A Thorn in Your Side

And the Lord spake unto Moses, ... saying,
Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye are passed over Jordan into the land of Canaan;
Then ye shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you, and destroy all their pictures, and destroy all their molten images, and quite pluck down all their high places:
... But if ye will not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you; then it shall come to pass, that those which ye let remain of them shall be pricks in your eyes, and thorns in your sides, and shall vex you in the land wherein ye dwell.

-- Numbers 33: 50–52, 55 (KJV)

Before drawing a detailed map of the Israelites' "promised land" -- that is, the coastal territory of Canaan -- the Lord first instructs them, through Moses, on how they should behave when they first arrive. Rather than love their Canaanite neighbors, they are told to drive them (and their hideous gods) clean out of the land. Otherwise, God warns, the natives shall be "pricks" in the Israelites' eyes, and "thorns in your sides."

Yahweh's metaphorical admonition was certainly prophetic. As the books of Joshua and Judges describe the situation, Canaanite tribes made for quite a collection of pricks and thorns, since it proved more difficult than God lets on to uproot them. Joshua himself -- Moses' successor and leader of the Israelites into Canaan -- admits that the struggle will be long, and he warns in a valedictory speech never to accommodate their heathen enemies. Otherwise, "The Lord your God will no more drive out any of these nations from before you; but they shall be snares and traps unto you, and scourges in your sides, and thorns in your eyes ..." (Joshua 23: 13).

Joshua muffs the quote, and the generations have preferred Yahweh's original coinage, "thorns in your sides," rendered as such into English by the King James team. (The more commonly quoted phrase "a thorn in the flesh" is also from the King James Bible -- St. Paul coins it at II Corinthians 12: 7.) "Thorns in your eyes" is just a bit too improbable, though "prick" and "eye" are joined in motherhood's collective unconscious.

Oddly enough, Numbers has also influenced China's disaffected youth, who for about a month in 1991 sported T-shirts emblazoned with rebellious slogans. In addition to such cynical phrases as "Aren't you witty!," "I'm terribly depressed! Keep away from me!," and "Chinese the world of evil beasts," teenagers proclaimed, "I've never been a thorn in anybody's side" with their casual wear. These, along with other shirts, were promptly banned by the government.

 
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Michael Macrone is Associate Site Producer of GraceCom and the author of nine books on language, literature, and ideas, including the best-selling Brush Up Your Shakespeare!