MOTE.The word chosen by Wyclif and Tindale, and accepted by all the subsequent versions as the tr. [Note: translate or translation.] of Gr. karphos in Mat_7:3-5, Luk_6:41-42 bis. The root of karphos is karphô to dry up, and it signifies a bit of dried stick, straw, or wool, such as, in the illustration, might be flying about and enter the eye. In its minuteness it is contrasted by our Lord with dokos, the beam that supports (dechomai) the roof of a building.
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible
Edited by James Hastings, D.D. Published in 1909
mōt (κάρφος, kárphos): A minute piece of anything dry or light, as straw, chaff, a splinter of wood, that might enter the eye. Used by Jesus in Mat_7:3 ff; Luk_6:41 in contrast with ?beam,? to rebuke officiousness in correcting small faults of others, while cherishing greater ones of our own.
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
PRINTER 1915.
Mat_7:3 (b) This word describes what may be a very small and inconsiderate flaw in the life of another person, whereas the critic may have faults and flaws far greater than in the one he observes and criticizes. The mote is in the flaw in the other person's life, while the beam is the flaw in our own lives.
Wilson's Dictionary of Bible Types
press 1957.
Mote
(κάρφος, something dry), any small dry particle, as of chaff, wood, etc. (Mat_7:3-5; Luk_6:41-42). Small faults or errors in others, discovered through the magnifying medium of prejudice, are likened by our Lord in these passages to a speck or splinter in the eye, which the censorious are fond of detecting, though guilty of more serious offences themselves, aptly compared to a beam (δοκός) (see Winckler, in Animadvers. Philol. 3:803 sq.). The proverb was a familiar one with-the Hebrews (see Buxtorf, Lex. Rabb. col. 2080). SEE EYE.
CYCLOPEDIA OF BIBLICAL, THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL
press 1895.