{It is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye}
(eukop(9374)eron estin kam(886c)on dia tr(886d)atos rhaphidos eiselthein).
Jesus, of course, means by this comparison, whether an eastern
proverb or not, to express the impossible. The efforts to explain
it away are jejune like a ship's cable, kamilon or 
haphis as
a narrow gorge or gate of entrance for camels which recognized
stooping, etc. All these are hopeless, for Jesus pointedly calls
the thing "impossible" (verse  26 ). The Jews in the Babylonian
Talmud did have a proverb that a man even in his dreams did not
see an elephant pass through the eye of a needle (Vincent). The
Koran speaks of the wicked finding the gates of heaven shut "till
a camel shall pass through the eye of a needle." But the Koran
may have got this figure from the New Testament. The word for an
ordinary needle is 
haphis, but, Luke ( Lu 18:25 ) employs
elon(885c), the medical term for the surgical needle not elsewhere
in the N.T.