Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Matthew 7:4
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?
4. a beam is in thine own eye ] Which (1) ought to prevent condemnation of another for a less grave offence; and which (2) would obscure the spiritual discernment, and so render thee an incapable judge. The Pharisaic sin of hypocrisy (see next verse) was deeper and more fatal to the spiritual life than the sins which the Pharisee condemned.
out of ] Greek (a reading which rests on the highest MS. authority) = “from the outside surface,” which alone the Pharisee discerns
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Verse 4. Or how wilt thou say] That man is utterly unfit to show the way of life to others who is himself walking in the way of death.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
4. Or how wilt thou say to thybrother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, abeam is in thine own eye?
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Or how wilt thou say to thy brother?…. This is not so much an interrogation, as an expression of admiration, at the front and impudence of such censorious remarkers, and rigid observators; who not content to point at the faults of others, take upon them to reprove them in a very magisterial way: and it is as if Christ had said, with what face canst thou say to thy friend or neighbour,
let me pull out the mote out of thine eye? give me leave to rebuke thee sharply for thy sin, as it deserves,
and behold a beam is in thine own eye; thou art guilty of a far greater iniquity: astonishing impudence! Art thou so blind, as not to see and observe thy viler wickedness? Or which, if conscious of, how canst thou prevail upon thyself to take upon thee to reprove and censure others? Dost thou think thy brother cannot see thy beam? And may he not justly retort thine iniquities upon thee, which exceed his? and then what success canst thou promise thyself? Such persons are very unfit to be reprovers of others.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
1) “Or how wilt thou say to thy brother,” (e pos ereis to adelpho sou) “Or how will you be able to say to your brother;” How is it so much easier to see your own brother’s little faults while dishonestly overlooking your own, is the force of the question, Rom 2:1-23. How dare you act as these Pharisee hypocrites act, Mr 7:1-14.
2) “Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye;” (aphes ekbalo to karpos ek tou oplithalmou sou) “Will you allow or permit me to pluck the chip out of your eye?” or the foreign particle from your eye, get rid of the little wrong I see in your life? Rom 10:1-4.
3) “And behold, a beam Is in thine own eye?” (kai idou he dokos en to ophthalmo sou) “And, behold, Is not a beam in your own eye?” Are you not a self-righteous, over-pious, deceitful despiser of others? Luk 18:9-14; Mat 5:20. He who “thinketh he stands”, in selfrighteousness, is bidden to take heed, be careful, lest he fall, 1Co 10:12. A brother overtaken in a fault is to be dealt with in love, not in carnal, harsh condemnation, that he may both be restored, and strengthen the one restoring or helping to restore him from wrong, Gal 6:1.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
(4) How wilt thou sayi.e., how wilt thou have the face to say.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
Or how will you say to your brother, Let me cast out the splinter from your eye,
And lo, the plank is in your own eye?
So He asks them to consider the folly of the person who with a great plank sticking out of his eye goes up to his brother and offers to remove the splinter from his eye. The picture is intended to be ludicrous. The plank will make the one he approaches stare at him in bemusement. For not only will the plank make the person unable to do the job, but it will hardly encourage confidence in the patient. If such a person cannot remove the plank from his eye, how on earth can he hope to remove a mere splinter? The person is thus rendered unsuitable on all counts. But Jesus is saying that that is really no more ludicrous than one man criticising another harshly. For the truth is that we need to recognise that we are all sinners together, and must therefore be mutually supportive and helpful, and if we cannot cope with dealing with our own sins how can we possibly assist another with regard to their sins?
The plank represents all the sins that prevent men from seeing clearly in spiritual matters, (which in the end means all sin, but here more specifically hypocrisy and censoriousness), because they have as a result ceased to see singly (Mat 6:22), and are spiritually squinting. Thus the point is that if we are to help another our own lives must be attuned. The gifted musician who has been lazy, and has not practised sufficiently, may sound well and good to the layman, but to other gifted musicians, (and, if he will face up to it, also to himself), his failure will be obvious. He will not be perfectly attuned. So is it too in our spiritual lives. If we fail to pray regularly and to study God’s word, and to walk rightly with Him in all things, walking in His light and ‘keeping short accounts with God’ (1Jn 1:7), it may not be immediately obvious to others, but it is something of which God and the angels will be keenly aware, and it will eventually become obvious to all men. And it renders us spiritually useless.
This is a position that we all find ourselves in time and again in our spiritual lives, and until it is put right we are in no position even to ‘judge’ others helpfully. For censoriousness and a sense of superiority and condemnation renders us immediately disqualified. There is no greater sin than harsh judgment of others, when we ourselves are forgiven sinners. To judge harshly is the greatest evidence of our own lack of fitness to help others. It is demonstrating our failure to recognise how deeply we have been forgiven (compare Mat 6:14-15; Mat 18:23-35). Rather the one who would help another must do so humbly, conscious of the depths of their own failure, and therefore esteeming the other better than themselves (Php 2:3). (They must remember that they have just got rid of a plank from their own eye, while their brother only has a splinter). Then only will they be in a position to help the other. For our approach in such cases must always be in sympathy and love and understanding, not with a view to passing the judgment that only God can dare to pass.
Thus Jesus’ point is that until the person in question has had the plank removed from their own eye, by true repentance of all wrongdoing and of all failures to do the right, and by humbling themselves before God, and coming back to full fellowship with Him in the light (1Jn 1:7), and are thus walking in humility and love (1Co 13:4-8) and having been reconciled to all who have anything against them (Mat 5:23), they are in no position to remove splinters from anyone’s eyes. To seek so to help others is to be seen as no light matter, and requires a true heart and great delicacy, something only possible to the one who is right with God on all matters, and goes about the matter fully conscious of his own sinfulness and unworthiness. For any other approach is but to bring condemnation on ourselves (Mat 7:1-2).
