shamir

• Beyond thorns, שָׁמִיר also names a hard cutting stone, an adamant or diamond point harder than flint, used to engrave or to picture a stubborn heart. שַׁיִת never carries this stone sense.Jer 17:1Ezk 3:9Zec 7:12
• שָׁמִיר can stand on its own as a thorn word, growing over ruined ground without its partner, whereas שַׁיִת appears only bound alongside שָׁמִיר.Isa 32:13

• Both name the wild thorns that overrun a neglected vineyard or field, the mark of fertile land left to go back to waste.Isa 5:6Isa 7:23
• Both serve as fuel that fire consumes in Isaiah's pictures of judgment sweeping through the land.Isa 9:18Isa 27:4

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• Covers a second, quite different thing: the hardest stone known, hard enough to serve as the cutting point that scratches writing into rock.Jer 17:1
• In that stone sense it supplies the standard image for a will nothing can wear down, whether a prophet's face set against opposition or a people's refusal to listen.Ezk 3:9Zec 7:12
• As a plant it belongs to the vineyard: the brier that takes over once a vineyard is left unpruned and untended, and the scrub that God offers to march against.Isa 5:6Isa 27:4
• Describes what a whole countryside becomes rather than a single thorn that pricks a person, so it is measured by acreage and by what the land is now good for.Isa 7:23Isa 7:24Isa 7:25

• Both name the prickly wild growth that overruns worked land when judgment falls, and the prophets pair them in a single breath for exactly that.Isa 32:13Isa 5:6Jer 12:13
• Both are pictured as fuel: dry stuff that flares up and is gone, which is why each stands for enemies burned away in a moment.Psa 118:12Isa 33:12Isa 9:18Isa 10:17
• Neither is a species label, so translators render both with the same small set of English words, and which one a version prints as "thorn" and which as "brier" is largely a matter of habit.Isa 32:13

• Turns up in ordinary life outside the prophets: an everyday field thorn that a stray fire can run through, and a handful of desert thorns a man can pick up and use as an instrument of punishment.Exo 22:6Jdg 8:7Jdg 8:16
• Names the bitter yield of ground under a curse, the growth that comes up where a farmer expected a crop, so it is what has to be cleared before anyone sows.Gen 3:18Jer 4:3Jer 12:13
• Becomes a picture of a hostile person: a neighbor who wounds the people living beside him, or worthless men no one can pick up bare-handed.2Sa 23:6Ezk 28:24
• Springs up over ruined places of worship, the sign that a site people once tended has been abandoned to the wild.Hos 10:8

• Also names the engraver's hardest tip, a diamond-like point that scores iron and cuts letters into rock, picturing Judah's sin graven on the tablet of the heart.Jer 17:1
• Carries a wholly separate sense that flint never has: the briers and thorns that overrun abandoned vineyards and fields.Isa 5:6Isa 7:23Isa 32:13

• Both are hard, unyielding stones, and Ezekiel sets the two side by side to picture an unflinching face, making the prophet's forehead harder than either.Ezk 3:9
• Each becomes an image of stubborn resistance to God's word: a brow that will not flinch and a heart that will not hear.Ezk 3:9Zec 7:12

• Names a working blade: a flint sharp enough to cut flesh, the stone Zipporah takes up to circumcise her son.Exo 4:25

• Names the very hardest known substance, invoked as the standard of hardness itself, so that even flint is measured against it and found softer.Ezk 3:9
• Denotes the cutting point of an engraving tool, the diamond-hard stylus that scores its mark into iron and stone.Jer 17:1
• Figures a heart set unyieldingly against God's word, refusing to be softened or to listen.Zec 7:12

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• Names an actual rock in the wilderness terrain, the least yielding stone of the landscape, which God nonetheless splits open to pour out water and oil for his people.Deu 8:15Deu 32:13Psa 114:8
• Stands for immovable natural resistance, the hard rock God overturns by sheer power when he lays bare the roots of the mountains.Job 28:9
• Pictures a person's unflinching resolve to endure abuse, a face set hard and unashamed against opposition.Isa 50:7

• The same spelling also names something extremely hard, with no plant in view at all: the cutting point that engraves guilt alongside an iron pen (Jeremiah 17:1), the stuff a prophet's forehead is made of so that it will not give way (Ezekiel 3:9), and the hardness a people set their own heart to so they will not hear (Zechariah 7:12).Jer 17:1Ezk 3:9Zec 7:12
• As a plant it is Isaiah's standing sign of worked land gone back to wild: a vineyard God stops pruning (Isaiah 5:6), a hillside once planted with a thousand vines (Isaiah 7:23), slopes people used to hoe and now only cattle tread (Isaiah 7:25).Isa 5:6Isa 7:23Isa 7:25
• It is repeatedly the fuel that fire eats up, so it pictures not just neglect but something God burns away: wickedness blazing like fire devours it (Isaiah 9:18), Israel's Holy One consumes it in a single day (Isaiah 10:17), and God says he would march against it and set it alight (Isaiah 27:4).Isa 9:18Isa 10:17Isa 27:4

• Both name low spiny growth that takes over ground people once tended, and both use that picture for a place under judgment: weeds over Israel's wrecked altars (Hosea 10:8), briers over a vineyard its owner has given up on (Isaiah 5:6).Hos 10:8Isa 5:6
• Neither normally stands alone: each is paired with the ordinary word for "thorn" in a doubled phrase (Genesis 3:18, Isaiah 32:13), and English Bibles draw both from the same small pool of words, "thorns", "thistles", "briers", and "brambles", so an English reader cannot tell which of the two is present.Gen 3:18Isa 32:13

• Its whole use in the Bible is tied to the sentence spoken over the ground in Eden: Genesis 3:18 announces that the soil will now yield "thorns and thistles" to the man who works it, and Hosea 10:8 reuses that same phrase for the weeds that will cover Israel's ruined altars.Gen 3:18Hos 10:8
• It only ever names a weed, so in both of its verses there is no question what kind of thing is meant; it is never used of anything hard, sharp, or made of stone.Gen 3:18Hos 10:8