Before your pots can feel the heat of the thorns, he will sweep away the green and the burning alike.
Parallel translations
- KJV Before your pots can feel the thorns, he shall take them away as with a whirlwind, both living, and in his wrath.
- BSB Before your pots can feel the burning thorns—whether green or dry—He will sweep them away.
- 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 is no more; but the righteous stand firm forever.
- Ps 118:12They surrounded me like bees. They are quenched like the burning thorns. In Yahweh’s name I cut them off.
- Eccl 7:6For as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fool. This also is vanity.
- Jer 23:19Behold, Yahweh’s storm, his wrath, has gone out. Yes, a whirling storm. It shall burst on the head of the wicked.
- Isa 17:13The nations will rush like the rushing of many waters: but he will rebuke them, and they will flee far off, and will be chased like the chaff of the mountains before the wind, and like the whirling dust before the storm.
- Ps 10:2In arrogance, the wicked hunt down the weak. They are caught in the schemes that they devise.
- Job 20:5–29that the triumphing of the wicked is short, the joy of the godless but for a moment?
- Prov 14:32The wicked is brought down in his calamity, but in death, the righteous has a refuge.
- Num 16:30But if Yahweh makes a new thing, and the ground opens its mouth, and swallows them up, with all that belong to them, and they go down alive into Sheol; then you shall understand that these men have despised Yahweh.”
- Ps 10:5His ways are prosperous at all times. He is haughty, and your laws are far from his sight. As for all his adversaries, he sneers at them.
- Prov 1:27when calamity overtakes you like a storm, when your disaster comes on like a whirlwind; when distress and anguish come on you.
- Ps 55:23But you, God, will bring them down into the pit of destruction. Bloodthirsty and deceitful men shall not live out half their days, but I will trust in you.
- Ps 73:18–20Surely you set them in slippery places. You throw them down to destruction.
- Job 18:18He shall be driven from light into darkness, and chased out of the world.
- Job 27:21The east wind carries him away, and he departs. It sweeps him out of his place.
- Isa 40:24They are planted scarcely. They are sown scarcely. Their stock has scarcely taken root in the ground. He merely blows on them, and they wither, and the whirlwind takes them away as stubble.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Hebrew/Greek interlinear, word definitions, and cross-references for this verse.
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.