What is the significance of thorns and thistles in the Bible?

Here as before it is present and earthly judgment. On account of the man the ground is cursed. His superiority entails wider and more serious results. He too must face sorrow here below all his days. Thorns and thistles oppose the food he needs and seeks; and hard toil must be his portion to eat bread, for the herb of the field was allotted, as to the subject beasts, to him who had lost through rebellion the beautiful and abundant garden which Jehovah Elohim had planted. In the sweat of his face be was to eat till he returned to the ground whence he had been taken. How evidently the body only is here regarded, and the end of life on the earth! Yet the source of man's soul had been carefully shown in chap. 2 as emanating from Jehovah Elohim's inbreathing, contrasted with every other creature on earth, to the confusion of materialists old or new. Present government is the theme, and neither hades nor the lake of fire. So in the Psalms, though Sheol or Hades appears appropriately, we read, in Ps. 146:4, man "returns to his earth: in that very day his thoughts perish." The body alone returns to dust, out of which the soil was not taken, but, as we are told elsewhere, the spirit returns to God Who gave it. All the notice here taken of man is to humble him who did not look up to God, nor obey Him: sorrow and toil, death and dust. We shall find that more is intimated even here in what follows. If the apostle tells us that the wages of sin is death, we ought not to overlook that the sentence does not mean the whole of sin's wages, but the first part; as in the Epistle to the Hebrews we are expressly told on the one hand that it is appointed unto men once to die, and after that the judgment, on the other that Christ also, having been once offered to bear the sins of many, shall appear a second time apart from sin to those that look for Him unto salvation: the portion respectively of unbelievers and of believers.

A. — That the ground was cursed because of Adam's sin is what scripture plainly states. That there was no "work" before his fall is not so stated. Man placed in the garden "to dress it and to keep it" shows that it was not God's will that His creature should be idle. But there was no "toil" or "sorrow" connected with such occupation. Now thorns and thistles were to appear, and in the sweat of his face was man to eat bread. Weariness is known, and so also the sweetness of rest after labour. Idleness was one of the iniquities of Sodom (Ezek. 16:49). It had no place in innocency, nor will it be compatible with the millennium (Amos 9:13), when "the wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose"; nor may we not add? — with the eternal state (Rev. 21). Labour here is good for all, and in it there is profit. For out of evil God can and does bring good.

1886 175 It is to be remarked that it is not here said that creation generally declares the glory of God, because this would have included the earth as a part of it; and it would not have been true, for since the fall of Adam, the curse of God rests upon the earth, and it brings forth "thorns and thistles," which bear witness to man's degradation and ruin rather than to God's glory.

"Then came Jesus forth, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe." Why does John only record this appearance of the Lord thus arrayed before the people? Matthew and Mark tell how the whole band of soldiers was called together to the mock coronation, and Luke wrote that "Herod and his men of war set Him at nought and mocked Him, and arrayed Him in a gorgeous robe, " but makes no reference to the crowning with thorns. There must be a reason for the prominence that John gives to this special suffering and shame endured by the Lord. What is it?

In our Gospel He is not presented to us as the Son of David, the King of Israel as in Matthew, nor as the faithful servant of man's need and God's glory as in Mark, but as the Word, the Creator of the world, who had come into it to be its Saviour. The world belonged to Him for He made it, and as the Son in the eternal Bosom He was the Heir to it, but it was under the curse, man's disobedience had brought the curse upon it, and thorns were the product and abiding evidence of the curse. He had come to redeem the world; to remove the curse and bring in the blessing, and to do this He must bear the curse. He has "redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree" (Gal. 3:13), but the original curse fell upon Him, and the sign of this was the crown that He wore. "Then came Jesus forth wearing the crown of thorns." Oh the shame and the glory of it! Shame to man, who crowned Him: to us all, for we all had our part in it, but glory to Him who in divine compassion for God's glory and our salvation took the curse upon Him that by His death He might remove it.

We will now consider briefly what God will do in that day for the CREATION IN GENERAL. Man, by his sin, has not only brought ruin on himself, but has marred his home, and dragged down all the creatures dependent upon him. Thorns and thistles are marks of man's sin, much more the groans of the brute creation (Gen. 3:18). Man, unlike angels, was constituted by God the centre of a system of things. The whole of this lower creation either suffers or rejoices with its head. This is its time of suffering. "We know that the whole creation groans and travails in pain together until now" (Rom. 8:22). We who believe groan also in sympathy, our mortal bodies forming a link with the old creation. But we alone are in God's secret, as to where deliverance will come from, and when. Though it understands it not, "the earnest expectation of the creature waits for the manifestations of the sons of God." When Christ comes upon the scene, bringing with him the whole glorified family of God, then the creation will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God.

