thistle: a spiny weed that overruns worked ground, and so a standing sign of land under a curse
This word turns up only twice in the Hebrew Bible, and both times it is bolted to the word for thorn (קוֹץ) in one stock phrase, "thorn and thistle." Nothing else in the Bible pairs those two words. That makes the phrase work almost like a title: the second time it appears, it drags the first appearance along with it.
The plant behind it is almost certainly the star-thistle, the spiny weed that still takes over grain fields across Israel and Syria and still carries this same name in Palestinian Arabic. Words for "thistle" in Aramaic, Syriac, Arabic, and Ethiopic all match it, and the Hebrew word doubles its own syllable, a pattern Hebrew likes for plant names and one that makes the phrase sound as stubborn as the weed itself. A Standard Arabic word that looks identical but means "elm" is a lookalike borrowed from Persian, not a relative.
The two verses use the same weed to make two different points:
- In Genesis 3:18 the thistles sprout out of the soil itself, the sign that the ground a man works has turned against him.
- In Hosea 10:8 they climb over Israel's smashed altars, the sign that a place people called holy has been handed back to the wild.
When the Old Testament was translated into Greek, this word became a term for "caltrop" (τρίβολος), the name of the spiked iron device thrown on the ground to cripple horses. That Greek pair, "thorns and thistles," is what the New Testament picks up when Hebrews 6:8 calls fruitless ground close to a curse, and when Jesus asks whether anyone gathers figs from thistles.
Whether the phrase in Hosea 10:8 is a deliberate quotation of Genesis 3:18 or a use of shared curse language.
- contestedA self-conscious echo of Genesis 3:18, part of Hosea's wider reversal-of-creation motif, since no other biblical text pairs these two words and Hosea applies the image to cultic rather than agricultural ground.; J. Andrew Dearman, The Book of Hosea (NICOT; Eerdmans, 2010), 267-268; Duane A. Garrett, Hosea, Joel (NAC 19B; B&H, 1997); Ehud Ben Zvi, Hosea (FOTL XXIA/1; Eerdmans, 2005); Michael DeRoche, "The Reversal of Creation in Hosea," Vetus Testamentum 31 (1981): 400-409
- contestedThe phrase belongs to a broad stock of desolation and covenant-curse vocabulary, so the shared wording shows familiarity with the primeval history at most, not a formal citation.; Hans Walter Wolff, Hosea (Hermeneia; Fortress, 1974); James Luther Mays, Hosea: A Commentary (OTL; Westminster, 1969); Douglas Stuart, Hosea-Jonah (WBC 31; Word, 1987), 162-164; A. A. Macintosh, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Hosea (ICC; T&T Clark, 1997), 391; Francis I. Andersen and David Noel Freedman, Hosea (Anchor Bible 24; Doubleday, 1980), 202, 269, 355-358
Disputed
Which plant the word names.
- majorityThe star-thistles of the genus Centaurea, the conspicuous winter and spring weeds of Levantine grain fields, with Centaurea iberica and Centaurea calcitrapa the leading candidates.; Michael Zohary, Plants of the Bible (Cambridge University Press, 1982), 153-160; Jehuda Feliks, "Thistles and Thorns," Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed. (2007); Harold N. and Alma L. Moldenke, Plants of the Bible (Chronica Botanica, 1952); F. Nigel Hepper, Illustrated Encyclopedia of Bible Plants (IVP, 1992); Lytton John Musselman, A Dictionary of Bible Plants (Cambridge University Press, 2012)
- minorityAn edible spiny plant, the wild cardoon or artichoke (Cynara syriaca), on the reasoning that Adam is condemned to eat these plants, so the curse lies in the painful labor of getting food from thorny growth rather than in inedibility.; Genesis Rabbah 20:10; Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (JPS Torah Commentary; JPS, 1989), 29-30