The moral lesson is to avoid hypocrisy and censoriousness. The analogy used is of a small object in another's eye as compared with a large beam of wood in one's own. The original Greek word translated as mote meant a stalk or twig rather than a tiny speck, as in modern usage. A proverb of this sort was familiar to the Jews and appears in numerous other cultures too. For example, the poet Robert Burns famously wrote: Oh, wad some Power the giftie gie us,To see ourselves as others see us!