Therefore, behold, I will hedge up your way with thorns, And I will build a wall against her, That she can't find her way.
So in the book of Judges the ever-recurring history is, they forsook God; He delivered them into the hands of their enemies; they cried unto Him; He sent them a deliverer. A way may be found through a “hedge of thorns,” although with pain and suffering; through a stone “wall” even a strong man cannot burst a way. “Thorns” then may be the pains to the flesh, with which God visits sinful pleasures, so that the soul, if it would break through to them, is held back and torn; the wall may mean, that all such sinful joys shall be cut off altogether, as by bereavement, poverty, sickness, failure of plans, etc. In sorrows, we cannot find our idols, which, although so near, vanish from us; but we may find our God, though we are so far from Him, and He so often seems so far from us. “God hedgeth with thorns the ways of the elect, when they find prickles in the things of time, which they desire. They attain not the pleasures of this world which they crave.” They cannot “find their paths,” when, in the special love of God, they are hindered from obtaining what they seek amiss. “I escaped not Thy scourges,” says Augustine, as to his pagan state, “for what mortal can? For Thou wert ever with me, mercifully rigorous, and with most bitter alloy all my unlawful pleasures, that I might seek pleasure without alloy. But where to find such, I could not discover, save in Thee, O Lord, who teachest by sorrow, and woundest us, to heal, and killest us, lest we die from Thee” (Conf. ii. 4).