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Mat_19:24. “Difficultatem exaggerat,” Melanchthon. For πάλιν , comp. Mat_18:19. The point of the comparison is simply the fact of the impossibility. A similar way of proverbially expressing the utmost difficulty occurs in the Talmud with reference to an elephant[4] See Buxtorf, Lex. Talm. p. 1722, and Wetstein. To understand the expression in the text, not in the sense of a camel, but of a cable (Castalio, Calvin, Huet, Drusius, Ewald), and, in order to this, either supposing κάμιλον to be the correct reading (as in several cursive manuscripts), or ascribing this meaning to κάμηλος ( τινές in Theophylact and Euthymius Zigabenus), is all the more inadmissible that κάμηλος never has any other meaning than that of a camel, while the form κάμιλος can only be found in Suidas and the Scholiast on Arist. Vesp. 1030, and is to be regarded as proceeding from a misunderstanding of the present passage. Further, the proverbial expression regarding the camel likewise occurs in Mat_23:24, and the Rabbinical similitude of the elephant is quite analogous.
εἰσελθεῖν after ῥαφ . is universally interpreted: to enter in (to any place). On the question as to whether ῥαφίς is to be recognised as classical, see Lobeck, ad Phryn. p. 90. To render this word by a narrow gate, a narrow mountain-pass (so Furer in Schenkel’s Lex. III. p. 476), or anything but a needle, is simply inadmissible.
The danger to salvation connected with the possession of riches does not lie in these considered in themselves, but in the difficulty experienced by sinful man in subordinating them to the will of God. So Clemens Alexandrinus: τίς ὁ σωζόμενος πλούσιος . Hermas, Pastor, i. 3. 6.
[4] The passage in the Koran, Sur. vii. 38: “Non ingredientur paradisum, donec transeat camelus foramen acus,” is to be traced to an acquaintance with our present saying; but for an analogous proverb concerning the camel which. “saltat in cabo,” see Jevamoth f. 45, 1.