earthworks, or in hidden pits; impalement was used also as a method of execution.262 Hughes supposes this to be the background thought here. Paul has in view this first sense of σκόλοψ, the image ‘of a body helplessly impaled’.263 D. M. Park likewise adopts it, as more suitable to the severe suffering implied by v. 8.264 The second sense, ‘thorn’, ‘splinter’, is found in the LXX, whilst the alternative, ‘stake’, is not.265 In two possibly significant passages the word is used metaphorically with