After they ate from the tree, Adam, Chava and the snake were all cursed. The thorn represents Adam’s curse (Breisheet 3:17-18): “…Accursed is the land because of you; by painful toil you shall eat all of the days of your life. It will sprout thorns and thistles for you and you shall eat plants of the field.”
The thorn (kotz) is a symbol of summer (kayitz). In the summer in Israel, thorns often catch on fire. This is not a new phenomenon but was already mentioned in Shmot 22:5: “If a fire shall go forth and find thorns, and a stack of grain or a standing crop or a field is consumed, the one who kindled the fire will make restitution.” Thorns go up in flames pretty quickly as we say in Hallel (Tehilim 118:12): “They surrounded me like bees, but they were extinguished like a thorn fire; In God’s name, I cut them down.”
In the Neviim (Books of the Prophets), the thorn is often used as a theme of destruction as in Yishayahu 32:13: “All over My people’s land the sounds of thorn and briar rise to reach all joyous homes across the exuberant city, for the palace is forsaken, the crowded city, bleak.” We see this as well in Hoshea 10:8: “The hilltop shrines of Aven will be ravaged, that place of Israel’s sin. Thorns and thistles will sprout up over their altars…”
In Yechezkel 28:24 we read about how one can get hurt by a thorn: “The House of Israel will no longer suffer stabbing briers, scratching thorns, from those in their surroundings who scorn them, and they will know that I am the Lord.”
The thorn tries to sabotage the growth of wheat as we find in Yirmiyahu 11:13: “They have sown wheat and they have reaped thorns.” Before one plants one must banish the curse of the thorns as mentioned in Yirmiyahu 4:3: “…Plow your untilled field well. and do not sow among thorns.”
A field that has thorns is looked at as a field that belongs to a lazy person as we learn in Mishlei 24:30-33:
I passed by a field of a lazy man, by the vineyard of a mindless person; it had become entirely overgrown with thorns, its surface covered with weeds, its stone fence demolished. I observed and took it to heart; I noted, and I took instruction. A little sleep, a little dozing, a little lying there with folded hands, and poverty will come like a sudden intruder, privation like a soldier bearing a shield.
The lesson to be learned here is that if you are lazy, then thorns will grow and destroy your field. However, with hard work, you can get your field ready to be planted which will yield excellent results.
Don’t let those thorns creep up on you!
