A.T. Robertson Commentary Matthew 19:24

"And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through a needle`s eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." — Matthew 19:24 (ASV)

It is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye (ευκοπωτερον εστιν καμηλον δια τρηματος ραφιδος εισελθειν). Jesus, of course, means by this comparison, whether an eastern proverb or not, to express the impossible. The efforts to explain it away are jejune like a ship's cable, καμιλον or ραφις as a narrow gorge or gate of entrance for camels which recognized stooping, etc. All these are hopeless, for Jesus pointedly calls the thing "impossible" (verse 26). The Jews in the Babylonian Talmud did have a proverb that a man even in his dreams did not see an elephant pass through the eye of a needle (Vincent). The Koran speaks of the wicked finding the gates of heaven shut "till a camel shall pass through the eye of a needle." But the Koran may have got this figure from the New Testament. The word for an ordinary needle is ραφις, but, Luke (Luke 18:25) employs βελονη, the medical term for the surgical needle not elsewhere in the N.T.