Tool Beta
Is It Actually in the Bible?
Phrases people quote as Scripture. The real verse, or the honest answer that there is not one.
God "kept him as the apple of his eye" (Deuteronomy 32:10), which a modern reader might picture as comparing someone to a piece of fruit.
"Apple of the eye" is an old idiom for the pupil: the small, precious, carefully guarded center of sight, not a piece of fruit.
Deuteronomy 32:10, in every translation this tool compares.
The Hebrew phrase behind this literally means something like "little man of the eye," referring to the tiny reflection of a person visible in someone's pupil. "Apple" was simply the old English word for any round object, applied here to the round pupil of the eye.
Because the pupil is so essential and vulnerable, protected instinctively by blinking, the phrase became shorthand for something cherished and carefully guarded. The same idiom appears in Zechariah 2:8. The "apple" has nothing to do with the fruit; it's describing precious, protected eyesight.
