Volume 18, Issue 1, 2026, pages 17-30

DOI: https://doi.org/10.64438/sbsLROR9837
Published online: 2025-06-01
Published in print: 2025-06-06

Abstract: Despite the widespread ancient Near Eastern belief in the evil eye as an envy-driven, projective force of harm, scholarship has often regarded explicit references to \u02bfayin r\u0101\u02bf\u0101h in the Hebrew Bible as marginal or absent. This article examines the idiom’s occurrences in Proverbs 23:6; 28:22 and Deuteronomy 15:9; 28:54.56. Using cognitive-linguistic metaphor analysis, social-scientific insights into envy in limited-good societies, and textual criticism, it demonstrates a consistent ironic reframing: the evil eye, traditionally emanating from envious outsiders in Mesopotamian and Egyptian traditions, is redirected in biblical texts to describe insiders who withhold resources – transforming a supernatural threat into an ethical critique of stinginess and hard-heartedness. This inversion likely reflects deliberate editorial strategy, motivated by fear of non-Yahwistic powers (paralleling YHWH-name avoidance) and Deuteronomistic neutralisation of magical elements. The findings reveal not absence but transformation of the evil eye concept, contributing to re-evaluations of cultural accommodation, metaphor, and monotheistic theology in the Hebrew Bible.