CAMEL
There are two species of camel:
the camel itself, or two-humped camel (“camelus bactrianus”), native to central Asia, and
the dromedary (“camelus dromedarius”), with a single hump.
This corresponds to the posterior hump of the «c. Bactrian”, although, in reality, it has another smaller one, which goes almost unnoticed, and which corresponds to the previous one in the saying “c. Bactrian.
In Lv. 11:4 the camel is said to have “no cloven hoof.” In fact, although their limbs end in two fingers, as happens with other ruminants, these two fingers are covered by a kind of wide and fibrous cushion, covered with a resistant horny layer, which acts as a sole, so they do not It has the external shape of a cloven hoof.
This constitution of the foot is admirably adjusted for walking through desert sand.
The camel is one of the most useful domestic animals, notable for its strength and endurance.
It can subsist on the most miserable and thorny forage. The humps are made up of an abundant reserve of fat that decreases as we go through prolonged fasting. It also has, under its belly, a set of aquifer cells that provide it with a reserve of metabolic water.
The camel reaches a length of 2.5 m. tall but when kneeling he can be carried as easily as a donkey. It can carry a load of 250 kg. and march all day long under a sun of justice.
Its meat, forbidden to the Israelites (Lev. 11:4), is nevertheless consumed by the Arabs. Tents and clothing are made with their skin. Camel milk is one of the bases of the Bedouin diet.
Contrary to the statements of critics hostile to the Bible, research has discovered statuettes representing camels, and bones and other vestiges dating back to 3,000 BC. (cp. J. P. Fee, “Abraham’s Camels”, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, University of Chicago, July 1944, pp. 187-193).
Therefore, it is not surprising that Abraham and Jacob owned camels (Gen. 12:16; 30:43), as did the Ishmaelites who took Joseph to Egypt (Gen. 37:25).
It is also demonstrated that the domestication of camels was highly developed in the 12th century BC, and that no historical difficulty can be argued for the hordes of Midianites mounted on camels (Judg. 6:5), nor for the caravans richly loaded with the queen of Sheba (1 Kings 10:2).
Figurative sense. On two occasions the Lord Jesus used the figure of the camel as the basis of a comparison (Mt. 19:24; 23:24). All the force of this double parallel is found in the hyperbole.
A camel will never be able to pass through the eye of a needle, nor through the gullet of a Pharisee. Nothing in this figure seems to confirm the position that “the eye of the needle” would be an open gate in the great gate of an oriental city.
With all this parallelism, the Lord refers on the one hand to the duplicity of the Pharisees, and to the impossibility of something in the natural order of things, but possible for God. In grace, the new creation eliminates all difficulties of access to God.