The Tiny Speck and the Giant Tree is an adaptation of Matthew 7.1-5
Translating ‘beam’ as ‘tree’
The first comment to make about this parable is that it really doesn’t need retelling – even after nearly two thousand years, the meaning is still immediately accessible. What can be explored are the translation choices; for example, I replaced ‘plank’ or ‘beam’ with ‘giant oak tree’.
When looking at commentaries on this parable, the word usually translated as beam/plank is a word that meant a very large joist. Essentially, Jesus was probably talking about a roof beam, a beam as long as the house, as big as a tree – or as big as a giant oak tree. Get one of those in your eye and you’d be staggering around desperately trying to get it out; it’s a very funny image that probably made the original audience laugh.
Judge and find fault
Again, looking at the commentaries, the Greek word usually translated as ‘judge’ also means ‘sorting good from bad’. A judge is meant to be neutral, sort out the good and the bad and then to keep the good. The thrust of the parable, however, is that people are finding fault. Instead of a neutral sort-through that aims at helping someone genuinely improve (by keeping the good and throwing out the bad) they’re concentrating on the bad.
It’s an interesting question whether the use of ‘judge’ in most English translations, linking this parable to Judgement Day, tends to make people think of God as judgemental. A parable about not concentrating on the faults of others (tackle your own faults first!) can give us an image of God as almost a divine fault finder. ‘Judge not, lest ye be judged’. But was that what Jesus’ pre-parable warning meant was going to happen, or was he offering a worst-case scenario? If we look for the good in others, will God look for the good in us?
Hypocrite or fake
Given that the New Testament Greek word ‘hupokrita’ has moved fairly seamlessly into the English ‘hypocrite’, why would I want to re-translate it as ‘fake’? Well, a hypocrite in the time of Matthew’s Gospel was an actor, a mask-wearer, someone who was pretending to be someone they’re not. In other words, a fake. Helping others by pointing out their faults? It’s all a big act.
Why change anything?
If the parable itself doesn’t need any changes to be immediately understood, why make any changes at all?
Well, one problem we can have is that some of the major parables have been heard so often that they almost flow over us. When Jesus first told them, they were surprising, new, different. Now they’re familiar. Very familiar. So familiar, perhaps, that we think we know everything they mean, that we’ve heard it all before.
Perhaps making different word choices is another way of hearing the parables as if they were being told today.
Previous Parable: Growing From Seeds (Mark 4: 26-34)
Next Parable: Mushrooms and Toadstools (Matthew 13: 24-30)
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