Luke 6:42 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Luke 6:42
Either how canst thou say to thy brother, Brother, let me pull out the mote that is in thine eye, when thou thyself beholdest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to pull out the mote that is in thy brother’s eye.
an interrogative particle of manner · particle — interrogative
canst
δύνασαιdunasai
G1410
to be able or possible · verb — present middle or passive deponent indicative, 2nd person singular
thou say
λέγεινlegein
G3004
properly · verb — present active infinitive
to
ἀδελφῷadelphō
G80
a brother (literally or figuratively) near or remote (m… · noun — dative singular masculine
thy
σοῦsoû
G4675
of thee
brother
ἀδελφέ,adelphe
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Romans 2:21-29 Thou therefore which teachest another, teachest thou not thyself? thou that preachest a man should not steal, dost thou steal?
1 Thessalonians 2:10-12 Ye are witnesses, and God also, how holily and justly and unblameably we behaved ourselves among you that believe:
Psalms 51:9-13 Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities.
Matthew 23:13-15 But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neit…
Proverbs 18:17 He that is first in his own cause seemeth just; but his neighbour cometh and searcheth him.
Matthew 26:75 And Peter remembered the word of Jesus, which said unto him, Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. And he went out, and wept bitt…
Luke 13:15 The Lord then answered him, and said, Thou hypocrite, doth not each one of you on the sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall, and le…
Luke 22:32 But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Luke 6:37–end
All these sayings of Christ we had before in Matthew; some of them in ch. 7, others in other places. They were sayings that Christ often used; they needed only to be mentioned, it was easy to apply them. Grotius thinks that we need not be critical here in seeking for the coherence: they are golden sentences, like Solomon's proverbs or parables. Let us observe here,
I. We ought to be very candid in our censures of others, because we need grains of allowance ourselves: "Therefore judge not others, because then you yourselves shall not be judged; therefore condemn not others, because then you yourselves shall not be condemned, Luk 6:37. Exercise towards others that charity which thinks no evil,…
(See on Mat 7:3-5, Mat 7:16-27.)
Next: Luke Chapter 7
Adam Clarke on Luke 6:41
And why beholdest thou the mote - See this explained on Mat 7:3-5 (note).
John Gill on Luke 6:42
Either how canst thou say to thy brother,.... Guilty of the lesser sin;
brother, let me pull out the mote that is in thine eye; that is, suffer me to reprove thee for thy sin: the word "brother" is omitted in the Cambridge copy of Beza's, and in the Persic version; nor is it in Matthew; but in the Syriac and Ethiopic versions it is read, "my brother"; pretending great affection and sincerity:
when thou thyself beholdest not the beam that is in thine own eye? that is, takest no notice of, and dost not refrain from a greater iniquity continued in:
thou hypocrite; as such an one must be, that bears hard upon his brother, and severely censures him for a small crime, when he indulges in himsel…
Luke 6:40
Matthew 10:21-25
Luke 6:40
21. And the brother will deliver up the brother to death, and the father the son, and the children will rise up against the parents, and will put them to death. 22. And you will be hated by all on account of my name: but he who shall endure to the end [588] will be saved. 23. And when they shall persecute you in this city, flee into another: for verily I say unto you, You will not have gone over [589] all the cities of Israel, till the Son of man bec ome. 24. The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord. 25. It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master, and that the servant be as his lord: if they have called the maste…
The Church Fathers
Now this has reference to the previous parable, in which He forewarned them that the blind cannot be led by the blind, that is, the sinner corrected by the sinner. Hence it is said, Or, how canst thou say to thy brother, Brother let me cast out the mote that is in thine eye, if thou seest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
And how can you say to your brother: Brother, let me cast out the speck from your eye, when you yourself do not see the beam in your own eye? You do this with your brother if (for example), what he sins by anger, you criticize by hatred. And just as a beam is to a speck, so is hatred to anger. For hatred is anger long-standing, which with the passage of time has so grown that it is rightly called a beam. It can happen that if you are angry with a man, you wish him to be corrected. But if you hate a man, you cannot wish him to be corrected. And therefore it is said to be impossible for one to remove the speck from his brother's eye who carries the beam in his own eye.
Hypocrite, first take the beam out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye. That is, first expel hatred from yourself, and then you will be able to correct the one whom you love. And it is truly necessary and troublesome to beware of the hypocrites, that is, the disguised kind, who take up accusations of all vices with hatred and envy, and also want to seem advisers. And therefore it is necessary to carefully and piously watch so that when necessity begins to blame or reprove someone, we first think whether it is a vice we never had or one from which we have already abstained. And if we never had it, let us think that we too are human, and could have had it. If indeed we had it and do not have it now, let common weakness touch memory, so that the reproof or correction is preceded not by hatred but by mercy. So that whether it works for his correction, for which we do it, or to his confusion (since the outcome is uncertain), we may be secure in the simplicity of our own eye. But if thinking to ourselves we find that we are in the same vice as the one whom we intended to reprove, let us not reprove or correct but rather sigh and invite him to strive together, not so that he conforms to us. Therefore, reproofs should be used rarely and with great necessity, yet in such a way that in these very matters we urge not ourselves but to serve God; for He is the end, to do nothing with a double heart, removing the beam of envy, malice, or disguise from our eye, so that we may see to take the speck out of our brother's eye.
Dictionary and topics
Beam — Occurs in the Authorized Version as the rendering of various Hebrew words. In 1 Sam. 17:7, it means a weaver’s frame or principal beam; in Hab. 2:11, a crossbeam or girder; 2 Kings 6:2, 5, a…
Mote — (Gr. karphos, something dry, hence a particle of wood or chaff, etc.). A slight moral defect is likened to a mote (Matt. 7:3-5; Luke 6:41, 42).
Pharisees — Separatists (Heb. persahin, from parash, “to separate”). They were probably the successors of the Assideans (i.e., the “pious”), a party that originated in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes in revolt…
Sermon on the mount — After spending a night in solemn meditation and prayer in the lonely mountain-range to the west of the Lake of Galilee (Luke 6:12), on the following morning our Lord called to him his disciples, and…
Charitableness · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
Mote (A Speck) · A small particle — A small particle
Parables · Beam and mote — Beam and mote
Sermon · Of Jesus, “on the plain,” — Of Jesus, “on the plain,”
Uncharitableness · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
G80
a brother (literally or figuratively) near or remote (m… · noun — vocative singular masculine
Brother
ἀδελφοῦadelphou
G80
a brother (literally or figuratively) near or remote (m… · noun — genitive singular masculine
let me
ἄφεςaphes
G863
an intensive form of · verb — second aorist active imperative, 2nd person singular
pull out
ἐκβάλωekbalō
G1544
to eject (literally or figuratively) · verb — second aorist active subjunctive, 1st person singular
the mote
κάρφοςkarphos
G2595
a dry twig or straw · noun — accusative singular neuter
that is in
ἐνen
G1722
"in · preposition
thine
σοῦsoû
G4675
of thee
eye
ὀφθαλμῷophthalmō
G3788
the eye (literally or figuratively) · noun — dative singular masculine
when thou
βλέπων;blepōn
G991
to look at (literally or figuratively) · verb — present active participle, nominative singular masculine
thyself
αὐτὸςautos
G846
the reflexive pronoun self · personal pronoun — nominative singular masculine
a log in your own: Jesus did not say that the speck in our friend’s eye is not our business, but that we must first correct our own faults so that we can see clearly enough to remove the speck. Jesus condemned hypocritical judgment; lovingly holding one another accountable regarding sin is desirable.
