StrongerBible

karphos

κάρφος

GreekG2595“speck, mote, ...”

Appears 6 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Mat 7:3Mat 7:4Mat 7:5Luk 6:41Luk 6:42 (2×)
Word studyResearch-gradeKAR-fosnoun

What karphos means

a tiny dry scrap of plant matter: a wood chip, splinter, twig, or bit of straw.

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintySettled

The word comes from a verb meaning "to dry up, wither, shrivel," so at its core it names something small, brittle, and dead. Greek writers used it for a whole family of such odds and ends:

  • the chip that flies off a piece of wood being cut
  • the dry twigs and wisps a bird gathers for its nest
  • the dried stalks of cinnamon a trader weighs out
  • the sliver of wood used to pick the teeth
  • the straw and hay swept up on a threshing floor

Because these things are the least valuable objects imaginable, the word became a stock way of saying "the smallest possible amount." Greek had ready-made phrases for it: someone so still she was "not stirring even a straw," or a man who came through unhurt and "was not harmed by so much as a straw." This is a plain, everyday noun, not a religious term.

In the New Testament it appears in only one saying, the one about the tiny bit in your neighbor's eye and the roof beam (δοκός) in your own. Everything depends on the two objects being made of the same stuff and differing only in size, absurdly: a shaving of wood against a whole load-bearing timber. Commentators regularly point out that the picture comes out of a workshop, which fits a speaker remembered as a builder by trade. Some suggest the bit in the eye is the sawdust the beam itself threw off when it was cut.

The older Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible uses the word once, of the olive leaf the dove carries back to Noah in Genesis 8:11, where it was added to mark the leaf as a torn off, dried fragment rather than a fresh green sprig. That is a good picture of what the word covers: a broken bit of plant matter light enough for a bird to carry, and small enough to blow into somebody's eye.

Mat 7:3Mat 7:4Mat 7:5Luk 6:41Luk 6:42 (2×)

Disputed

Whether the word in this saying means sawdust specifically, matched to the sawn timber it is set against, or should be kept generic (a splinter, chip, or piece of straw).

  • majorityKeep the rendering generic: a small dry splinter, chip, or bit of straw, without narrowing it to sawdust.; W. D. Davies and D. C. Allison, Matthew, ICC, vol. 1 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988), 671-74; I. H. Marshall, The Gospel of Luke, NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 267-70; J. A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke I-IX, AB 28 (Garden City: Doubleday, 1981), 641-43
  • minorityRead it as sawdust here, since the beam it is contrasted with is a sawn timber and would have produced exactly that debris.; D. A. Hagner, Matthew 1-13, WBC 33A (Dallas: Word, 1993), 169

