Page 87 - Through New Eyes

S E V E N

TREES AND THORNS

Trees arrest our attention in the earliest chapters of the
Bible; we are told not only that the Garden of Eden was planted
with all kinds of trees, but that there were two special trees in its
center, the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good
and Evil. Adam’s interaction with these two trees almost doomed
humanity, had not the Shoot of Jesse come to die on the Tree of
the Cross. As a result, God’s people can be replanted, and flour-
ish “like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, which yields it
fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither” (Psalm 1:3).
The trees of Eden are said to be good for food, but also de-
lightful to look at (Genesis 2:9). In other words, in terms of their
appearance they were glorious. Lovely trees are, then, but one
more emblem of the glory of God in the world.
Because of man’s sin, however, the ground would yield ugly
thorns as well as splendid trees (Genesis 3:18). Though this is not
explicitly said, the symbolic structure of Genesis 3 and 4 makes
it plain that man, himself made of earth, would yield sons who
are like trees and thorns; and thus we have a tree, Abel, and a
thorn, Cain. The Bible continues to picture the unrighteous as
thorns, as in Judges 9:14-15. Such bramble-men imposed their
curse on our Lord when they gave Him a crown of thorns (Mat-
thew 27:29).

Trees as Provision
As we noticed, Genesis 2 speaks of trees as providing both
food and beauty. In terms of food, we can look back at Genesis
1:29, where God had said, “Behold, I have given you every plant
yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree in
which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; it shall be food for you.”
These two categories of food plants were established on the third
81