2 Corinthians 12:7
To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.
is this Old Testament language?
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Numbers 33:55
"'But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land,
those you allow to remain will become barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides.
They will give you trouble in the land where you will live.
Ezekiel 28:24
"'No longer will the people of Israel have
malicious neighbors who are painful briers and sharp thorns. Then they will know that I am the Sovereign LORD.
Joshua 23:13
then you may be sure that the LORD your God will no longer drive out these nations before you. Instead,
they will become snares and traps for you, whips on your backs and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from this good land, which the LORD your God has given you.
1 Thessalonians 2:14
13 And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers.
14 For you, brothers,
became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea. For you suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they did from the Jews,
15 who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and
drove us out, and displease God and oppose all mankind 16 by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they might be saved—so as always to fill up the measure of their sins. But God’s wrath has come upon them at last!
2 Corinthians 11
12 And what I do I will continue to do,
in order to undermine the claim of those who would like to claim that in their boasted mission they work on the same terms as we do.
13 For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ.
14 And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.
15 So it is no surprise if
his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds.
2 Corinthians 12:7
To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations,
there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.
2 Corinthians 12:10-12
Therefore I take pleasure in
infirmities, in
reproaches, in
necessities, in
persecutions, in
distresses for Christ's sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong. I am become a fool in glorying; ye have compelled me: for I ought to have been commended of you: for in nothing am I behind the very chiefest apostles, though I be nothing. Truly the signs of an apostle were wrought among you in all patience, in signs, and wonders, and mighty deeds.
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Thorn in the flesh
The source of this expression is
Paul of Tarsus, who uses it in
2 Cor. 12:7-10:
.....6. A meaning accepted by many Christians was that Paul had a person in his life that annoyed him. Paul would then sin (in what way is unknown, probably acting out in anger). This would show him he is man and fallible, still in need of Christ. It kept him from becoming prideful from his many glorious experiences.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_in_the_flesh