I have not yet found an interpretation of Matthew 7 which depends on translating κάρφος (kárthos) and δοκός (dokós) as ‘dustmote’ and ‘sunbeam’; in books and websites of biblical exegesis, they are always rendered ‘splinter’ and ‘plank’ or other variations on a joinery theme.
Nevertheless, the text of Matthew 7 contains clues that the manifest interpretation, of splinters and planks, is intended to mislead: for suddenly it alerts us that in this image something precious has been hidden—‘Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine [μηδὲ βάλητε τοὺς μαργαρίτας ὑμῶν ἔμπροσθεν τῶν χοίρων], lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you’ (7:7). This warning does not flow from the sentences which precede: it comes out of nowhere. And only a few lines further back the text plainly asserted that we are to envisage the eye as projecting light: Ὁ λύχνος τοῦ σώματός ἐστιν ὁ ὀφθαλμός [The lamp of the body is the eye] (6:22).
It may be objected that the text of Matthew does not possess the coherence necessary to read this line as referring to the lines preceding it. There is indeed a strand of biblical studies which considers the whole of the Sermon on the Mount to be ‘merely a collection of unrelated sayings of divine origin, a patchwork’. [1] But another strand, which given my own line of work I do prefer, insists on the role of the gospel ‘authors’ as true editors of their material, selecting and arranging the sayings that had come down to them, whether verbally or from another textual source now lost, in order to compose a determinate doctrine. In which case the warning against casting pearls before swine need not, as biblical commentary insists, be considered an abrupt change of subject.
Nevertheless, the Greek dictionary pours cold water on these interesting suggestions. The core meanings of δοκὸς are solidly architectural: bearing-beam, main-beam, balk or beam, bar (of gate or door), firewood [Eulexis: δοκός]; while κάρφος is any small dry body, esp. dry stalk, dry sticks of cinnamon, rice-straw, dry twigs, chips, straws, bits of wool, such as birds make their nests of, chip of wood, toothpick [Eulexis: κάρφος]. Very far from ‘dustmote’.
The Greek of the New Testament admits another meaning for δοκὸς, as a kind of meteor, perhaps because of the resemblance between the streak across the heavens and the projection of a joist or rafter. This does indeed mean a beam of light; but the kind of beam needed to carry the metaphor would seem to be αὐγή (augē), sunbeam. Meanwhile, the Latin Vulgate translates δοκὸς with trabs, which also carries the secondary meaning of meteor, and in some Latin dictionaries this is extended to shaft of sunlight; so it may be that King James brought this double meaning in from the Latin; but even in Latin the connection is weak.
If the King James translation adds a layer of meaning that was not compassed by the original text, I cannot believe that this was done by accident: one does not by accident produce a metaphor as perfect and compassionate as the ‘dustmote and the sunbeam’. Admittedly there is no way, as far as I know, to argue straightforwardly from the Greek that this inner layer was intended; but such a negative conclusion hardly satisfies when Matthew insists so plainly that a meaning has been hidden.
Could there be another linguistic device in the Greek which would produce the same double meaning as the ‘mote’ and the ‘beam’? Yes, there may be. This is the theme of the final part.
Notes
[1] W. D. Davies, The Setting of the Sermon on the Mount (Brown Judaic Studies, 1964), p. 1.
Babel editing 
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