Camels and Needle’s Eyes

I preached this past weekend at the church from James 1:9-11 and during the sermon I made reference to Jesus’ story about the Rich Ruler in Luke 18. If you weren’t there or just fell asleep during that portion of the sermon (who could blame you?!), the story is about a rich guy who comes to Jesus and wants to know how he can obtain eternal life. Jesus gives him some pointers about keeping the Mosaic Law and the rich guy happily responds, “I have done all of that since I was a kid.” Knowing that the guy’s wealth had become his real God, Jesus asked him to sell everything, give the money to the poor, and come follow him. At this, the rich guy was crushed and he went away. Then Luke writes these words…

Jesus, seeing that he had become sad, said, “How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” Those who heard it said, “Then who can be saved?” But he said, “What is impossible with men is possible with God.” (ESV)

I tried to explain that Jesus’ point here was that big things (camels) have a hard time going through little holes (eyes of needles). Some people have written and spoken to me after the fact and shared with me what they have heard other preachers say about the “Eye of the Needle,” namely that it was a Hebrew idiom for a special kind of gate around Jerusalem. According to some, at night the walls around the city of Jerusalem were closed up for protection and the only way you could get into the area was by going through a small door. If you were riding a camel, the animal would have to kneel in order to make it through. This gate was called the “Eye of the Needle” and when Jesus used that phrase in Luke 18, he was referring to that special gate instead of a literal needle’s eye.

Now, this is a neat story, but it has a couple of huge problems…

1. If Jesus was referring to a gate that a camel could make it through on its knees, one would expect the disciples to respond differently than they did. They protest to Jesus that he has set an impossible standard for rich people, not a mere inconvenience for them.
2. There really is no historical evidence that there ever was a gate called the “Eye of the Needle” through which camels had to stoop at night. It is pretty much an urban legend that has made its rounds through churches because the story is so neat to the preachers.

So, what I am saying is that when Jesus referred to the “eye of the needle” he was being very literal. It was an exaggeration for the sake of effect, to be sure, but the reference was quite literal.

Why is this important enough to blog about? I think it teaches us a couple of important things about reading our Bibles and teaching others…

1. The first, second, and third rule of interpreting Scripture is context, context, context. If you are reading along and you come up with some clever idea about what a Biblical writer is saying, you must (MUST!!) test your interpretation by the wider context of the passage. Your view has to make sense of what the author is trying to say. There are so many examples of people (preachers and others) not doing this kind of checking that it boggles the mind. I can literally show you dozens of places where someone has taken the Bible and made it say something completely different to what the author meant to say and then they have memorized that verse, quoted it daily as a promise from God, and been completely mistaken about its meaning. My point is that reading the context and letting it determine the meaning of a particular passage is ultra-important and will save you a lot of headaches.
2. In regards to teaching, it’s pretty popular today for a some to cite obscure historical references that makes sense of a passage.  There is everything right about understanding the Bible in its historical context, but the problem is when the history being described is without foundation. So, if you like to study and teach others, do your homework well. This is the Word of God we are dealing with here and I don’t think its Divine Author takes too kindly to us messing around with it so we can sound clever.

Out.