5 min read

Israel Stood Like a Lily Among Hostile Thorns

The north wind bent the flower until the thorns bit the stem. The stalk still pointed up. A tax collector's knock did the same work.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The North Wind Found the Stem
  2. Fire for a Flower Too Hard to Pluck
  3. The King Left the Thorns on Purpose
  4. Jacob Slept and the Rain Kept Falling
  5. The Face That Would Not Drop
Israel Stood Like a Lily Among Hostile Thorns Click for full size

The North Wind Found the Stem

The north wind hit the lily first. It did not ask the flower to bow. It shoved, and the thorns that had always stood nearby finally closed. They bit the stem. A thin line of sap rose. The petals shook. The stalk still pointed up.

Rabbi Huna looked at Israel in exile and named that plant. A collector knocked. A neighbor scraped a boundary stone a finger's width inward. A tax doubled because someone could double it. The neck tilted. The heart did not flop into the dirt. My eyes are always toward God (Psalm 25:15).

The nations were not a garden border. They were a ring of points, close enough to draw blood and too close to leave.

Fire for a Flower Too Hard to Pluck

Rabbi Aivu asked how you harvest a lily like that without losing a hand. You cannot. Reach in and the hedge teaches you why the owner waits. He brings fire. He burns the thorns. Then he gathers the flower that would not lie down.

Cities faced cities the way those thorns faced the stem. Halamish against Naveh. Jericho against No'aron. Susitan against Tiberias. Kastra against Haifa. Lod against Ono. The Lord has commanded concerning Jacob that those around him should be his adversaries (Lamentations 1:17). This is Jerusalem. I have set her in the midst of the nations (Ezekiel 5:5).

Isaiah saw peoples as burnings of lime, thorns cut and set alight (Isaiah 33:12). After the fire, the Lord alone would lead, with no foreign god beside Him (Deuteronomy 32:12). The owner was never confused about which plant was his.

The King Left the Thorns on Purpose

A king planted a vineyard. Cedars rose among the vines, tall enough to steal the sun. Thorns tangled at the roots and snagged every cloak that passed. He cut the cedars. He left the thorns. His servants protested. "Master, you kept the things that tear our clothes and felled the beauty."

The king answered. "If I left the cedars and cut the thorns, with what would I fence my vineyard?"

Israel is that vineyard. The vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel (Isaiah 5:7). When Israel entered the land, God cut down the Amorite cedars whose height was like cedars. Lesser nations He left as hedge. The vines would be tested. Torah would have to be kept with a scratch on the skin.

At the sea, Pharaoh hurled his multitudes until the people could not count the horses. Heaven reckoned them as a single horse. One breath of wind drowned that horse. The hedge is never stronger than the Owner. It is a tool in His hand, and He can snap it when He wants the fruit.

Jacob Slept and the Rain Kept Falling

At Beth El, Jacob put a stone under his head and received borders while he slept. Spread out west, east, north, and south (Genesis 28:14). Egypt sat outside the line. The land that would later work his children to the bone was already excluded while the gift was still warm in the dark.

Then the larger sentence landed. All the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you and your seed. Rain fell on roofs that would never say his name. Dew sat on grain in fields that would one day tax his children. The sleeping man's dream became weather for strangers. Nations drank from a channel they did not name.

The fenced people were also the hidden irrigation. Merit traveled farther than the border drawn on the stone.

The Face That Would Not Drop

On a tax day a woman stood in a courtyard with a lily in a thorn hedge at her wall. The knock came. She paid. Her neck tilted the way the stem had tilted. She still recited toward Heaven because that angle was the only one the plant still owned.

The servants in the vineyard had wanted the cedars left standing. Height looks like safety until it steals the sun. God had already felled that height. What remained was smaller, sharper, close enough to snag a cloak on the way to prayer. Israel walked through markets that did not love them and kept the face up anyway.

When the plucking time comes, fire will do what a hand cannot. Until then the work is the stem. Up. Even while pierced. The Owner stays closer than the hedge.

LilyThornsExileVineyardJacobMeritNationsShir HashirimIsraelRepentanceKindnessRedemptionLamentations
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From the tradition

Sources

3 sources

The texts behind this telling. Some cards carry a translation of the source; others are our own retelling of it, and each card says which. Every card links out to the original.

Shir HaShirim Rabbah 2:5Shir HaShirim Rabbah

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.The Sefaria Midrash Rabbah, 2022 · CC-BY

That image, that feeling, is captured beautifully in the ancient interpretations of the Shir HaShirim, the Song of Songs.

Rabbi Huna uses the image of a lily among thorns to describe the Jewish people scattered in exile. A harsh north wind blows, tilting the lily, and the thorns pierce it. Yet, even in that painful position, the lily’s stalk remains directed upwards. Rabbi Huna says, that's us! Even when weighed down by taxes and hardship, our hearts are directed towards our Father in Heaven. “My eyes are always toward God,” as it says in Psalms (25:15).

