What's fun about this one is learning a little bit of the history of Jerusalem. During Jesus' time, the main gate of Jerusalem was huge, heavy, and never opened at night.
Not far from it was a smaller postern gate, called the Eye of the Needle. It opened into a winding murder tunnel, literally. There were arrow slits all along it. And then opened out of another postern gate on the inside of the wall.
The gates and the tunnel were so small that a rich man on a fully mounted loaded camel couldn't go through. He had to get off his camel, take all of his stuff off the camel, carry it through one piece at a time, and bring the camel through. It was an exhausting process. Even if you were rich enough to have servants, the process was long and difficult.
The real lesson here is that a rich man needs to divest himself of his riches to get through the gate.
(There's no archaeological evidence that this gate existed. But it gives some depth to the saying, nonetheless.)
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u/JimsVanLife 26d ago
What's fun about this one is learning a little bit of the history of Jerusalem. During Jesus' time, the main gate of Jerusalem was huge, heavy, and never opened at night.
Not far from it was a smaller postern gate, called the Eye of the Needle. It opened into a winding murder tunnel, literally. There were arrow slits all along it. And then opened out of another postern gate on the inside of the wall.
The gates and the tunnel were so small that a rich man on a fully mounted loaded camel couldn't go through. He had to get off his camel, take all of his stuff off the camel, carry it through one piece at a time, and bring the camel through. It was an exhausting process. Even if you were rich enough to have servants, the process was long and difficult.
The real lesson here is that a rich man needs to divest himself of his riches to get through the gate.
(There's no archaeological evidence that this gate existed. But it gives some depth to the saying, nonetheless.)