Matthew 7:3

Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye but fail to notice the beam in your own eye?

Berean Standard Bible

Study note

Setting — Jesus addresses his disciples and the crowd during the Sermon on the Mount, immediately after warning that the standard of judgment they apply to others will be applied to them (Matthew 7:2).

The words — κάρφος (karphos) is the word rendered "speck"; it means a splinter or chaff, a tiny fragment, which sharpens the contrast with the large timber (δοκός) in one's own eye.

The thread — Luke 6:41 preserves the identical saying in the parallel account; the logic echoes John 8:7 (self-examination before condemning) and Galatians 6:1 (restore gently, guarding against your own temptation).

Why it lands — It is a rhetorical question that exposes a specific failure: you have located a small fault in another while your own larger one remains unexamined, and the verse treats that gap as the obstacle to any honest correction.

Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.

The Greek words

King James Version

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

Cross-references

John 8:7 When they continued to question Him, He straightened up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to cast a stone at her.”
Galatians 6:1 Brothers, if someone is caught in a trespass, you who are spiritual should restore him with a spirit of gentleness. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted.
Luke 6:41 Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye but fail to notice the beam in your own eye?
2 Samuel 12:5 David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan: “As surely as the LORD lives, the man who did this deserves to die!
Luke 18:11 The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed, ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other men—swindlers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector.
Psalms 50:16 To the wicked, however, God says, “What right have you to recite My statutes and to bear My covenant on your lips?
2 Chronicles 28:9 But a prophet of the LORD named Oded was there, and he went out to meet the army that returned to Samaria. “Look,” he said to them, “because of His wrath against Judah, the LORD, the God of your fathers, has delivered them into your hand. But you have slaughtered them in a rage that reaches up to heaven.