What about the future? What about the ultimate redemption? Rabbi Aivu takes the same lily image and spins it in a new, hopeful direction. He says, just as this lily among thorns is difficult to pluck, so too is Israel. The owner can't just reach in and grab it without getting hurt. So, what does he do? He brings fire and burns away the thorns surrounding it, and then he plucks the lily.

This, Rabbi Aivu suggests, is a metaphor for the future redemption. "The Lord has commanded concerning Jacob that those that surround him should be his adversaries" (Lamentations 1:17). The commentary mentions specific cities as examples: Ḥalamish to Naveh, Jericho to No’aron, Susitan to Tiberias, Kastra to Haifa, Lod to Ono. These were all gentile cities bordering Jewish cities. As Ezekiel (5:5) puts it, “This is Jerusalem, in the midst of the nations I have situated it.”

So, what happens in the future, when the end of days arrives? The Holy One, blessed be He, will bring fire and burn away what surrounds Jerusalem. As Isaiah (33:12) says, “Peoples will be burnings of lime, [cut thorns ignited with fire].” And what follows that fiery purification? "The Lord alone will lead him [and there is no foreign god with Him]" (Deuteronomy 32:12). The great Onkelos, who famously translated the Torah into Aramaic, explains that this means there will no longer be peoples who engage in idol worship.

It’s a powerful and, admittedly, a bit intense vision. The image of fire cleansing the way for redemption is a recurring theme in Jewish thought.

Perhaps it's this: even when surrounded by difficulties, even when pierced by the "thorns" of life, we can still direct our hearts upward. And perhaps, just perhaps, that persistent upward gaze will eventually clear the way for a brighter future, a future where the thorns are burned away, and the lily – representing the Jewish people – can be gently and safely gathered.

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Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Re'eh 3:1Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Re'eh

Translation of the source text.Midrash Tanchuma (Buber), Public Domain, on Sefaria · CC-BY-SA

(Deuteronomy 12:29:) "When the LORD your God cuts off the nations." A parable: To what is the matter comparable? To a king who planted a vineyard in the midst of his field, and within it were great cedars and thorns. The king went and cut down the cedars and left the thorns. His servants said to him: Our lord the king, you have left the thorns, which catch in our garments, but you have cut down the cedars! He said to them: If I had left the cedars and cut down the thorns, with what would I have fenced in my vineyard?

And so too Israel is the vineyard of the Holy One, blessed be He, as it is said (Isaiah 5:7): "For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel." He brought Israel into the land and cut down the cedars that were in it, as it is said (Amos 2:9): "Yet I destroyed the Amorite before them, whose height was like the height of the cedars." But He left their children and their children's children, so that Israel would keep the Torah, as it is said (Judges 3:1): "Now these are the nations which the LORD left, to test Israel by them."

And when the vineyard stands in its place in the keeping of the Torah, then (Isaiah 33:12): "And the peoples shall be as the burnings of lime, as thorns cut down, [that are burned in the fire]." And it is written (Isaiah 40:17): "All the nations are as nothing before Him." See how many multitudes Pharaoh sent out after Israel! When Israel saw them, they were terrified before them and said: Who can stand against these? The Holy One, blessed be He, said to them: By your lives, all of these are accounted before Me as nothing [but] a single horse, as it is said (Exodus 15:19): "For the horse of Pharaoh came." And they all died with a single breath, as it is said (Exodus 15:10): "You blew with Your wind."

So too, Gog and Magog are destined to come against Israel, and against him the Holy One, blessed be He, will execute His judgments, as it is said (Ezekiel 38:22): "And I will enter into judgment with him with pestilence and with blood." At that hour (Ezekiel 38:23): "Thus will I magnify Myself, and sanctify Myself, [and make Myself known] in the eyes of many nations, and they shall know that I am the LORD."

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Midrash Aggadah, Genesis 28:14Midrash Aggadah

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.Sefaria Community Translation · CC0

God laid out the borders of the promised land for Jacob as he slept at Beth El: spread out to the west, to the east, to the north and the south (Genesis 28:14). The midrash notices a quiet boundary inside the promise. The Holy One drew the lines deliberately, and in drawing them left Egypt outside. The blessing had an edge, and Egypt sat beyond it, the land that would one day enslave Jacob's children excluded from the inheritance even as the inheritance was being granted.

Then comes the larger claim. The verse continues, "All the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you and your descendants." The Sages read this not as a polite flourish but as a statement about how the world is held together. Creation continues to exist, and the rains and the dew that make the fields yield their produce come down, all of it sustained by the merit of Israel. Every nation, knowingly or not, drinks from blessing that descends on Israel's account.

This reflects a recurring conviction of the midrashic sages: that the covenant with the patriarchs is not a private benefit but the hidden support of the whole created order. The promise to one sleeping man at Beth El turns out to be the reason the rain falls everywhere and the earth keeps living. The families of the earth bless themselves by Jacob because, in the rabbis' reading, their very sustenance flows through the channel of his descendants' merit.

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