Needle

Needle appears in one of Jesus' most striking pronouncements: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God" (Matt. 19:24; Mark 10:25; Luke 18:25). Some interpreters have proposed that "needle's eye" referred to a small gate in Jerusalem's wall through which a loaded camel could barely squeeze, but this explanation has no early support and seems to soften the intentional hyperbole. The disciples understood the saying as depicting something humanly impossible, asking "Who then can be saved?" — to which Jesus replied, "With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." The teaching addresses not the impossibility of wealthy people's salvation but the impossibility of self-salvation.