Anablepo: Using Your Eyes

Word of the Week

August 17, 2024

Anablepō: Using Your Eyes

 

[Ananias] came to me, and standing nearby he said to me, “Brother Saul, receive your sight! And at that very moment I looked up at him. 

Acts 22:13 NASB

 

“Why didn’t you see that?”

It might be a driver ignoring a red light.  Or a toddler running into an unwary bystander.  It might be stumbling over a paint can in the garage.

It might be a family member who seems blind to the folly of his political opinions.  Or a coworker who fails to see the signs of a crisis looming in the near future.

We all suffer from failure to see things that would save us from trouble or open doors of opportunity.  But the reasons why we miss those clues vary widely from person to person.

The New Testament uses an interesting Greek word that highlights some of the reasons why a person doesn’t see things that might seem obvious.

The Greek word is anablepō [ah-nah-BLEH-poh].  It appears 25 times in the New Testament, always as a description of sight.  Blepō by itself means “to see.”  But when you add ana at the beginning, it takes on two different meanings.

It can mean “to see again.”  In the Gospels, Jesus repeatedly restores sight to those who are blind.  These people cannot see because they don’t have the capacity for sight.  In John 9, Jesus gave sight to a man who was born blind.  In other passages, He restored sight to people who may have lost their vision at some point.  Now they could see again.  He healed two blind men outside Jericho (Matthew 20:34).  In fact, he listed one of the prominent features of His ministry as “the blind receiving their sight” (Matthew 11:5).

We don’t blame a blind person for failing to see the things around her.  She simply doesn’t have the capacity for sight.  But there is a second meaning for anablepō.

It can mean “to look up.”  In these verses, the word describes someone who has perfectly good vision.  Instead of opening the eyes of the blind, the word pictures someone who looks upward.

• Jesus looked upward to see Zacchaeus perched above him in the branches of a sycamore tree (Luke 19:5).
• He looked upward toward His Father as He blessed the bread that He was going to distribute to the crowd of 5000 hungry hearers (Matthew 14:19).
• He gazed toward heaven as He healed a deaf man (Mark 7:34).

Sometimes it describes not so much a skyward look as a person who lifts his eyes from the ground or from his task or her conversation – a look that notices something important in the surroundings.

• The Lord interrupted a conversation with the disciples to look up at the rich people dropping off gifts at the temple (Luke 21:1).
• When Jesus touched a blind man and asked “What do you see?” the fellow looked up into His face to give an answer (Mark 10:51).
• The women who came to Christ’s tomb looked up and noticed that the stone had been rolled away (Mark 16:4).

You can see both ideas in a single verse in Paul’s testimony of His conversion.  Acts 9 tells how he regained his sight after his blinding encounter on the road to Damascus.  And as he recounts that episode later, he tells how a man named Ananias was sent from God to minister to him. This Christian brother made the announcement:  “Brother Saul, anablepō  – regain your sight!”  And according to Paul, he immediately looked up at this messenger from God.

The Greek word we are studying appears only in the Gospels and Acts.  It always describes physical sight.  However, it can serve as a reminder that there are also varied reasons why people fail to see spiritual truth.  Many people are unable to grasp or receive the gospel of Christ because they are spiritually blind (2 Corinthians 4:4).  They need a healing touch from the Savior to open their eyes.

Others of us have the capacity to see because the Holy Spirit dwells in us.  However, we can be so occupied with our own affairs that we fail to see the important things around us – the lessons for life, the opportunities for ministry, the reasons for gratefulness.

Let’s be on the lookout for everything that God is doing around us.

 

Study Hint:

The two meanings of anablepō spring from the versatile preposition that lies at its root.  Ana is one of the common Greek prepositions that shows how a noun is connected to the rest of the sentence.  It is often used as a building block, combined with something else to construct a new word.  In such combinations, it sometimes means “up.”  For example, when you add it to bainō, “to go,” you get anabainō, “to go up or ascend.”  In other combinations, it can mean “again.”  So the word anakainōsis means “to make new again, to renew.”

That’s why anablepō can sometimes mean “to see again” and sometimes means “to look up.”

 

Coming Up

We know that sin is bad, and that might be enough to know.  But it is such a pervasive issue that we can benefit from a clear understanding of the idea.  Next week we will look at the most common word for sin.

©Ezra Project 2024