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The Mote and the Beam (also called discourse on judgmentalism) is a proverbial saying of Jesus given in the Sermon on the Mount. in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 7, verses 1 to 5. The discourse is fairly brief, and begins by warning his followers of the dangers of judging others, stating that they too would be judged by the same standard. The Sermon on the Plain has a similar passage in Luke 6:37–42.
Contents
Narrative
The New Testament text is as follows:
The first two verses use plural "ye" and "you", and the next three verses use the singular "thou", "thy" and "thine" to the individual. (Luke 6:41 was translated "thou" after using "ye" in Luke 6:37.)
Interpretation
The moral lesson is to avoid hypocrisy, self-righteousness, and censoriousness. The analogy used is of a small object in another's eye as compared with a large beam of wood in one's own. The original Greek word translated as "mote" (κάρφος karphos) meant "any small dry body". The terms mote and beam, more common in Early Modern English, are from the King James Version and are equivalent in modern speech to the words "speck" or splinter, and "board" or "plank", respectively. The analogy is suggestive of a carpenter's workshop, with which Jesus will have been familiar.
In the analogy, the one seeking to remove the impediment in the eye of his brother has the larger impediment in his own eye, suggesting metaphorically that the one who attempts to regulate his brother often displays the greater blindness and hypocrisy.
A proverb of this sort was familiar to the Jews and appears in numerous other cultures too, such as the Latin proverb of later Roman days referenced by Athenagoras of Athens, meretrix pudicam.... Herbert Lockyer noted a similar idea in the work of Scottish poet Robert Burns, who wrote in "To a Louse":
Oh, wad some Power the giftie gie us,
To see ourselves as others see us!