The Open Graves of the Eyes Text: Proverbs 27:20
Introduction: The Infinite Thirst
We live in an age of perpetual dissatisfaction. Our entire economy, our whole advertising industry, is built on the careful cultivation of a constant, low-grade ache in the soul. You are told, in a thousand subtle ways every day, that you are not enough, you do not have enough, and you are not experiencing enough. The screen in your hand is a firehose of curated envy, a direct mainline of discontentment. And so we are a people who are perpetually hungry and perpetually eating, but never, ever satisfied.
The modern secular man believes this is a feature, not a bug. He calls it ambition. He calls it progress. He calls it self-actualization. He believes that if he just gets the next promotion, the next phone, the next political victory, the next sexual partner, then the ache will finally subside. But it is a phantom oasis in a desert of his own making. He is a dog chasing a rabbit tied to its own tail. He is trying to fill an infinite void with finite things, and the project is doomed from the outset.
The book of Proverbs, being the intensely practical book that it is, diagnoses this condition with a brutal and earthy clarity. It does not offer a ten-step program for contentment. It does not suggest mindfulness exercises. It simply holds up a mirror to the soul of fallen man and tells him the blunt truth. It gives us a spiritual MRI, and the results are terminal. Our text today is one such diagnosis. It is a proverb that functions like a spiritual autopsy on the heart of man, revealing the fundamental reason for our restlessness. It is a grim, stark, and absolutely necessary word.
Solomon, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, gives us a parallel, a spiritual equation. He takes two of the most inexorable, insatiable realities in the created order, Sheol and Abaddon, and says, "That... that is what your eyes are like." If we want to understand our own hearts, and the world of trouble that flows from them, we must first understand the nature of the grave.
The Text
Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied,
So the eyes of man are never satisfied.
(Proverbs 27:20 LSB)
The Twin Hungers of the Grave (v. 20a)
First, we must consider the first clause of this parallelism:
"Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied..."
Sheol is the Old Testament word for the realm of the dead, the grave. It is the place where all the living go. It is a place of consumption. It takes and takes and takes and never once gives anything back. It has swallowed kings and paupers, wise men and fools, infants and the elderly. It has consumed entire civilizations. And in all that time, Sheol has never once said, "Enough." It has never posted a sign on its gates that reads, "Sorry, we're full." Its appetite is infinite.
Abaddon is a Hebrew word that means "destruction" or "ruin." It is often used in parallel with Sheol, as it is here, but it carries a more intense connotation of the utter ruin and decay that accompanies death. Think of it as the active principle of destruction within the grave. If Sheol is the stomach, Abaddon is the digestive acid. It is the relentless entropy that breaks down all that was once strong and beautiful into dust and nothingness.
The wisdom literature personifies these realities to make a sharp theological point. Elsewhere in Proverbs, we are told of four things that never say "Enough": "Sheol, the barren womb, the land never satisfied with water, and the fire that never says, 'Enough'" (Proverbs 30:16). The grave is a mouth. It is an appetite. It is a black hole at the center of the fallen created order, a consequence of sin. When Adam sinned, death entered the world, and with death came this insatiable hunger for the lives of men.
This is a grim picture, but it is a realistic one. The Bible does not sugarcoat reality. The world, under the curse of sin, is a world that is groaning and breaking down. The grave is the final tax collector, and it always gets its due. This is the first half of the equation: an infinite, relentless, consuming hunger. And Solomon says, this is your starting point for understanding yourself.
The Open Graves in Your Head (v. 20b)
Now, Solomon brings the analogy home with a swift punch to the gut.
"So the eyes of man are never satisfied."
The parallel is stark and intentional. The same way the grave is never full of bodies, the eyes of fallen man are never full of seeing. The word "eyes" here is a synecdoche, a figure of speech where a part represents the whole. It refers to the desires of man, the lusts that are stimulated and fed through the eye-gate. This is about covetousness. It is about envy. It is about lust. It is about the grasping, wanting, craving nature of the sinful heart that expresses itself through what we look at and long for.
Your eyes are little graves. They are little portals to Abaddon. They see, they want, they consume, and they are immediately hungry again. The man sees a car, and wants it. He gets it, and the satisfaction lasts a week, until he sees a better car. The man sees a woman, and lusts for her. He consumes her with his eyes, or perhaps in reality, and the momentary thrill gives way to a deeper emptiness and a craving for the next thrill. The woman scrolls through images of other homes, other vacations, other families, and the green-eyed monster of envy sinks its teeth into her soul. The eyes see, the heart wants, the hands grasp, and the soul remains empty. The eyes are never satisfied.
