Eye of the Beholder

 

I have been reflecting on Jesus' parable of the landowner who paid all the workers in his vineyard the same wage no matter how long they worked. At the end of the story when those who worked the longest complain, the landowner asks, "Is your eye evil because I am good?" That's what Matthew's Greek says(20:15.) I have found only two others who translate it that way, King James and Daniel Harrington in his commentary on Matthew. The other ten or so that I checked have something like, "Why should you be envious because I am generous?" A translation that makes sense in the context but is so far from the original Greek that it makes me wonder.
So I got to thinking about the old quote "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." This gets at how subjective beauty can be. When we look on someone with a loving eye we may see a beauty that some objective observer may not notice. The landowner is asking the worker if his eye is so evil that he can see only evil, even when he is looking at goodness.