“Straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel”
Matthew 23:24
Figure of speechSettledJesus
You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel. (Matthew 23:24 BSB)
* An Aramaic pun: galma (gnat) and gamla (camel).
What it sounds like today
A surreal image pulled from nowhere.
The cultural key
Careful Jews strained wine through cloth precisely to avoid swallowing an insect; the gnat is about the smallest unclean creature the law names (Leviticus 11:41 covers swarming things), while the camel is the largest unclean land animal in the same chapter (Leviticus 11:4). So the sentence swallows the purity code whole: filter out the minimum violation, gulp down the maximum one. In Aramaic it's also a pun: qalma (gnat), gamla (camel).
Recovered meaning
Micro-purity, mega-blindness: the discipline that catches the speck-sized fault while the camel-sized one (extortion, injustice) goes down whole. Possibly the best one-liner in the Gospels, and it rhymed.