Before your pots can feel the burning thorns—whether green or dry—He will sweep them away.
Parallel translations
- WEB Before your pots can feel the heat of the thorns, he will sweep away the green and the burning alike.
- KJV Before your pots can feel the thorns, he shall take them away as with a whirlwind, both living, and in his wrath.
- NKJV Before your pots can feel the burning thorns, He shall take them away as with a whirlwind, As in His living and burning wrath.
- NASB Before your pots can feel the fire of thorns He will sweep them away with a whirlwind, the green and the burning alike.
- NLT God will sweep them away, both young and old, faster than a pot heats over burning thorns.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
God's judgment will sweep the wicked away suddenly, before their plans can even mature. It assures that He acts swiftly and decisively against evil.
Overview
This difficult verse pictures God removing the wicked before their schemes, like a fire of thorns, can come to full heat. Though the Hebrew is hard to render precisely, the sense is of sudden, sweeping judgment. The certainty of God's intervention encourages the faithful to wait patiently rather than despair at evil's apparent advance.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 16
- Prov 10:25When the whirlwind passes, the wicked are no more, but the righteous are secure forever.
- Ps 118:12They swarmed around me like bees, but they were extinguished like burning thorns; in the name of the LORD I cut them off.
- Eccl 7:6For like the crackling of thorns under the pot, so is the laughter of the fool. This too is futile.
- Jer 23:19Behold, the storm of the LORD has gone out with fury, a whirlwind swirling down upon the heads of the wicked.
- Isa 17:13The nations rage like the rush of many waters. He rebukes them, and they flee far away, driven before the wind like chaff on the hills, like tumbleweeds before a gale.
- Ps 10:2In pride the wicked pursue the needy; let them be caught in the schemes they devise.
- Job 20:5–29the triumph of the wicked has been brief and the joy of the godless momentary?
- Prov 14:32The wicked man is thrown down by his own sin, but the righteous man has a refuge even in death.
- Num 16:30But if the LORD brings about something unprecedented, and the earth opens its mouth and swallows them and all that belongs to them so that they go down alive into Sheol, then you will know that these men have treated the LORD with contempt.”
- Ps 10:5He is secure in his ways at all times; Your lofty judgments are far from him; he sneers at all his foes.
- Prov 1:27when your dread comes like a storm, and your destruction like a whirlwind, when distress and anguish overwhelm you.
- Ps 55:23But You, O God, will bring them down to the Pit of destruction; men of bloodshed and deceit will not live out half their days. But I will trust in You.
- Ps 73:18–20Surely You set them on slick ground; You cast them down into ruin.
- Job 18:18He is driven from light into darkness and is chased from the inhabited world.
- Job 27:21The east wind carries him away, and he is gone; it sweeps him out of his place.
- Isa 40:24No sooner are they planted, no sooner are they sown, no sooner have their stems taken root in the ground, than He blows on them and they wither, and a whirlwind sweeps them away like stubble.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Christ at the center
The Psalms are Christ's own prayer book and a gallery of his portraits — the suffering one of Psalm 22, the risen Lord of Psalm 16, the priest-king of Psalm 110, the Son to whom the nations are given.
How Psalms 58:9 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.