Brier

Prickly vegetation, painful to the touch, often seen as a symbol of dereliction.

A brier as prickly vegetation

Ezekiel 28:24 See also Isaiah 7:23–25; Ezekiel 2:6; Micah 7:2–4

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.’

A brier as a symbol of dereliction

Isaiah 5:6 See also Job 31:38–40; Isaiah 32:11–13, Isaiah 55:13; Hosea 9:6

I will make it a wasteland, neither pruned nor cultivated, and thorns and briers will grow up. I will command the clouds that rain shall not fall on it.”

Briers are destroyed by fire

Isaiah 10:17 See also Isaiah 9:18, Isaiah 27:4

And the Light of Israel will become a fire, and its Holy One a flame. In a single day it will burn and devour Assyria’s thorns and thistles.

Briers as an instrument of punishment

Judges 8:16 See also Judges 8:4–7

Then he took the elders of the city, and using the thorns and briers of the wilderness, he disciplined the men of Succoth.