“A camel through the eye of a needle”
It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. (Mark 10:25 BSB)
What it sounds like today
So impossible that softening legends grew up around it.
The cultural key
Standard hyperbole: the largest local animal through the smallest household opening (the Babylonian Talmud runs the same joke with an elephant, Babylon's biggest beast). Two famous domestications should be flagged as myths: the 'Needle Gate' (a low Jerusalem gate a camel could squeeze through kneeling) has no ancient evidence and first appears in medieval commentary; and the manuscript variant kamilos ('rope' for 'camel') is a late scribal softening. The disciples' astonishment ('Who then can be saved?') assumes wealth signals God's blessing: if the blessed can't get in, who can? Mark adds the disciples' double take ('And they were exceedingly astonished') and the look Jesus gives them before answering: 'With man it is impossible, but not with God.'
Recovered meaning
Jesus means impossible, and refuses to blunt it: riches bind tighter than their owners believe. The resolution isn't a smaller camel or a bigger needle; it is 'with God all things are possible.'