Matthew19chapter 19

The divorce question was the hottest legal dispute of the generation, and the questioners knew it. Deuteronomy permitted a man to divorce his wife if he found some indecency in her. The school of Shammai read that narrowly as unfaithfulness; the school of Hillel read it broadly enough to cover almost any displeasure, including a spoiled meal. Asking Jesus to rule was asking him to take a side and lose half the audience.

It was also dangerous ground. John the Baptist had lost his freedom, and then his head, over Herod Antipas's marriage — and this conversation happens in Antipas's territory east of the Jordan.

In practice the certificate of divorce mattered enormously to a woman. It was her legal proof that she was free to remarry, and without a husband or a son she had almost no means of support. That is the real weight behind a ruling that made divorce easy for men.

The camel and the needle's eye is a deliberately impossible picture — the largest animal in the region and the smallest opening in a household. Attempts to soften it by inventing a small gate in Jerusalem's wall have no ancient evidence behind them. The disciples' astonishment shows they heard it as impossible, because in their world wealth was widely read as a sign of God's favour.