Matthew 7:3-12
New American Bible (Revised Edition)
3 Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove that splinter from your eye,’ while the wooden beam is in your eye? 5 You hypocrite,[a] remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye.
Pearls Before Swine. 6 “Do not give what is holy to dogs,[b] or throw your pearls before swine, lest they trample them underfoot, and turn and tear you to pieces.(A)
The Answer to Prayers. 7 (B)“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.(C) 8 For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.(D) 9 Which one of you would hand his son a stone when he asks for a loaf of bread,[c] 10 or a snake when he asks for a fish? 11 If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him.(E)
The Golden Rule. 12 [d]“Do to others whatever you would have them do to you.(F) This is the law and the prophets.
Read full chapterFootnotes
- 7:5 Hypocrite: the designation previously given to the scribes and Pharisees is here given to the Christian disciple who is concerned with the faults of another and ignores his own more serious offenses.
- 7:6 Dogs and swine were Jewish terms of contempt for Gentiles. This saying may originally have derived from a Jewish Christian community opposed to preaching the gospel (what is holy, pearls) to Gentiles. In the light of Mt 28:19 that can hardly be Matthew’s meaning. He may have taken the saying as applying to a Christian dealing with an obstinately impenitent fellow Christian (Mt 18:17).
- 7:9–10 There is a resemblance between a stone and a round loaf of bread and between a serpent and the scaleless fish called barbut.
- 7:12 See Lk 6:31. This saying, known since the eighteenth century as the “Golden Rule,” is found in both positive and negative form in pagan and Jewish sources, both earlier and later than the gospel. This is the law and the prophets is an addition probably due to the evangelist.
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