You're the Apple of My Eye!

He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness;
he led him about, he instructed him,
he kept him as the apple of his eye.

 Deuteronomy 32:10  (KJV)
I came across the phrase "apple of my eye" not too long ago, an expression which many of us know as one of affection in the English language. Someone who is cherished is the "apple of my eye." For some unknown reason I wanted to know where that came from and began snooping. It was used in a play by William Shakespeare, but there are several examples in the King James Version of the bible from the early 17th century. Modern scholars aren't so sure that the original Hebrew meant anything other than eyeball, but the translator whose prodigious work was foundational to the KJV may have decided that it was the apple or the focal point of God's eye. William Tyndale's marvelous translation gave us phrases such as:

my brother's keeper

knock and it shall be opened unto you

a moment in time

seek and ye shall find

ask and it shall be given you

judge not that ye be not judged

let there be light

the powers that be

the salt of the earth

a law unto themselves

it came to pass

the signs of the times

filthy lucre

There are at least five verses where the "apple of the eye" phrase is used in the KJV perhaps more. Well, there is your arcane trivia lesson for today. Who knows, this may help you watching Jeopardy some evening. I do this dear readers because you are the bushel of apples in my eye...please pass the Visine...

Keep me as the apple of the eye,
hide me under the shadow of thy wings...

Psalm 17:8  (KJV)