What Was Paul’s Thorn in the Flesh?

Q:One of the recent Sunday readings spoke of a thorn in Paul’s flesh (2 Corinthians 12:7). What was that thorn?

A:No one knows for sure what Paul meant when he spoke of the thorn in his flesh. Some speculate that he referred to carnal temptations. Yet Tomas O’Curraoin, S.P.S., in a New Commentary on Holy Scripture (Nelson), says that was certainly not the case. He suggests it was a chronic humiliating malady with acute attacks, such as “marsh fever.”

John McKenzie in his Dictionary of the Bible is just as certain Paul did not mean an illness. He says that some interpret the thorn to mean persecution by former coreligionists. Jerome Murphy O’Connor in the New Jerome Biblical Commentary says the passage is widely interpreted to refer to a psychic or physical ailment which, in Jewish tradition, would be caused by Satan or a demon.

But Murphy O’Connor rushes on to say the passage really suggests an external personal source of affliction. He writes that in the Old Testament thorns meant enemies. The thorn in Paul’s flesh is the hostility coming from within his own communities.