Luke 18:24-27

2 d. Luke 18:24-27. The Conversation regarding the Rich Man.

It is not the fact of proprietorship which hinders the soul from taking its flight to spiritual blessings; it is the feeling of security which it inspires. So, in Mark, Jesus says, in explanation of His first declaration: “How hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter...!” The Shemites denote the impossibility of a thing by the image of a heavily-laden camel arriving at a city gate which is low and narrow, and through which it cannot pass. Then, to give this image the piquant form which the Oriental proverb loves, this gate is transformed into the eye of a needle. Some commentators and copyists, not understanding this figure, have changed κάμηλος, camel, into κάμιλος (the η was pronounced ι), a very unusual word, which does not occur even in the ancient lexicographers, and which, it is alleged, sometimes denotes a ship's cable. In the received text (τρυμαλιᾶς ῥαφίδος), ῥαφίδος is a correction borrowed from Mark and Matthew; the true reading in Luke is βελόνης, which also signifies needle. Instead of the word τρυμαλία, the Alex. read τρύπημα (or τρήμα). The first form might come from Mark; but it is more probable that it is the second which is taken from Matthew, the Gospel most generally used. We must therefore read in Luke, τρυμαλιᾶς βελόνης.

To exclude the rich from salvation was, it seemed, to exclude all; for if the most blessed among men can only be saved with difficulty, what will become of the rest? Such appears to be the connection between Luke 18:25-26. De Wette joins them in a somewhat different way: “As every one more or less seeks riches, none therefore can be saved.” This connection is less natural.

Jesus, according to Matthew and Mark, at this point turns on His disciples a look full of earnestness (ἐμβλέψας αὐτοῖς, looking upon them): “It is but too true; but there is a sphere in which the impossible is possible, that of the divine operation (παρὰ τῷ Θεῷ, with God).” Thus Jesus in the twinkling of an eye lifts the mind of His hearers from human works, of which alone the young man was thinking, to that divine work of radical regeneration which proceeds from the One only good, and of which Jesus is alone the instrument. Comp. a similar and equally rapid gradation of ideas, John 3:2; John 3:5.

Which would have been better for this young man to leave his goods to become the companion in labour of the St. Peters and St. Johns, or to keep those possessions so soon to be laid waste by the Roman legions?