Search It Out · The way we see it
Was Paul's thorn in the flesh a sickness?
Faithful Christians differ on this question. This is where Come Find God lands and why, and how others read it.
Our answer: We think it most likely wasn't. Read where the picture comes from and what surrounds it, and the thorn looks like people: the opponents who fought Paul wherever he went.
Many people have been told that God gave Paul a sickness to keep him humble, so God must send sickness to us too. Let's see what the text itself says.
Read the verse itself
2 Corinthians 12:7: or because of these surpassingly great revelations. So to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.
2 Corinthians 12:8: Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.
2 Corinthians 12:9: But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is perfected in weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly in my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest on me.
Paul calls it "a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me." Notice the three words. A thorn (skolops) is a sharp stake. A messenger (angelos) is a person sent by someone. And the word for torment, kolaphizō, means to strike with fists. It's the word used when Jesus was struck before his crucifixion (Matthew 26:67).
A messenger who keeps punching sounds more like a person than a disease.
Where Bible readers had heard of thorns before
Numbers 33:55: But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land before you, those you allow to remain will become barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides; they will harass you in the land where you settle.
Joshua 23:13: know for sure that the LORD your God will no longer drive out these nations before you. Instead, they will become for you a snare and a trap, a scourge in your sides and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from this good land that the LORD your God has given you.
Judges 2:3: So now I tell you that I will not drive out these people before you; they will be thorns in your sides, and their gods will be a snare to you.”
Ezekiel 28:24: For the people of Israel will no longer face a pricking brier or a painful thorn from all around them who treat them with contempt. Then they will know that I am the Lord GOD.’
In the Old Testament, thorns in your eyes and sides are always people: the nations Israel failed to drive out of the land, and neighbors who treated Israel with contempt. Paul knew the Old Testament in Greek, and the Greek Old Testament uses his exact word, skolops, in Numbers 33:55 and Ezekiel 28:24.
Open these side by side: the words that keep turning up nearby are sides, drive out, land, nations and snare.
Who Paul was fighting
2 Corinthians 11:13: For such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as apostles of Christ.
2 Corinthians 11:14: And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.
2 Corinthians 11:15: It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their actions.
Chapters 10 to 13 are about false teachers attacking Paul in Corinth. A few verses before the thorn, Paul calls them "false apostles" who masquerade as apostles of Christ, the way Satan's servants masquerade as servants of righteousness. When he then speaks of a messenger of Satan, his readers already had faces to put to it.
Paul's own list
2 Corinthians 12:10: That is why, for the sake of Christ, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
2 Corinthians 11:24: Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one.
2 Corinthians 11:25: Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked. I spent a night and a day in the open sea.
2 Corinthians 11:26: In my frequent journeys, I have been in danger from rivers and from bandits, in danger from my countrymen and from the Gentiles, in danger in the city and in the country, in danger on the sea and among false brothers,
Right after the thorn, Paul lists the weaknesses he boasts in: insults, hardships, persecutions and difficulties. A chapter earlier he listed what those were: whippings, beatings, a stoning, and dangers from his own people and from Gentiles. Sickness isn't on either list.
The illness argument, and a closer look
Galatians 4:13: You know that it was because of an illness that I first preached the gospel to you.
Galatians 4:14: And although my illness was a trial to you, you did not despise or reject me. Instead, you welcomed me as if I were an angel of God, as if I were Christ Jesus Himself.
Galatians 4:15: What then has become of your blessing? For I can testify that, if it were possible, you would have torn out your eyes and given them to me.
2 Corinthians 12:10: That is why, for the sake of Christ, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
Paul says he first preached to the Galatians "because of an illness," and that they would have torn out their eyes for him. That's why many careful readers think the thorn was an eye disease or another sickness. But look at the Greek. The word the BSB translates "illness" is astheneia, which simply means weakness. It's the same word Paul uses in 2 Corinthians 12:10 for the weaknesses he delights in right after the thorn: insults, hardships, persecutions and difficulties. And in verse 14, "my illness" is literally "my flesh": his body was a trial for them to look at.
"You would have torn out your eyes and given them to me" may simply mean they would have given anything for him, the way we say "I'd give my right arm."
What happened to Paul in Galatia
Acts 14:19: Then some Jews arrived from Antioch and Iconium and won over the crowds. They stoned Paul and dragged him outside the city, presuming he was dead.
Acts 14:20: But after the disciples had gathered around him, he got up and went back into the city. And the next day he left with Barnabas for Derbe.
2 Timothy 3:11: my persecutions, and the sufferings that came upon me in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra. What persecutions I endured! Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them.
Galatians 6:17: From now on let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.
On his first journey Paul preached in Antioch, Iconium, Lystra and Derbe, cities in the Roman province of Galatia. He was driven out of one city after another, and at Lystra he was stoned so badly that the crowd dragged him out of the city, thinking he was dead. The next day he went on to Derbe. Years later he still remembered "the sufferings that came upon me in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra." And he ends his letter to the Galatians: "I bear on my body the marks of Jesus." A man arriving beaten, scarred and barely able to walk would be a trial to look at. We honestly think this lines up with Galatians 4 better than a sickness does.
If the "weakness" the Galatians saw was the wounds of persecution, then the strongest argument for illness becomes one more piece of evidence for persecution. (This reading fits best if Paul wrote Galatians to these southern churches of Acts 13-14, as many scholars think; some place the Galatians farther north.)
So, what did we find?
Whatever the thorn was, God's answer is the point: "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9). And if the thorn was persecution, it fits what Jesus promised his followers: "If they persecuted me, they will persecute you too" (John 15:20). It isn't a verse about God sending sickness.
Where Christians differ
Many good scholars believe the thorn was physical: an eye disease (from Galatians 4:15 and 6:11), malaria (William Ramsay), or chronic pain, and they read Galatians 4:13 as a real sickness. Early Christian writers were divided too. Tertullian guessed a pain in the ear or head, while John Chrysostom (Homily 26 on 2 Corinthians) rejected that idea and named Paul's opponents, such as Alexander the coppersmith. We think the evidence leans toward persecution, but whatever it was, Paul's point is the same: God's grace was enough.
Scripture quotations are from the Berean Standard Bible (public domain).
More Bible studies and word studies · Come home: how to know God