Wait a little bit: A lesson from the thorn tree

South Africa is a land of rare trees, strange cacti, and bushes that hum ancient tunes. Their shapes are sometimes distorted by time, their thorns hardened by desert winds, their names whispered in dozens of tongues—Zulu, Afrikaans, Khoisan, and those older still. These trees do not merely grow; they witness. Their roots stretch deep into the soil but also into the psyche, into myth and memory.

Afrikaans has a very special name for the tree: “Wag- ‘n-bietjiebos – Wag-‘n-bietjieboom or: Blikbaar wag-‘n-bietjiebos”. It is clear and quite amazing. It means: “Wait A Little Bit Tree”. Thus, it is full of thorns, very green with some fruit, and it definitely looks nice and appealing. A bush-tree of stubborn thorns, of patience incarnate with a specific local multi-African clear-cut Creolized Dutch name.

It grows in dry and thorny places, places where time does not run but limps along slowly, deliberately. It exists not just in the veld of the Karoo, but astonishingly, also in Jerusalem, in the valley down the Knesset. That battered, beloved city—where the sacred and the shattered sit side by side—knows this tree too. It teaches us something vital for dangerous days: the discipline of waiting, the necessity of thorns, the holiness of time withheld.

The wag-‘n-bietjiebos is also known as the Buffalo Thorn Tree, Ziziphus mucronata, a name that travels in time: from Greek (ziziphos) to Arabic (zizûf), from the ancient shores of the Levant to the routes of trade and exile, from Zanzibarand the coast that run down into Africa’s heart. It carries a lineage older than Latin, older than the names we know for “tree”—boom, bos, arbor, etz-עץ. This is not just flora; it is a living totem. In Christian tradition, the thorns that once crowned Jesus were said to come from this tree, supposedly from the present Monastery of the Cross that belongs to the Georgian tradition. The same genus, the same twisted message: pain, endurance, royalty mocked—and glory deferred.

In Hebrew, patience is savlanut\סבלנות, from the root s-v-l\סבל, which also means suffering. The wag-‘n-bietjiebos does not hide its suffering. Its thorns are unapologetic, defensive, like the barbed memory of a wounded people. But there is more. Once those thorns are passed, there is softness within. It is the same paradox as the sabra, the cactus used to describe native-born Israelis—tough outside, tender within.

Psalm 1 compares the righteous man to a tree planted by streams of water—always bearing fruit, never withering. The Hebrew speaks of yehgeh\יהגה, the murmuring meditation of someone who chews over God’s Word like a cow ruminates—herkou in Afrikaans, herkauwen in Dutch. Patience is not passive. It is a labor, a repeated inward journey. The wag-‘n-bietjiebos, with its immobile resilience, stands as such a meditator in the wild: it reflects, waits, remembers, witnesses.

In Jerusalem, this tree takes on a strange familiarity. There, in the City of David and on the Mount of Olives, the winds tell older stories. Olive trees bend with wisdom, but the wag-‘n-bietjiebos is not so accommodating. It stands guard. It holds back. Indeed, it resists the hand that reaches too quickly. It reminds that in order to survive here, we must wait a little bit—for understanding, for justice, for peace that does not rush in like a fire but grows slowly like a tree with roots in a stone environment.

To call it a cradle tree is no exaggeration. In certain places, nomads have used its entangled branches to build enclosures, make beds, mark the edges of safety. In times of fear or wandering, it offers a natural womb—thorned but protective. One does not enter easily, but inside there is calm.

In today’s Jerusalem, this truth remains. The city waits—not idly, but painfully—for some final reckoning or revelation. It waits for healing. So does the tree. Its fruits are bitter and sweet, medicine and sustenance. Like the land, they demand time.

You may hear the words – thanks for your patience—daily in Israel. They are spoken half-ironically, half-desperately. Patience is a civic virtue here because the absence of it would be collapse. And what is patience if not a national burden in both South Africa and the Middle East? These are lands where memory weighs heavily, where forgetting is both impossible and dangerous.

In South Africa, 2008 brought waves of xenophobic violence, people attacking strangers for being foreign—”stealing jobs,” as they said, “taking space.” Amid the chaos, a song emerged, “Wag-’n-bietjie.” It became a kind of refrain, a folk-spoken command not just to others but to the self: wait a little bit. See first. Listen first. Trees do not move. And they do not forget.

The following year, the economy recovered. But scars remain. The message of the wag-‘n-bietjiebos was not to delay forever, not to freeze. Rather, to wait just long enough. To act only after watching. To not slash when we should shelter. In times of threat—whether war, exile, or inner unrest—this is radical wisdom.

Perhaps, this thorned bush whispers most clearly in our time is a plea for sacred delay. In a world governed by immediacy—by rapid reaction, by weaponized urgency, by the speed of algorithms and collapsing time—the wag-’n-bietjiebos stands as resistance. It neither flees nor advances; it stays. It reminds us that wisdom is not found in reflex, but in stillness. That some truths take years to ripen. That patience is not the absence of action but the slow art of discernment. We no longer wait well. We demand conclusions, sides, outcomes—yet this tree suggests another way: one that honors suffering without rushing to vengeance, one that listens before it wounds.

And maybe this is the deeper power of a cradle tree rooted in both Africa and Jerusalem: it offers shelter not just to one people or language, but to all who are lost or in flight. In these days when so many are exiled again—when homes are shattered in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan – recently even in Tel Aviv, Haifa, Tamra and beyond—this ancient thorn bush may still hold enough space for us to pause together. A missile cut down a tree in the center of Tel Aviv. Jews, Christians, Muslims, seekers and doubters: we are all, in a way, trying to be human in a time of thorns. And the tree waits for us.

Trees mark territory. They define boundaries. But some trees, like the Ziziphus thorn tree, mark time. They are not merely vegetation; they are slow clocks, ecological metronomes. The wag-‘n-bietjiebos reminds us that suffering is not meaningless if it is endured with wisdom. That thorns are not cruelty but sometimes compassion. That in both South Africa and Jerusalem, survival has never been smooth. It has always involved expectancy.

Waiting through pain, in exile. Waiting for someone else’s anger to pass. For one’s own courage to return. Waiting with the hope that something still breathes under the ash.

And so the tree stands. Not just in the veld, not just in the hills of Golan, Judea, but in the imagination of all who hope and do not hurry to conclusions. Cradled among thorns, we too are asked: can we wait a little bit? We are alive.