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

The mystery of 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’, is how such a bizarre image offering such banal advice should be found in a text that has been described as the ‘supreme statement of the ethical duties of man’.

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.]

The insight into human failings is clear, as is the moral-psychological advice proposed as a remedy. We are inclined to obsess about the faults of others while remaining oblivious to our own: therefore, when I observe myself complaining about someone else, I should use that observation as a reminder to reflect instead on my own defects, which are much worse; and once I am free from my own defects, then I can help others get rid of their defects too.

I do not think the advice in Matthew 7 is completely unworkable, since it is always useful that some external shock should remind me of my own failings: however, it is not a very appealing way to approach relationships. The image calls on me to substitute spiteful reflection on other people’s defects with morbid reflection on my own; and then, once I am purified, to get back to helping them expunge their own faults. But this seems banal ‒ or maybe better to say poisonous, supercilious, and encouraging of hypocrisy; since it would be tempting to pretend to have cast out my own log so I can get back to helping other people with their splinters. And it is 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.

Not only is the advice in Matthew 7 unappealing, but the image is ridiculous. I have a vivid memory of the passage being explained by my primary school teacher.[1] With us all sitting before him on the carpet, he told us that we should not complain about the tiny splinters in other people’s eyes ‘when you’ve got a ruddy great joist in your own eye’.

This seeded doubts in me about the image in Matthew 7. A splinter in one’s eye is an elegant metaphor for a personal defect, certainly; but then Matthew somersaults from the splinter to the rest of the plank! And how can an eye contain a plank?

Perhaps there is nothing to be said except that the Gospel sometimes employs hyperbole or even deliberate comic exaggeration: Diarmaid MacCulloch wrote that Christ’s sense of humour is the main evidence for his real historical existence. 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 shelves of theological libraries, and heaven knows the biblical internet, repeat the same interpretation of the splinter and plank image without remarking on how unworkable the image really is. Perhaps this is because it is so familiar that it has ceased to provoke thought; but perhaps it is also because the King James bible translates the Greek by exploiting a double meaning in English, and so adds a new aspect which does not have that unappealing psychology at all, but soars above it, and replaces the unworkable image with a universal representation of compassion. 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. I add this footnote only because other former pupils might also occasionally search for information about him, and if he was as much an influence on you as he was on me, 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.