Those Brothers Grimm were well-named. I grew up on their fables, and recently purchased the full canon. But my eyeballs nearly popped at some of the tales I’d never read. Like ‘Clever Hans’. The story is about a boy, who, I think, likes a girl called Gretel. But after a weird romance, he ‘went into the stable, cut out all the calves’ and sheep’s eyes, and threw them in Gretel’s face.’ No surprise then that the tale does not finish with a ‘happily ever after’.

It forced me to admit that the Book also contains some gruesome eyeball stories. Like the one in Proverbs where children who are disobedient to their parents will have their eyeballs plucked out by the ravens. And like Samson who had his eyeballs gouged out for his unwise dalliance with Delilah. And like King Zedekiah, who for his idolatry lost his eyeballs to a Babylonian brute squad.

Even the Lord Jesus had a grim eyeball story. In his famous Sermon on the Mount, he said, “If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.” His counsel of course was not in the genre of the Brothers Grimm, nor to be taken ultra-literally. He was simply using language to express the serious nature of lust. And clever is the Hans who ‘throws his eyeballs away’ in pursuit of truth and purity.