Meanings of the Mote and the Beam [pt. 1]

There are layers of mystery in Matthew 7:3‒5, the passage of the Sermon on the Mount containing the metaphor of the ‘mote and the beam’ (or the ‘splinter’ and the ‘plank’); and the first mystery is how the Gospels could employ an image that is so bizarre and impossible, and why so few people have noticed how bizarre and impossible it is.

³ τί δὲ βλέπεις τὸ κάρφος τὸ ἐν τῷ ὀφθαλμῷ τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ σου, τὴν δὲ ἐν τῷ σῷ ὀφθαλμῷ δοκὸν οὐ κατανοεῖς;

⁴ ἢ πῶς ἐρεῖς τῷ ἀδελφῷ σου, Ἄφες ἐκβάλω τὸ κάρφος ἐκ τοῦ ὀφθαλμοῦ σου, καὶ ἰδοὺ ἡ δοκὸς ἐν τῷ ὀφθαλμῷ σοῦ;

⁵ ὑποκριτά, ἔκβαλε πρῶτον ἐκ τοῦ ὀφθαλμοῦ σοῦ τὴν δοκόν, καὶ τότε διαβλέψεις ἐκβαλεῖν τὸ κάρφος ἐκ τοῦ ὀφθαλμοῦ τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ σου.

[And why do you look to the splinter in the eye of your brother, yet the plank in your own eye you do not recognise?

And how will you say to your brother, ‘Allow that I should throw out the splinter from your eye’, and look! a plank is in your own eye.

O Dissembler, first throw the plank out of your own eye, then you will see clearly to throw the splinter out of the eye of your brother.]

My doubts about this image have been brewing since primary school. Dating from about 1981, I have a vivid memory of sitting on the classroom carpet while our teacher told us that we should not complain about the splinters in other people’s eyes ‘when you’ve got a ruddy great joist in your own eye’.[1]

A splinter in one’s eye seems a good metaphor for a personal defect; but then Matthew leaps from the splinter to the rest of the plank! And how can an eye contain a plank?

Perhaps it is deliberate comic exaggeration. Diarmaid MacCulloch wrote that Christ’s sense of humour is the main evidence for his real historical existence, and there certainly are plenty of other images in the Gospels which seem intentionally funny (ὁδηγοὶ τυφλοί, οἱ διϋλίζοντες τὸν κώνωπα, τὴν δὲ κάμηλον καταπίνοντες [blind guides, filtering out the gnat, but swallowing the camel], Matt. 23:24). But other theologians have considered that Matthew 7:3 goes beyond a joke: ‘This is neither hyperbole nor paradox such as we find in some other sayings of Jesus. The situation to which the precept relates is simply meaningless.’[2]

The richer the insight into human nature that the image conveyed, the easier it would be to overlook how strange it is, for then we might say, with Bruce Lee:

It is like a finger, pointing a way to the moon; don’t concentrate on the finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory.

It matters, therefore, that the psychological insight conveyed by the image is apparently banal. It seems to amount to this: when I observe myself complaining about someone else, I should remind myself about my own defects, which are much worse; and once I am free from my own defects, then I can better help others be free of theirs too.

To me this seems such an obvious thing to say, one wonders why the Sermon on the Mount has been thought to be the ‘supreme statement of the ethical duties of man’.[3] It is also morbid: everyone in the picture is dwelling on their faults and busily purifying themselves and helping others do the same. Where is the joy? Also encouraging of hypocrisy: it would be tempting to pretend to have cast out my own plank so I can get back to helping other people with their splinters. And also illogical: why would it always be that my own defects are greater than my brother’s? In so far as the picture fits me, it must fail to fit my brother, since he (according to the image) really did have a splinter, not a plank.

Everywhere I see the same interpretation of the splinter and plank image repeated without remarking on how unworkable it really is. Perhaps this is because it is so familiar that it long ago ceased to provoke thought; but perhaps it is also because there is another interpretation, one which does not have that unappealing psychology at all, but soars above it, turning the unworkable image into a transcendent expression of compassion. Perhaps, when we think of the Mote and the Beam, we are unconsciously thinking of this secondary interpretation. If this second interpretation really does fit, then the Sermon on the Mount deserves its reputation as a supreme ethical statement just on this passage alone. But what is it? This is the topic for part two.

Notes

[1] Imanol Iriondo, a teacher at Barrow Hill Primary School in northwest London, and very much beloved and admired by pupils and parents. If any other former Barrow Hill pupils happen to come across this post, I send you my very best wishes!

[2] G. B. King, ‘A Further Note on the Mote and the Beam’, Harvard Theological Review 26 no. 1 (January 1933), p. 74.

[3] W. D. Davies, The Setting of the Sermon on the Mount (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), p. 1. (Yes, I only read the first page of this.)