Literary devices and sentence structure in Matthew 7:1 (KJV)

Solution 1:

The literary device at play in your cited verse is parallelism, much stricter in the original Koiné:

Μὴ κρίνετε ἵνα μὴ κριθῆτε

mē krinete hina mē krithēte
Not (y’all) judge so that not (y’all) should be judged.

As a much more inflected language than English, the Greek dispenses with both subject pronouns, in this case second person plural, while the passive subjunctive “you should be judged” is a single word.

Unlike the language of the KJV or Shakespeare, present day English does not express negative imperatives without do-support: “don’t judge” rather than “judge not.” Thus if you wanted to modernize the proverb “Waste not, want not,” it would become the much more cumbersome “Don’t waste anything and you won’t lack anything.”

Solution 2:

Transitivity of "judge not"

Webster's 1828 cites this verse as an example of the transitive form of the verb judge¹:

JUDGE, verb transitive

  1. To censure rashly; to pass severe sentence.
    JUDGE not, that ye be not judged. Matthew 7:1.

Literary devices employed

One literary device (and as other answers will no doubt demonstrate, there can be several) being employed here is polyptoton.

From The CopyBot, which actually uses this verse as an exemplar of this device:

Polyptoton is unique in that it’s a repetition of the root word. For example, you can use similar words like “strength” and “strong” instead of just repeating the same word.

"Judge not, that ye be not judged.” Matthew 7:1

Of course, the entire passage has passed into the English canon of aphorisms², but this term doesn't capture any specific devices in the saying itself, it describes the saying, ex-post-facto, in terms of the English-speaking world's attitude towards it. But it's worth pointing out anyway.

A deeper reading

There's a case to be made that there's a deeper structure here, which warrants attention.

In Text to Text Pours Forth Speech: Voices of Scripture in Luke-Acts by Robert L. Brawley (published 1995), 3rd chapter entitled FALLING AND FITTING SHOES: MISE EN ABYME AND VOICES OF SCRIPTURE IN LUKE 20:9-19, we read:

The parable as a brief narrative embedded in a larger narrative is an explanatory variant on the text that contains it — a literary device dubbed mise en abyme.
...
In its negative form, the aphorism runs, judge not, that you be not judged.

This is an interesting take. It it saying that the final part of the aphorism that you be not judged, is an embedding of a smaller part which reflects the larger text which contains it. A so-called mise en abyme.

This is a useful reading, to my mind, especially considering Wikipedia's definition of the device:

Mise en abyme (French pronunciation: ​[miz‿ɑ̃n‿abim]; also mise en abîme) is a term used in Western art history to describe a formal technique of placing a copy of an image within itself,

Example of *mise en abyme*, a photo of a hand holding a photo of a hand holding...

Of course, this definition explicitly constrains the device to the visual arts, but I am inclined to endorse Brawley's extension here³.


¹ Unfortunately, I can offer this at no more than face value. More detailed grammatical analysis will have to come from our resident synctacticians.

² From Collins: aphorism: An aphorism is a short witty sentence which expresses a general truth or comment.

³ Which is saying a lot, as I am not predisposed to sympathize with the PoMo project of deconstruction.

Solution 3:

KariG's answer is very important, though the questioner does not have ready access to it.

The original Greek has absolutely no literary device. It is plain Greek. Translating into the same plain English, it says "Don't judge in order not to be judged . The questioner is being asked to think himself back into the time (and grammar) of Stuart England to decide what in the language of that time counts as a literary device. Quite a task.

I found a useful study of this topic by Chung-hye Han in Diachronic Syntax: Models and Mechanisms, eds., Anthony Warne, Susan Pintzuk, George Tsoulas, Oxford Univrsity Press.

In it he describes how in Middle English (down to about 1500 CE), imperatives were standardly expressed with the subject after the verb and that in negative imperatives, similarly, the negative was delayed till after the subject (as in "Judge ye not").

a. Ne hide ou no t fram me yn comaundement.
Ne hide you not from me your commandment. (The Earliest Prose Psalter 146.2169)
b. Depart ou nou t fro me.
depart you not from me (The Earliest Prose Psalter 24.594)
c. medyl e not wyth hym meddle you not with him (Margery Kempe I,56.218)

In Early Modern English, (1500 to 1700), the same holds true: in negative imperatives the order is 'verb - subject pronoun - negative.

a. And feare ye nott them which kyll the body (310 mt10-28)
b. Forbid ye hym not (310 lk9-50)
c. doubte thou not all thinges rightly orderd be. (356 90-25)

So strictly speaking, I am far from sure that there is any literary device at the imperative end of this sentence.

So the New International version's "Do not judge, or you will be judge yourselves" does deliver a plain English equivalent. On the other hand, in the so-called Modern English Version (MEV) we find "Judge not that you be not judged", which looks like a semi-archaised copy of the King James Version!

So it is quite difficult to see what the original question is driving at. The sentence is balanced in a certain way by means of the reciprocity between what we do and what is done to us. But questions about literary devices and style are notoriously hard to interpret.

There is one that may be a one of the literary devices feature of the Early Modern English: chiasmus. Chiasmus involves balanced clauses in which the the order in the first clause is reversed in the second (AB-BA). So "Judge not" [AB] "that ye be NOT JUDGED" [BA]

Sorry not to be more helpful. Can the questioner not ask for guidance about the meaning of the question? Or perhaps review whatever has already been taught about literary devices?