The beautiful world, beautiful wherever man’s hand has not marred it, or his foot has not trodden it down; that which came out of the hand of its Creator in all its variety of living beauty, displaying His handiwork in all its lights and shadows — it has been purchased by the blood of Christ. Already redeemed by blood from the hands of the enemy, it has yet to be redeemed by power. The eye of faith turns on high and sees Him on the throne of God, the title to all things in His hand, as God their Creator, as Son and Heir of them, and as Man! Yet more, as the One who has “tasted death” for it! He took the curse that was on the scene; and the day is coming when not a vestige of that curse will remain. The thorns and thistles of Adam (Gen. 3:18), and the want of fruitfulness of Cain (Gen. 4:12), will give place to the earth yielding her increase (Ps. 67:6), and the thorn and thistle giving place to the myrtle and the fir tree (Isa. 55:13). He will inherit it as its Redeemer-Heir. He tastes death and then goes on high, where God has “crowned him with glory and honour”

The blessing of man, and with him of all creation, is to be determined simply by his position before God. Therefore to be without God is to be without hope in the world; and thus every renewed soul proves, in the daily, hourly history of his own little kingdom within, that his blessing is in the favour of the Lord, and that clouds and sorrows arise when that favour is withdrawn or forgotten. As man at first stood on the face of this earth of ours, his blessing was all of this character. He was blest because his whole condition reflected the kindness and love of his Creator. His very constitution was as the image of God, the manifestation of divine perfections and dominion (Gen. 1:27); in the sabbath a standing witness of fellowship between him and his Creator was ordained (Gen. 2:3); over him he had a most gracious Lord, who enjoined on him only a necessary burden (Gen. 2:16); around him he saw a fair creation spread as his own domain, made willingly subject to him in its ten thousand sources of tribute and service, by their great Creator; for, in token of man's lordship of them all, the Lord brought them to him to be named, and whatsoever name Adam gave them the same was the name thereof (Gen. 2:19, see Isa. 40:26). By his side, to complete the blessedness, he had given him of the Lord a companion fully meet for him, a part of himself, — bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh (Gen. 2:22); and thus was his condition perfect and blessed in every relation, showing forth the kindness of God; and he had access to the tree of life to keep it so. But all this state of things was forfeited by transgression; — all blessing was gone when the divine favour was withdrawn, when enmity fell out between the righteous God and His offending creature; so did it between the creatures as among themselves. There was no longer the due subjection of the earth to Adam, when Adam had failed in his subjection to God; the earth yielded thorns and thistles to him, as soon as he had brought forth the fruit of a heart revolted from God. And the joys of innocency between the man and the woman were all likewise fled: their nakedness was now their shame, and confidence was changed for covering.

Till now God had provided all things and man lived but to enjoy the manifold blessings in the garden of Eden. Now, he was an outcast condemned to toil for his daily bread, and to see in the thorns and thistles, with which his own hands had to fight for the mastery of the soil, the bitter fruits of his disobedience, which called to his mind unceasingly the fact that he was mortal. Yet in the very hour of judgment came the promise of mercy (Gen. 3:15), through the Seed which should bruise the serpent's head. And it is our privilege today to look back over the long years and see the promise fulfilled in wonderful perfection.

The creature, which was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of man when he fell, groaning and travailing in pain, waiting for that day of its deliverance, shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption, into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. We read in Genesis 3, "Cursed is the ground for thy sake … thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee." But of the day of its regeneration, "instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle-tree." "The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose." Again, the sentence pronounced upon Cain, "When thou tillest the ground it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength," shall be removed; for we read of the day when God shall cause His face to shine upon restored Israel, that "then shall the earth yield her increase, and God, even our own God, shall bless us; God shall bless us; and all the ends of the earth shall fear Him." (Psalm 67)

Thus the curse of sterility, though partially removed at the time of the flood, still continued in large measure; for the abundant harvests promised to Israel were merely conditional on their obedience, and like all other blessings held by such a tenure, were lost through the nation's unfaithfulness. Thorns and briers were to be brought forth — the fruits of sin. But when the reign of righteousness begins, "instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to Jehovah for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off" (Isa. 55:13). Again — "I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water. I will plant in the wilderness the cedar, the shittah tree, and the myrtle, and the oil tree; I will set in the desert the fir tree, and the pine, and the box tree together; that they may see, and know, and consider, and understand together, that the hand of Jehovah has done this, and the Holy One of Israel has created it" (Isa. 41:18-20). So too, "the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose" (Isa. 35:1).