Mark 15:17-19 And they clothed him with purple, and platted a crown of thorns, and put it about his head,… Thorns and briars were the curse of the earth, sent because of man's disobedience, and after his expulsion from Paradise. There is, therefore, a symbolical propriety in Christ assuming a crown of thorns. He who had come to undo the fault of Adam, to take away its consequences, takes to His head the symbol of the evil brought on the earth, and bears it on His temples...God of old likened the law which He gave to Israel to a thorn hedge enclosing His people. Christ has come to take away the law of ordinances which tore and tortured the Jewish people, and He takes its symbol, the thorny circle, and is crowned with it...The thorn has also the symbolic meaning of sin, and a dry thorn was regarded as the symbol of a sinner (Ezekiel 2:3, 6)...A thorn is symbolical, not of sin only, but of mockery. As the thorn enters into the flesh and works itself deeper in, and rankles there, causing intolerable pain, and can only with the greatest difficulty be extracted, so is it with the stabbing word of sarcasm — it pierces deep into the heart, and festers there. (S. Baring Gould, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: And they clothed him with purple, and platted a crown of thorns, and put it about his head,WEB: They clothed him with purple, and weaving a crown of thorns, they put it on him. |
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