NT Text: Luke 18:27
OT Source(s):
Source: Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type: Allusion
Connection Method(s): Analogy + Longitudinal Theme
Significance: Jesus' declaration "What is impossible with man is possible with God" (Luke 18:27) echoes the divine question of Genesis 18:14 — hăyippālēʾ mê-YHWH dābār ("Is anything too difficult for the LORD?") — spoken when God announced that the aged and barren Sarah would bear a child. The context in both cases involves an apparently impossible gift of life: Sarah's miraculous conception, and the salvation of a wealthy man (for whom entry into the kingdom is likened to a camel passing through the eye of a needle). The Genesis text is the archetype of divine omnipotence operating where human capacity is exhausted, and Jesus invokes that precedent to establish that salvation — even for the rich — depends entirely on divine power, not human effort. Jeremiah 32:17, 27 repeat the same divine declaration in contexts of covenant restoration, reinforcing that the principle spans the whole canon.