"... The commandment is again quoted verbatim from LXX Exodus 20:14; Deuteronomy 5:18. It is concerned specifically with a man who has sexual relations with another man’s wife. The “woman” in Jesus’ declaration is thus to be understood also as another man’s wife, and the looking “in order to desire her,” specifically of wanting (and planning?) sexual relations (hence my translation “wants to have sex with her” above). The focus is thus not (as some tender adolescent consciences have read it) on sexual attraction as such, but on the desire for (and perhaps the planning of) an illicit sexual liaison (compare Exodus 20:17, “you shall not covet your neighbor’s ... wife,” where LXX uses the same verb, epithymeō). The famous sin of David (2 Samuel 11:2-4), where such a desire led not only to adultery but also to murder, would naturally come to mind as a lurid scriptural example. The danger of looking lustfully at women is the subject of many Jewish sayings (e.g., Job 31:1, 9; Proverbs 6:25; Sirach 9:5, 8; Testament of Benjamin 8:2), and the idea that the desire is tantamount to the deed is hinted at in, for example, Testament of Reuben 5:6; T. Iss. 7:2 and explicit in the extracanonical tractate Kallah (“whoever gazes intentionally at a woman is as though he had intercourse with her”); according to b. Yoma 29a it is even worse ..."

"... In its association of vision and phallus, however, the Yerushalmi goes further than the kind of manual vision envisaged in Cixous’ description. This Palestinian tradition crystallizes earlier Jewish traditions, such as those found in Matthew 5:28 and Leviticus Rabbah 23:12, which emphasize the sinfulness of the illicit sexual gaze ..."