On Looking (Prov. 27:20)

Recently in several different conversations with women, the idea of whether or not there is any harm to be found in “looking” has come up. Window shopping, browsing without aim, Pinteresting in boredom, Facebook scrolling for hours at a time, watching cheesy romantic Hallmark movies—call it what you will and add your own poison—but we women have many different labels we slap on something that the world tells us is harmless. But is it really?

Today in my reading, I came across a verse in Proverbs that made me think of these conversations: “Sheol [death] and Abaddon [hell] are never satisfied, nor are the eyes of man ever satisfied” (27:20, NASB). Think about that one for a minute. The looking never causes us to be satisfied, and I would argue it increases dissatisfaction within us. The more we look and dwell on something that is worldly, the natural inclination is to desire it. 

Another word for desiring something we do not have is coveting, and coveting when used in a “good sense” means “to desire or wish for, with eagerness; to desire earnestly to obtain or possess” (Webster’s 1828). Really? There’s a bad sense? Webster’s furthers this definition by offering a second definition of coveting, the “bad sense,” as the act of desiring “inordinately” that which is “unlawful to obtain or possess,” as in the Exodus 20:17 sense, which God clearly places off limits to His peculiar people in His Ten Commandments.

The fact that there are two different meanings for some would seem to cloud the issue, but whether it is “good” or “bad,” coveting is still defined as “inordinate desire.” The word inordinate is an adjective that means several things: “irregular; disorderly; excessive; immoderate; not limited to rules prescribed, or to usual bounds” (Webster’s 1828). This is beginning to sound a little more disturbing. If the looking leads in any way to a desire to have what has not been given us by God, whether in a “it’s not forbidden me” kind of way or whether in its adulterous state, looking is leading us into sin. This is the place where it becomes harmful. The problem is that we never know when what we see will grab at our hearts and suck us in with the first glance (or second or third in this marketing-controlled, desire-gratifying device-driven world in which we live that feeds us what it thinks we want based on clicks and algorithms).

Another disturbing aspect of the Provers 27:20 verse is the inclusion of death and hell by Solomon. Read the verse again: “Sheol [death] and Abaddon [hell] are never satisfied, nor are the eyes of man ever satisfied.” The comparison of our eyes with death and hell are seriously sobering. The root of the word Abaddon comes from several different languages and means “to be lost, or destroyed, or to perish” (Webster’s 1828) and can reflect either a destroyer (an angel of the bottomless pit) or the bottomless pit itself, which we call Hell. 

Matthew Henry says this about this passage: 

The eyes of man are never satisfied, nor the appetites of the carnal mind towards profit or pleasure. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor is he that loves silver satisfied with silver. Men labour for that which surfeits, but satisfies not; nay, it is dissatisfying; but satisfies not; nay, it is dissatisfying; such a perpetual uneasiness have men justly been doomed to ever since our first parents were not satisfied with all the trees of Eden, but they must meddle with the forbidden tree. Those whose eyes are ever toward the Lord in him are satisfied, and shall for ever be so.

Henry hits at the heart of the matter with this, but his last sentence really struck me. Only when we look to the Lord will our eyes be satisfied. Many of these other pursuits involving looking at something are not necessarily harmful in and of themselves, but will we pierce ourselves with a longing we didn’t even know we would have when we set out to entertain ourselves for a few idle minutes? 

Our world of instant gratification (when it comes to things we can look at) brings to mind 2 Timothy 3:1-8:

But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; avoid such men as these. For among them are those who enter into households and captivate weak women weighed down with sins, led on by various impulses, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.

This desire for pleasure, for entertainment, for pleasing ourselves, for wanting what has not been given to us . . . this lacking of self-control is not healthy. Looking is not really ever the problem, our hearts are, our flesh, our sin natures. Even more alarming is Paul’s note of women in particular as being easily captivated, weighed down with sins, impulsively led on, never seeing the truth, having a pretense of learning yet never any understanding or application of the truth. 

All this to say, be careful “little eyes what you see.” Piper says, “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.” What you put in matters . . .