Matthew 7:4

4 Or how can you say to your neighbor, "Let me take the speck out of your eye,' while the log is in your own eye?

Matthew 7:4 Meaning and Commentary

Matthew 7:4

Or how wilt thou say to thy brother?
&c.] 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.

Matthew 7:4 In-Context

2 For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.

3 Why do you see the speck in your neighbor's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?

4 Or how can you say to your neighbor, "Let me take the speck out of your eye,' while the log is in your own eye?

5 You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor's eye.

6 "Do not give what is holy to dogs; and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under foot and turn and maul you.

Footnotes

• [a]. Gk [brother]