441. Thorns for Fuel

 •  1 min. read  •  grade level: 7
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Psalm 58:9. Before your pots can feel the thorns, he shall take them away as with a whirlwind.
There is a great variety of thorny shrubs and plants abounding in Palestine. These the people gladly gather and use for fuel. They make a quick, hot fire, which kindles easily and soon expires. The idea conveyed in the text is that of swift destruction. The wicked are to be destroyed quicker than the heat from a fire of thorns could reach the cooking vessels.
A similar figure is used in the prophecy of Isaiah: “And the people shall be as the burnings of lime: as thorns cut up shall they be burned in the fire” (Isa. 33:12). It has been supposed from this text that thorns may have been used in lime-kilns.
Allusion to the use of thorns for fuel is also made in 2 Samuel 23:6-7; Psalm 118:12; Eccl 7:6; Isaiah 9.18; 10:17; Nahum 1:10.
See note on 1 Kings 17:10 (#304) and also on Matthew 6:30 (#646).