Before your pots can feel the thorns, he shall take them away as with a whirlwind, both living, and in his wrath.
Parallel translations
- WEB Before your pots can feel the heat of the thorns, he will sweep away the green and the burning alike.
- 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 10:25As the whirlwind passeth, so is the wicked no more: but the righteous is an everlasting foundation.
- Ps 118:12They compassed me about like bees; they are quenched as the fire of thorns: for in the name of the LORD I will destroy them.
- 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, a whirlwind of the LORD is gone forth in fury, even a grievous whirlwind: it shall fall grievously upon the head of the wicked.
- Isa 17:13The nations shall rush like the rushing of many waters: but God shall rebuke them, and they shall flee far off, and shall be chased as the chaff of the mountains before the wind, and like a rolling thing before the whirlwind.
- Ps 10:2The wicked in his pride doth persecute the poor: let them be taken in the devices that they have imagined.
- Job 20:5–29That the triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment?
- Prov 14:32The wicked is driven away in his wickedness: but the righteous hath hope in his death.
- Num 16:30But if the LORD make a new thing, and the earth open her mouth, and swallow them up, with all that appertain unto them, and they go down quick into the pit; then ye shall understand that these men have provoked the LORD.
- Ps 10:5His ways are always grievous; thy judgments are far above out of his sight: as for all his enemies, he puffeth at them.
- Prov 1:27When your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you.
- Ps 55:23But thou, O God, shalt bring them down into the pit of destruction: bloody and deceitful men shall not live out half their days; but I will trust in thee.
- Ps 73:18–20Surely thou didst set them in slippery places: thou castedst them down into destruction.
- Job 18:18He shall be driven from light into darkness, and chased out of the world.
- Job 27:21The east wind carrieth him away, and he departeth: and as a storm hurleth him out of his place.
- Isa 40:24Yea, they shall not be planted; yea, they shall not be sown: yea, their stock shall not take root in the earth: and he shall also blow upon them, and they shall wither, and the whirlwind shall take them away as stubble.
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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.