The Mote and the Beam

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.

The New Testament text is as follows:

1 Judge not, that ye be not judged.
2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?
5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

The first two verses use plural "ye" and "you", and the next three verses use the singular "thou", "thy" and "thine" to the individual. ( was translated "thou" after using "ye" in .)

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.

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