Strictly the illustrations are of the beams that hold up the roofs of houses, a compared with a splinter of wood or a speck of sawdust. In those days those were familiar to all because of the ways in which their houses were constructed. We have used here the ideas of planks because for many of us these are more familiar than beams. (In the same way as the prophets spoke of heavenly things using earthly pictures which would be familiar. Communication must always be through what is understandable at the time).
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Mat 7:4. Let me pull out the mote, &c. Hold still, and I will take the mote out of thine eye. This seems to be the exact meaning of the words in the original, which, translated thus literally, elegantly intimates, how ready men are to shrink from reproof. The simile here used implies, that it is as absurd for a bad man to set up for a reprover of others, as it would be for one who is almost blind himself to pretend to perform operations on other men’s eyes. How wilt thou say, means, “How wilt thou have the confidence to say?” See Doddridge, and Beausobre and Lenfant.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Mat 7:4-5 . Or how will it be morally possible for thee to say, and so on. The , like ( cur ), Mat 7:3 , expresses what is morally absurd. “Est enim proprium stultitiae, aliorum vitia cernere, oblivisci suorum,” Cic. Tusc . iii. 30. 73.
, . . .] The more emphatic from there being no ; and lo, the beam in thine eye!
] Conjunct. hortatory, and in the present instance, in the sense of calling upon oneself (used also in the singular, see Khner, II. 1, p. 185; Ngelsbach on Iliad , p. 404, Exo 3 ; Bornemann, in d. Schs. Stud . 1846, p. 30).
] Hypocrite , who pretendest to be free from faults. The attribute is here taken from his demeanour as seen from its objective side , while the subjective side , which here presents itself as hypocrisy , is the conceit of self-delusion .
] neither imperative nor permissive (thou mayest see), but future . The result of self-amendment will be the earnest effort to help others to amendment Observe the compound (correlative of the simple verb, Mat 7:3 ) intenta acie spectabis . Comp. Plat. Phaed . p. 86 D; Arist. de Son 3Son 3 ; Plut. Mor . p. 36 E.
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
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?
Ver. 4. Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, &c. ] How impudent are hypocritical find faults, that can say such things to others, when themselves are most obnoxious! whence is this, but either from a secret desire of purchasing an opinion of freedom from the faults they so boldly censure in others, or that they may thereby the sooner insinuate and ingratiate with them they deal with? The Vulgate translation reads here Frater sine, &c., a “Brother, let me pull out the mote that is in thine eye,” &c. “Burning lips and a wicked heart are like a potsherd covered with silver dross. When he speaketh fair, believe him not; for there are seven abominations in his heart,” Pro 26:23 ; Pro 26:25 ; but there lies a great beam of hypocrisy between him and himself, that he cannot discern them. These are they that by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple, as the serpent did Eve. b You would think by their smoothing, soothing honey words, they were wholly set upon seeking your good; when they merely serve not the Lord Jesus Christ, but their own bellies, as those Popish flesh flies. “Faithful are the wounds of a friend” (fair they are and pleasant, saith the Chaldee here), “but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful,” Pro 27:6 , as were those of Joab to Amasa, and Judas to Christ. non est , saith Philo. Love is not always in a kiss; there are those who kiss and kill. David would not taste of their dainties, nor endure that they should pour upon him the sweetest ointments (as at feasts it was the custom among that people, Luk 7:46 ). Indeed, if the righteous smite him, he would take it for a singular courtesy. “Let him reprove me,” saith he, “it shall be an excellent oil,” and shall soak into me, as soft oil doth into wooden vessels,Pro 26:6Pro 26:6 ; Psa 141:4-5 . It shall not break my head; my heart it may; and so make way for the oil of God’s grace which is not poured save only into broken vessels; for indeed whole vessels are full vessels, and so this precious liquor would run over and be spilt on the ground, as Bernard hath it.
a Frater, quasi fere alter. Gellius xiii. 10.
b Pertinax Imp. vulgo dictus est , quod blandus esset magis quam benignus. Aurel. Victor.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
4. ] = , Luke; wie darfst du sagen , Luther.
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
Mat 7:4 . , hortatory conjunctive, first person, supplies place of imperative which is wanting in first person; takes such words as , , or as here , before it. Vide Goodwin, section 255. For modern Greek has , a contraction, used with the subjunctive in the first and third persons ( vide Vincent and Dickson, Modern Greek , p. 322).
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
out of = from. Greek. ap’o. App-104.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
4.] = , Luke; wie darfst du sagen, Luther.
Fuente: The Greek Testament
Mat 7:4. , how?) i.e. How is it fitting for you to do so?
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament
Reciprocal: Pro 26:7 – so Mat 23:24 – General
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
7:4
This continues the thought of inconsistency just described.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
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?
[Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye, etc.] and this also was a known proverb among them: “It is written in the days when they judged the judges, that is, in the generation which judged their judges, When any [judge] said to another, Cast out the mote out of thine eye; he answered, Cast you out the beam out of your own eye;” etc.
“R. Tarphon said, ‘I wonder whether there be any in this age that will receive reproof: but if one saith to another, Cast out the mote out of thine eye, he will be ready to answer, Cast out the beam out of thine own eye.’ ” Where the Gloss writes thus; “Cast out the mote; that is, the small sin that is in thine hand; he may answer, But cast you out the great sin that is in yours. So that they could not reprove, because all were sinners.”