The Hard Saying: Mark 10:25

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.

This article is part of a series explaining the sayings of Jesus that are hard to understand. This list was put together by the Lord's Library. To see the list an access earlier articles, go to this page.

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This verse was spoken after a rich, young man asked Jesus how he could inherit eternal life. Jesus told him to sell his property and follow him (see this article on Mark 10:21). Jesus first, however, told the young man that he had to obey Moses’ laws. After the young man says that he already obeyed them, Jesus gave him a higher standard: selling his property, giving the money to the poor, and following him. The unavoidable implication is that, if the young man had been a law breaker, all that would have been required from him was becoming law abiding. Because the man was already virtuous, Jesus asks more: giving up his property and his sense of being virtuous.

The young man was upset because he couldn’t make that sacrifice. Probably more to the point, he was afraid of the uncertainty of following Jesus, the call to adventure going into the unknown. Jesus then tells the Apostles that it is difficult for a “rich” man to enter the realm of the Divine. Jesus clearly means “rich” both in property and the man’s self-righteousness. At the time, worldly wealth was often seen as a reward from God for correct living, as it often, but not always, is in our lives today.

Jesus then offers his analogy for how difficult this challenge is in Mark 10:25:

NIV: It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.

The Popular Theories

There are to primary theories that seek to minimize the oddness of this verse. Many of you have heard them, so let us just mention them briefly. First, there is the confusion between the word “camel” and “rope,” based on the Greek word’s similarity to an Aramaic word the means both. In Greek, the words are similar but different. There is also the idea that this could be a reference to the "needle" gate in Jerusalem where a camel had to be unloaded to pass through. Here is a current list of articles discussing these ideas. These theories are promoted by those who want Jesus to sound more logical and less wild.

A more objective view of all of Jesus’s “difficult” sayings is that he sought to be entertaining, thought provoking, and memorable. The “camel through the eye of a needle” verse is all of these things. Exaggeration is one of the many sources of Jesus’s humor. It works here both as a play on the words, “camel” and “rope,” a play on the gate, if it existed in Jesus’s time, and the silliness of the image itself.

What Jesus Said

Jesus started by pointing out that doing what he describes is difficult. The word translated as "easier" in this verse is a compound word. It is an uncommon word, appearing only seven times in the New Testament and only five times in the rest of ancient Greek literature in the Perseus database. It prefix means "better" because the word is a comparative form. The base word primarily means "beating" or "fatigue". So the sense is a “better beating” or "better fatigue", both of which are funny and have the sense of "less tiring" or "easier work."

This brings us to the camel and the needle. Both the “rope” and “gate” theories work to clarify Jesus’s real point: the “eye of the needle” is the narrow gate in Matthew 7:13, Matthew 7:14, and Luke 13:24. All three of these verses use the same verb for "enter" that this verse uses, translated here as “go through.” The Greek word translated as "eye" means "hole," not "eye." This Greek word is only used twice, once here and in the parallel verse in Luke 18:25. Both a rope and a heavily burdened camel are too big to go through their holes. Both must give up something: the rope its strength, the camel its baggage. This is the point of the “exchange” that Jesus proposes in Mark 10:21.

"Rich" is from an adjective that means "rich," and "opulent." It very much has the sense of ostentatiously rich, but like our English word, it doesn’t only mean wealthy in money. A person can be rich in wisdom, friends, and virtue. Here, this word is not used with a definite article, “the,” as in the previous verse. It is not “the rich” but “a rich,” one among many types of rich. In the case of this young man, rich in both property and virtue. Perhaps our word “comfortable” fits him best. Sacrificing this comfort is what is difficult for him and us.

People analyzing this verse overlook the virtue part of this young man’s wealth, but they also overlook another part of his wealth: his youth. His whole life lies before him. He can stay, stuck by his wealth and righteous sense of virtue in the same rut. Both conspire together to get him from moving forward physically and spiritually. Without those burdens, it would be easier, less tiring, for him to sacrifice his old life and take up Jesus’s call to the adventure and uncertainty of being a traveling student.

Jesus’s apostles heard something more like this:

Listeners Heard: It is easier for a camel to enter through a hole of a needle than a comfortable one to enter into the realm of the Divine.

Different Versions

Different versions of this verse appear in two other Gospels. Matthew 19:24 and Luke 18:25. All three are nearly the same, and occur after a similar story about the rich young man. The differences are slight, but these differences raise questions about what Jesus said, the exact words he used.

Do different versions of verses in the Gospels mean that only one of them or perhaps none of them are exactly correct?

Not necessarily. The Matthew version tells us Jesus delivered this line several times. He starts it by saying, “Again, I tell you.” The Gospel writers all put their versions in the same story, but all three versions could have been Jesus’s words at different times. Jesus’s words were likely recorded on different occasions but not all of those situations were recorded. As John testified:

New International Version: Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.

This is likely true for many of the similar verses in the gospel. More of Jesus’s words were preserved than every event in his life. He reused good lines, improving and adapting them over time, as any good teacher does.