What scholars say about karphos

κάρφος is a neuter noun formed from κάρφω ("dry up, wither, shrivel"; Homer, Od. 13.398; Hesiod, Op. 7, 573), and its lexical core is therefore "a dried up thing." LSJ catalogues a broad but consistent range of dry plant and wood fragments: cinnamon sticks (Herodotus 3.111), nesting twigs and wool (Aristophanes, Aves 643), a wood chip (Vespae 249), a toothpick (Alciphron 1.22), hay (SEG 9.35), rice straw (Polyaenus 4.3.32), the festuca rod of Roman manumission (Plutarch, Mor. 550b), a wooden watchword tally (Polybius 6.36.3), fenugreek (Dioscorides 2.102). Hesychius glosses it ἄχυρον, χόρτος, κεραία ξύλου λεπτή. BDAG (510) gives "speck, chip (of wood)"; Thayer, "a dry stalk or twig, a straw; chaff"; Louw-Nida file it at §3.66 under "Wood and Wood Products," alongside ξύλον and φρύγανον, which settles the referent as woody or vegetable matter rather than mineral dust. Moulton-Milligan note the absence of papyrus attestation but adduce Kaibel, Epigr. Graec. 980.9 (οὐδὲ κάρφος ἐβλάβη) for the proverbial "least little thing," and record Old Latin stipula and Vulgate festuca. TDNT has no article on the word, a fair index of its status as a concrete common noun rather than a theological term. In the Septuagint it is a hapax at Genesis 8:11, where the translator produced a doublet (φύλλον ἐλαίας κάρφος) glossing the rare Hebrew טָרָף; Wevers takes the translator to have read the Hebrew as "something torn off," hence a dried, broken fragment (so also NETS, "an olive leaf, a dry twig"). No pre-Christian Greek text uses the word in an eye-speck saying; the closest pagan analogue is Horace, Sat. 1.3.25-27, and the Aesopic "two wallets" tradition (Babrius 66; Phaedrus 4.10) conveys the moral without the ophthalmic image. The direct parallel is rabbinic: R. Tarfon in b. ʿArakhin 16b and b. Bava Batra 15b sets קֵיסָם ("splinter") against קוֹרָה ("beam"), the exact equivalents of κάρφος and δοκός, with Sifra Qedoshim 4.9 showing the underlying tannaitic dispute about reproof. France (NICNT) allows that the rabbinic form may derive from Jesus, but the majority (Davies-Allison, Luz, Fitzmyer, Bovon, Marshall, Derrett) treats gospel and Talmud as independent witnesses to a shared Palestinian proverb; King's HTR studies stress that the two forms overlap only in general idea. On the Q logion itself the commentary tradition is near unanimous in reading grotesque, comic, carpenter-shop hyperbole (Davies-Allison, Luz, France, Keener, Bock, Bovon), with Green and Nolland subordinating the humour to the didactic aim; Hagner alone proposes the narrower "sawdust," matched to the sawn δοκός. All agree the pericope prescribes an order (self-scrutiny, then fraternal correction) rather than prohibiting correction, a reading reinforced by the βλέπεις (v. 3) / διαβλέψεις (v. 5) wordplay.

In-depth research

This is a research paper, so it may be hard to read without scholarly background. It is useful if you want to dig even deeper into this word.

Sources

  • F. W. Danker (ed.), A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 510, s.v. κάρφοςlexicon
  • LSJ, A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., s.v. κάρφος and κάρφωlexicon
  • J. P. Louw and E. A. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, 2nd ed. (New York: UBS, 1989), §3.66lexicon
  • J. H. Thayer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (New York: American Book Co., 1889), s.v. κάρφοςlexicon
  • J. H. Moulton and G. Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1930), s.v. κάρφοςlexicon
  • G. Abbott-Smith, A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1937), s.v. κάρφοςlexicon
  • W. D. Davies and D. C. Allison, Matthew, ICC, vol. 1 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988), 671-74commentary
  • U. Luz, Matthew 1-7, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), on 7:1-5commentary
  • R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), on 7:3-5commentary
  • D. A. Hagner, Matthew 1-13, WBC 33A (Dallas: Word, 1993), 169commentary
  • C. S. Keener, A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 241commentary
  • J. A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke I-IX, AB 28 (Garden City: Doubleday, 1981), 641-43commentary
  • I. H. Marshall, The Gospel of Luke, NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 267-70commentary
  • D. L. Bock, Luke 1:1-9:50, BECNT (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994), on 6:41-42commentary
  • F. Bovon, Luke 1, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002), on 6:41-42commentary
  • J. B. Green, The Gospel of Luke, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 276-77commentary
  • J. W. Wevers, Notes on the Greek Text of Genesis, SBLSCS 35 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993), on Gen 8:11monograph
  • G. B. King, "The Mote and the Beam," Harvard Theological Review 17 (1924): 393-404article
  • J. D. M. Derrett, "Christ and Reproof (Matthew 7.1-5/Luke 6.37-42)," New Testament Studies 34 (1988): 271-81article

AI-generated word study · claude-opus-4-8

All attested forms of κάρφος

accusative n s

κάρφος

Mat 7:3, Mat 7:4, Mat 7:5, Luk 6:41, Luk 6:42, Luk 6:42