Pricks in your eyes, and thorns in your sides— God here declares to the Israelites, that if they mix themselves with the Canaanites, whom they suffered to remain in the land, those Canaanites should be the instruments, in his hand, to chastise them, and should cause them evils as dolorous in their kind as those which arise from a thorn in the eye, or poignard in the side. See Ezekiel 28:24. Joshua intimated the same threatening to them before he died, Judges 23:13 of which an angel put them in mind, Judges 2:3. And so it came to pass, as we read there, Numbers 33:13 and throughout that whole book.
Related Commentaries of Numbers 33:55
Numbers 33:55
55 But if ye will not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you; then it shall come to pass, that those which ye let remain of them shall be pricks in your eyes, and thorns in your sides, and shall vex you in the land wherein ye dwell.