This is why the Tenth Commandment is so fundamental: "You shall not covet" (Exodus 20:17). Covetousness is the engine of sin, and the eyes are the fuel intake. Eve saw that the tree was a "delight to the eyes," and the whole tragic story of the fall was set in motion (Genesis 3:6). Achan saw the "beautiful mantle from Shinar" and the silver and gold, and brought disaster upon Israel (Joshua 7:21). David saw Bathsheba bathing, and it led to adultery, conspiracy, and murder (2 Samuel 11:2).
Our culture, of course, has made this sin into a virtue. It is the engine of our consumer economy. It is the foundation of the sexual revolution. We are told to follow our hearts, to trust our desires, to never deny ourselves. We have built a whole civilization on the principle that the eyes of man should never be satisfied, because a satisfied man stops buying things. We have taken the very principle of Hell, insatiability, and made it our god.
Cataracts of the Soul
The problem is not with the eyes themselves. The problem is not with the created world. God made a world full of glorious things to see. Sunsets, mountains, the face of your spouse, the smile of your child. These are good gifts. The problem is with the heart behind the eyes. Sin has given us spiritual cataracts. We no longer see the world as a signpost pointing to the glory of God; we see it as a catalog from which we can order up our next hit of happiness.
The unsatisfied eye is the mark of an idolatrous heart. An idolater is someone who looks to the creation to provide what only the Creator can give: satisfaction, contentment, life, meaning. And because the creation was never designed to bear that weight, it always fails. Trying to find ultimate satisfaction in the things of this world is like trying to quench your thirst by drinking saltwater. The more you drink, the thirstier you become, until it kills you.
This is the state of every man and woman apart from Christ. We are born with Sheol in our hearts and Abaddon in our eyes. We are spiritual black holes, trying to suck the whole universe into ourselves in a desperate attempt to feel full, but the void within is infinite.
The Gospel for Unsatisfied Eyes
If the diagnosis is this grim, what is the cure? The cure is not to try harder to be satisfied. The cure is not to gouge out your eyes, either literally or metaphorically by retreating to a monastery. The law can diagnose the disease of covetousness, but it cannot cure it. The cure must be a radical, heart-level transformation. It must be a miracle.
The only one who can satisfy an infinite hunger is an infinite God. The only one who can fill an infinite void is the one who is Himself infinite. The gospel is the good news that God has provided the only satisfaction that will ever last.
First, Jesus Christ entered into the belly of Sheol for us. He was swallowed by the grave. Death, for the first and only time in history, swallowed something it could not digest. On the third day, the grave was forced to give back what it had taken. Jesus Christ broke the gates of Sheol from the inside out. He defeated the power of Abaddon. He conquered our ultimate dissatisfaction by conquering death itself.
Second, through His death and resurrection, He offers to fill the void within us. He said, "I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst" (John 6:35). He is the living water. He is the pearl of great price. He is the treasure hidden in the field. When the eye of faith sees the supreme beauty and worth of Jesus Christ, all the other trinkets of the world are exposed for the cheap baubles they are. The Apostle Paul could say that he counted all his worldly accomplishments as "rubbish" in comparison to the "surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord" (Philippians 3:8).
This is the great exchange. We give Him our insatiable, restless, covetous hearts, and He gives us His own perfect contentment. This is what it means to be born again. God performs a heart transplant. He gives us a new heart with new desires. He performs cataract surgery on our souls, so that we can see Him as He truly is, and in seeing Him, be satisfied.
This does not mean that we will never struggle with covetousness or lust again. But it means the war has been turned. We are no longer slaves to our unsatisfied eyes. We now have a choice. We can choose to feast our eyes on Christ, or we can go back to chewing on the gravel of the world. Sanctification is the daily process of learning to starve the old desires and feed the new ones. It is about learning to say with the psalmist, "Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you" (Psalm 73:25).
The world says your eyes are never satisfied, so feed them whatever they want. The gospel says your eyes are never satisfied, so fix them on the only one who can ever truly satisfy them. Fix your eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. For in His presence, and in His presence alone, is fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore.