GREAT THINGS ENTERPRISE
CLAUDE BLACK
Mark 10:25
Hyperbole
English is filled with hyperbolic statements: “I’ve told you a million times,” “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse,” “This bag weighs a ton,” “This job will take a century,” or “You scared me to death.” Oh, romantics have their own hyperboles: “My love is deeper than the ocean,” or “I’ll love you till the seas go dry.”
There’s no reason to think that the Judaism of the New Testament era lacked hyperboles. One writer records a conversation between two rabbis, in which one says, “Perhaps thou art one of those who can make an elephant pass through the eye of a needle.”
When the rich young ruler turned away after Jesus explained that to have eternal life, he must desire it more than his earthly possessions, Jesus said sorrowfully to his disciples, “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)
There have been creative interpretations for this statement, but the most likely explanation is that Jesus was using a well-known hyperbole to explain, not the impossibility of something, but its difficulty. Commenting on this statement, St. Jerome (342-420 A.D.) wrote, “It is not the absolute impossibility of the thing which is set forth, but the infrequency of it.”
esus’ statement, of course, applies not only to the financially wealthy (πλούσιος, plousios, from which we get “plutocrat”) but to anyone for whom “possessions”—whether popularity, career, comfort, relationships, religion, good works, politics, skepticism, or agnosticism, etc.—become stumbling blocks.
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