnerable to Weakness. In Genesis 27, Jacob takes advantage of his father Isaac's old age and the fact that "his eyes were so weak that he could no longer see"(1). And in 29:17, we learn that Rachel was beautiful but "Leah had weak eyes". 

Eyes as a Means of Witnessing an Event. Gen 42:24 Joseph "had Simeon taken from them and bound before their eyes."

The Closing of Eyes as Representing Death. In Genesis 46:4, the Lord reassures Jacob with the promise that "Joseph's own hand will close" the eyes of Jacob in death.

I am far from being ready to draw any conclusions yet, but with all these references to eyes (and 44 uses of some form of "see") in the first book of the Bible, it seems to me at least that eyes are an important motif, worthy of further investigation.