Before your pots can feel the thorns,.... Which is soon done; for as dry thorns make a great blaze, so they give a quick heat; the pots soon feel them, or the water in them soon receives heat from them.
From imprecations the psalmist proceeds to prophesy, and foretells the sudden destruction of wicked men, which would be before a pot could be heated with a blaze of thorns. The Targum is,"before the wicked become tender, they harden as the thorn:''that is, they never become tender, or have any tender consciences, but are hardened in sin from their infancy.
Some render the words, "before your thorns grow up to a brier" or "bramble" ; little thorns become great ones, tender thorns hard ones, as Jarchi; that is, as he interprets it, before the children of the wicked are grown up, they are destroyed; those sons of Belial, who are like to thorns thrust away, 2Sa 23:6.