Carolyn Adams Roth reflects here on what likely was the plant from which the Roman soldiers plaited the crown of thorns for Jesus. Reading that got me thinking. On this Good Friday—marking the most horrific sin in all history, the murder of God—it is good to reflect on thorns and what they teach us.
The Bible’s first mention of them comes in God’s proclamation of judgment on Adam in Genesis 3:17–18: “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field.”
Thorns are an enduring testimony of God’s hatred for sin. They are also an enduring testimony that nature (what happens without human intervention) is not preferable to culture (the fruit of human action). As the Dutch theologian and prime minister Abraham Kuyper insisted, nothing in this world is normal (conforming to the norm); all is corrupted, including every human being (Romans 3:23, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”) and consequently every human institution, every human activity.
Our word nature comes from the Latin natus, which we also see in our nativity, and means what grows or is born as a matter of course, “naturally.”
Our word culture comes from the Latin colere, the root of both cultivate and cult, the latter the term for worship. Worship of God and cultivation of the earth are related, for cultivating the earth is part of our obedient service to God. (Genesis 1:28: “And God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over everything that moves on the face of the earth.’” Genesis 2:15, “And God put the man into the Garden of Eden to till [i.e., cultivate] and guard it.”)
I find it interesting that God concluded His judgment on Adam by saying that he would “eat the plants of the field.” Field translates the Hebrew sadeh, which in its most basic sense denotes an open, unenclosed place, hence one unfrequented by people but exposed to violence, to wild beasts, and characteristically stony. The idea contrasts starkly with the “garden” into which God had first placed Adam to till (cultivate) and guard it. The Hebrew for garden is gan, the basic sense of which denotes an enclosure. Because Adam was to till (cultivate) the garden, it would need to be enclosed to keep out wild beasts that otherwise would trample it and destroy its crops, and because he cultivated it, its soil would be not stony but rich and fertile.
(As an aside that I’ll not develop here, I couldn’t help, as I wrote this, thinking of Jesus’ parable, in Matthew 13:1–23, of the sower and the seed [the Word of God], some of which fell on the beaten path and was plucked away; other of which fell on rocky soil, sprang up quickly, but perished in the heat for lack of depth and water; other of which fell on thorny soil and germinated but was quickly strangled; and other of which fell on good, cultivated soil and sprang up and bore much fruit. It behooves us to consider: Which kind of soil am I?)
God’s sentence on Adam to eat the plants of the field, then, meant that he would be ejected from the garden, the enclosure, and driven out into the field, the unenclosed place characterized by wild beasts and violence. (Genesis 3:23–24: “the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.”) The plants he would eat there would, initially, be only those that were “natural,” that is, that grew as a matter of course out of the stony ground. They would be meager fare for Adam and Eve and their progeny, until they began to enclose parts of the field, i.e., turn them into gardens, and till the soil within them, to make it more fertile.
What divine poetry! Thorns and wild field (wilderness) were part of God’s judgment on Adam for his sin, and the Messiah was crowned with thorns and taken outside the city walls of Jerusalem (out of the enclosure into the stony field) to bear the sins of men through the violence of crucifixion! And God’s poetry continues through to the end, when the New Jerusalem descends out of heaven as an enclosed place (i.e., in the language of Genesis, a garden):
And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great, high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. It had a great, high wall, with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and on the gates the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel were inscribed—on the east three gates, on the north three gates, on the south three gates, and on the west three gates. And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. … By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever. (Revelation 21:10–14, 24–22:5)
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