A thorn
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G173 names thorns or thorny plants and is used for unfruitful growth, choking pressures, unreliable fruit, cursed land, and the cruel crown placed on Jesus. The noun refers to actual thorny vegetation and supports images of crowded soil, recognizable fruit, judgment, and mock kingship, so each metaphor must be read from its own parable, warning, or passion scene.
Reader summary
Full entry for ἄκανθα (G173) · Open the biblical lexicon
G173 names thorns or thorny plants and is used for unfruitful growth, choking pressures, unreliable fruit, cursed land, and the cruel crown placed on Jesus. The noun refers to actual thorny vegetation and supports images of crowded soil, recognizable fruit, judgment, and mock kingship, so each metaphor must be read from its own parable, warning, or passion.
The BSB source-word alignment has 14 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include thorns (9), [which] (3), thornbushes (2).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Matthew 7:16. Its strongest book concentrations include Matthew (5), Luke (4), Mark (3), Hebrews (1).
G173 names thorns or thorny plants and is used for unfruitful growth, choking pressures, unreliable fruit, cursed land, and the cruel crown placed on Jesus. The noun refers to actual thorny vegetation and supports images of crowded soil, recognizable fruit, judgment, and mock kingship, so each metaphor must be read from its own parable, warning, or passion scene.
In Matt. 13. 22, jesus explains that worries of this age and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the heard word until it becomes unfruitful. In John. 19. 2, roman soldiers weave a crown from thorns, place it on Jesus head, and dress Him in purple as part of their mockery. G173 opens teaching on pressures that choke the word, fruit that reveals a plants nature, and the thorns soldiers weaponize to mock the true King.
It corrects shallow advice that blames struggling hearers without naming worries and deceptive wealth, and it prevents fruit language from becoming a tool for instant suspicion or punitive judgment. G173 holds together choking and suffering without flattening them: Jesus says worries and deceptive wealth choke the word into unfruitfulness, His soldiers twist thorns into a crown of mockery, and Hebrews warns of land that persistently produces thorns.
The image can diagnose competing growth, expose violent contempt for the King, or warn about fruitless response. None of these uses turns pain itself into proof of guilt. For G173, responsible teaching keeps lexical meaning, passage context, canonical synthesis, and present application distinguishable. G173 does not teach that anxiety is a simple moral failure, make poverty automatically fruitful, authorize believers to pronounce final curses on others, or imply that suffering earns salvation.
G173 appears across passages that develop creation under curse, choked fruitfulness, anxious care, deceptive wealth, moral recognition, judgment, mockery, suffering, and Christs kingship. For G173, the immediate setting decides which part of the range is active, so the witnesses must remain distinct rather than being merged into one formula.
The seed sown among the thorns is the one who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.
Jesus explains that worries of this age and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the heard word until it becomes unfruitful.
The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns, set it on His head, and dressed Him in a purple robe.
Roman soldiers weave a crown from thorns, place it on Jesus head, and dress Him in purple as part of their mockery.
But land that produces thorns and thistles is worthless, and its curse is imminent. In the end it will be burned.
The warning compares persistently unfruitful hearers to land producing thorns and thistles whose end is burning.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Greek word. A prickly plant symbolizing spiritual unfruitfulness, pain, and the curse of sin in NT parables
A prickly plant symbolizing spiritual unfruitfulness, pain, and the curse of sin in NT parables
(ἀκή, a point), [in LXX chiefly for קוֹץ, also for סִיר, שַׁיִת, etc. ;] a prickly plant, thorn, brier; in NT always pl.: Mat.7:16 13:7,22 27:29, Mrk.4:7,18, Luk.6:44 8:7,14, Jhn.19:2, Heb.6:8 (see MM, VGT, see word).
Textus Receptus witness, full corpusGreek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
14 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
a thorn-bush
Read versea thorn-bush
Read versea thorn-bush
Read versea thorn-bush
Read versea thorn-bush
Read versea thorn-bush
Read versea thorn-bush
Read versea thorn-bush
Read versea thorn-bush
Read versea thorn-bush
Read versea thorn-bush
Read versea thorn-bush
Read versea thorn-bush
Read versea thorn-bush
Read verseFull New Testament corpus: 260 chapters, 7,957 verses, 140,628 tokens. Data source: honza/textus-receptus (data only), with authority check against byztxt/greektext-textus-receptus.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
This word appears as a noun across 3 case and number patterns. The form changes show how the word functions in a sentence; they do not change the basic lexical meaning by themselves.
Verse guides are not available for this word yet, so verse references remain plain evidence markers.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 4 selected witnesses from 14 lexical occurrence verses.
ἄκανθα is built from this root:
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
G173 holds together choking and suffering without flattening them: Jesus says worries and deceptive wealth choke the word into unfruitfulness, His soldiers twist thorns into a crown of mockery, and Hebrews warns of land that persistently produces thorns. The image can diagnose competing growth, expose violent contempt for the King, or warn about fruitless response.
None of these uses turns pain itself into proof of guilt. G173 names thorns or thorny plants and is used for unfruitful growth, choking pressures, unreliable fruit, cursed land, and the cruel crown placed on Jesus. The selected witnesses keep the teaching concrete: Matt. 13. 22 shows that jesus explains that worries of this age and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the heard word until it becomes unfruitful, while John.
19. 2 Shows that roman soldiers weave a crown from thorns, place it on Jesus head, and dress Him in purple as part of their mockery. Heb. 6. 8 adds that the warning compares persistently unfruitful hearers to land producing thorns and thistles whose end is burning. G173 opens teaching on pressures that choke the word, fruit that reveals a plants nature, and the thorns soldiers weaponize to mock the true King.
It corrects shallow advice that blames struggling hearers without naming worries and deceptive wealth, and it prevents fruit language from becoming a tool for instant suspicion or punitive judgment. A church teaching G173 faithfully will name both the promise and the boundary carried by these contexts, attend to vulnerable hearers, and refuse to make the lexical item prove more than its passages support.
G173 does not teach that anxiety is a simple moral failure, make poverty automatically fruitful, authorize believers to pronounce final curses on others, or imply that suffering earns salvation.
Matt.13.22
G173 is a Greek noun for a thorn, brier, or prickly plant and appears in the New Testament in plural forms within agricultural images and the passion narratives.
Thorns enter Scriptures curse imagery and mark neglected or judged land, yet they also become part of the mock regalia borne by Jesus. The crucified and risen King meets a thorn-marked world while calling hearers to receive the word with persevering, fruitful faith.