camel through the eye of a needle
idiomHyperbole to illustrate something that is impossible to do or to make happen.
Origin
From the New Testament: Jesus tells his followers that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God — recorded in Matthew 19:24, Mark 10:25, and Luke 18:25. The image is deliberate hyperbole, a stock rhetorical move of the period; the Babylonian Talmud reaches for the same effect with an elephant in place of the camel.
Two later theories tried to soften the impossible picture, and both are unfounded. The first invents a low Jerusalem gate called the "eye of the needle" that a camel could supposedly squeeze through only once unloaded and forced to its knees — no such gate ever existed. The second claims the Greek kamelos (camel) was a slip for kamilos (rope or cable); scholars treat that as a much later rationalisation rather than the original reading.
The consensus is that the exaggeration was the point. Jesus's follow-up — that with God all things are possible — frames the lesson as one about divine grace, not earthly wealth or status.
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an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth
compensation for injury caused by a person, in the form of inflicting of an identical injury on that person.
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apple of someone's eye
The object of somebody's affections; a person (or sometimes a thing) that someone strongly prefers; a favorite, a loved one.
- 03
blink of an eye
A moment (a very short period of time).
- 04
catch someone's eye
To capture someone's attention.
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catch the eye
To attract the attention
- 06
close one eye
to look the other way, to deliberately ignore or overlook (a mistake or transgression).
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dry eye
An eye which is not crying, i.e. someone emotionally unmoved.
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eagle eye
Good eyesight.