AMERICAN FORESTS 
 
Trees of the Bible 
(Continued from page 717) 
 
vised Version, the Hebrew word in this in- 
stance being tirzah. This root word, tirzah 
(ilex), is, however, obsolete in Hebrew and 
nothing in philology seems to indicate what 
particular trees are meant.   Yet, cypress 
trees there were. 
The word 'oren, a fir, occurring in the 
same verse, has been rendered ash in the Re- 
vised Version, and may be the maritime or 
stone pine frequently found there at the 
present time. 
The word berosh, for fir trees, has been 
applied to several trees, among them the 
pine, the tall juniper, and the wild cypress. 
The last two would seem to meet all require- 
ments, but the wild cypress, still to be found 
in Lebanon, is more favored as the probable 
choice. 
The plane tree, 'armon, is rendered chest- 
nut in the 1611 Version (Genesis 30:37; 
Ezekial 31:8). The tall, thick stem of the 
horse chestnut of Persia may have led to 
this interpretation, giant specimens of which 
may be seen on the grounds of the Capitol 
at Washington, D. C., as well as of the 
plane tree, orientalis platanus. 
The terebinik of Hosea 4:13 was an elm 
in the earlier Version, but the translation for 
the poplar tree remains the same for both. 
"They burn incense upon the hills, under oaks 
and poplars and terebinths, because the 
shadow thereof is good." 
The poplar tree, libhneh, the white moun- 
tain, the root of Lebanon, was doubtless a 
tree on Lebanon, and yet the Arabic word, 
libna, the storax, means a shrub. This tree 
is said to have been common in the Valley 
of the Jordan, and is now found growing at 
Banias, as well as some fine examples to be 
encountered, in the Ghor, for instance, with 
smaller ones near Jericho. But the fact that 
it was deemed by the Arabs the best wood 
from which to make charcoal for gunpowder 
has rendered this tree almost extinct, the 
Turkish government at one time having 
levied a tax which might be paid in char- 
coal. 
Not least in importance among the ever- 
green trees of the Old Testament are the 
Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowl- 
edge of Good and Evil. It is significant of 
the interdependent relation between people 
and trees that, when two great truths were 
to be made known, the symbol used was the 
tree. 
The Tree of Life of the Book of Genesis 
may well have had its inception in the story 
of the tree of life of Persia or of India, of 
which if a man ate or drank he took on 
immortality. Ezekial pictures the ideal state 
and Messianic Age as a place where a life- 
giving river flows from the sanctuary of 
God, and having trees upon its banks on 
 
either side yielding fruit every month "whose 
leaf shall not fade, neither shall the fruit 
thereof be consumed  . . . and the fruit 
thereof shall be for meat, and the leaf for 
medicine" (47:12).. John, in Revelations 22, 
draws much the same word picture and, in 
2:7, calls it "hidden manna."  The Book 
of Enoch, thought to have been written in 
the second or first centuries before Christ, 
says the Tree of Life "has a fragrance be- 
yond all fragrances; its leaves and bloom 
and wood wither not forever; its fruit is 
beautiful and resembles the date palm, and 
it is permitted no single mortal to touch this 
tree . . . until the time of the Great 
Judgment." 
The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and 
Evil has not, it seems, received the same at- 
tention from the Chronicler, possibly on the 
theory that sufficient information had been 
diffused. The "tree of wisdom," it is called 
in the Book of Enoch, "fair and beautiful 
and of a ravishing look from which our 
hoary first parent and our aged first mother 
ate and found the knowledge of wisdom 
and their eyes were opened." Enoch further 
compares it to the Johannes bread tree, "with 
fruit like a cluster of grapes, very good, and 
the fragrance of the tree spreads far around." 
Paradise itself is mentioned in the Scrip- 
tures only with reference to a forest (Nehe- 
miah 2:8), or an orchard (Ecclesiastes 2:5; 
Canticles 4:13). For some of us it would be 
paradise indeed. 
(In the January issue Miss Borah traces 
the oak tree through the Biblical narrative 
of the Old Testament.) 
 
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