‘The Apple of My Eye’
We forget how much of an influence our Authorised King James Version of the Bible has been in our country and wherever English has been spoken. The two most significant influences on the English language have been the AV and Shakespeare’s plays. There are a huge number of expressions that you and I use that many do not realise come from the Authorised Version. Take this one, for example: ‘You are the apple of my eye’. The phrase refers to that most delicate part of the eye, the pupil, and means, of course, that you are deeply loved and cherished by the speaker. The expression has even found its way into song. There are half a dozen songs that use the phrase, the most famous of all being Stevie Wonder in the song, ‘You are the sunshine of my life’, which goes on to say, ‘You are the apple of my eye, forever you’ll stay in my heart’.
But where is the expression found in the Bible? It comes right at the beginning and describes not the love of a man for a woman or a woman for a man, but the love of God for His people. ‘The LORD’S portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance. He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye. As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings: So the LORD alone did lead him, and there was no strange god with him, Deuteronomy 32.9-10. God tells His people here, His earthly people, the Jews, that He found them. They did not find Him. He found them ‘in a desert wasteland’, not literally but meaning without hope in this world, and He encircled the nation, instructed them and cherished them. Was this because of any good found in themselves? No, God’s love is never merited, it is always of grace. ‘Thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God: the LORD thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth. The LORD did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people: But because the LORD loved you, and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers’, Deut. 7.6-8. God had chosen Abraham out of all the men and families in Ur of the Chaldees, called him, separated him from the pagan world around him, promised to make him and his seed great in this world and promised to bless all nations through them.
Did they deserve this great love? No. Did they cherish it? No. Yet God still loved them and said to them, through the prophet Zechariah hundreds of years later, ‘Thus saith the LORD of hosts. . . . he that toucheth you toucheth the apple of his eye’, Zechariah 2.8. And that is still true in politics today. God blesses those who pray for His people the Jews and has a plan to make them a great nation once again. ‘Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. They shall prosper that love thee’, Psalm 122.6. That does not mean we have to approve of everything the nation does, nor does it mean we have to approve of their politics. However, they are still God’s chosen people and we must pray for them.
Many of the expressions in the Bible that we apply to believers in Christ today are said to that ungrateful nation. ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love, therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee’, Jeremiah 31.3. But the same truth that God taught His earthly people He has taught us. ‘Ye did not choose me, but I chose you’, John 15.6 (said to His eleven disciples); ‘We love Him because He first loved us’, (said to believers other than the eleven) 1 John 4.19. ‘No man can come to me except the Father which hath sent me draw him’, John 6.44. Just as the earthly ‘children’, the nation, was chosen by God, so are we as His spiritual children. ‘He hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world’, (said to all believers) Ephesians 1.4. Because He loved sinners such as us, He gave His very best to save us and win us over to Himself. ‘If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?’, Romans 8.31. And then we get that wonderful unbroken chain of blessing for believers, ‘We know that all things work together for good to them [all of them] that love God, to them [all of them] who are the called according to his purpose. For whom he did foreknow [all of them], he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate [all of them], them he also called: and whom he called [all of them], them he also justified: and whom he justified [all of them], them he also glorified [all of them]’, Romans 8.28-30. We are indeed, ‘Loved with everlasting love, led by grace that love to know’.
And here is your prayer for today, as you and I rejoice in His everlasting love, unworthy as we are. ‘Keep me as the apple of the eye, hide me under the shadow of thy wings’, Psalm 17.8.