Does the Bible’s representation of trees indicate the existence of sentient tree spirit entities?
This is the continuing series responding to a teaching by another ministry encouraging seers to go on spirit trips to commune with nature spirits.
- Part 1 Concerning Stoicheion, Elementals and Nature Spirits is here.
- Part 2, Are Stoicheion really “Earth Spirits” is here,
- Part 3, Do Talking Rivers, Mountains and Stones in the Bible Represent Nature Spirits? is here.
And finally, what about tree spirits in the Bible? Sentient nature spirits? Something else? It took some extra research because I’ve never even considered this idea before.
Imagery in the Bible
The biblical authors used lots of imagery to convey their messages. According to Dr. Kirsten Nielsen, in There is Hope for a Tree, released when Nielsen was Professor of Biblical Studies at Aarhus University in Denmark, the primary function of imagery “is to express fundamental theological statements.”[ref]Kirsten Nielsen, There is Hope for a Tree: The Tree as Metaphor in Isaiah, translated by Christine and Frederick Crowley, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament: University of Sheffield, Sheffield, England, 1985.[/ref] The biblical authors, through the power of words, use the rules of their language, which is a function of a culture, to convey ideas to their readers, employing a wide range of linguistic tools, including fables, parables, metaphor, allegory, and even literalism in their imagery.
The writers expected their readers to understand what kind of language they were using. Our challenge today, thousands of years later in a culture far different than that of the biblical writers, is to understand when the writers were using fables, parables, metaphor, allegory or were being literal, and we do this by understanding their culture.
A sure way to misinterpret the Bible is to impose incorrect cultural understandings on scripture.
So, do the biblical authors, when using tree imagery, ever assume tree spirits are in view, as the ministry in question suggests?
Nielsen explains that the same imagery in various parts of the Bible might not interact with each other, the reader, the texts or reality in the same ways. When we think about how we use language, this is obvious, but it’s helpful when considering how some people may hyper-literalize scripture that the writers and intended audience obviously thought of as fable (a short story, typically with supernatural elements, and animals or plants as characters, conveying a moral).
The Cultural Background of the Tree Image
“It is important,” Nielsen explains, “to understand the image in the light of its context.”[ref] Ibid., 72.[/ref] So how did the people in the biblical world think of trees?
Trees provided timber.
“The most valued species was the cedar,” and was desired by kings including Solomon for the Temple and Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon.[ref]Idid., 74 [/ref] Cedar trees were hard to come by, being found only in distant Lebanon up in remote mountains, and was extremely valuable.
Trees provided fruit.
Trees were an important food source, such that destroying trees in war is actually legislated against (Deut 20:19-20).[ref]This section is drawn from Nielsen, 75-80.[/ref] Let’s consider how the culture thought of certain trees.
Olive Trees
Olive trees were among the most important trees to Israelites. Olive trees have good conditions for growth in Israel and can be cultivated outside normal agricultural areas because their long roots penetrated deep to the water-retaining rock crevices, leaving the fields for wheat and other crops.
Olive trees were important because they were strong, produced good shoots from the roots, and yielded a lot of fruit.
Harvested olives were used in everyday housekeeping, such as cooking. lighting, treating wounds, cosmetics, and an offering.
Olive Tree Imagery
Olive trees are evergreen and provides a good image to represent vitality and luxury in Psalms 52:10, Jeremiah 11:16, and Hosea 17:7.
The olive is harvested just before the fruit is ripe, with the fruit high on the tree knocked down with sticks. This method provides a useful image of judgement in Isaiah 17:7 and Isaiah 24:12.
The importance of olive trees is reflected in their use in the fable of Jothan in Judges 9:8: they spoke first.
Vines and Vineyards
Vines and vineyards play an even greater role in the region, also reflected in the fable of Jotham, where it reads wine cheers gods and men.
The vine requires constant attention. Vines must be protected, the soil sloughed and cleared and supported by low walls, and the plants must be pruned, supported, and staked.
Vines were often planted with a fig tree as support. Vines lose their leaves in the autumn.
Gathering grapes was a time of joy and festivity. Some are left on the vine for the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow (Deuteronomy 24:21).
Grapes were dried into raisins to make raisin cakes, evidently a favorite food (1 Samuel 25:18, 2 Samuel 6:9). And of course grapes were pressed into juice and converted into wine. The power of wine to intoxicate has generated “an ambiguous attitude towards it.” While it’s a gift of God (Psalms 104:15), was taken with meals and was present at feasts, getting drunk on it had unfortunate consequences and Aaron and his sons were forbidden from drinking it while performing their priestly roles.
Vine Imagery in the Bible
The vine resembles a lady demanding attention and consideration and the biblical writers frequently equate vine or vineyard as an image of Israel, as opposed to the self-reliant olive tree. “The wilting vine (and fig trees) can be used to describe the disintegration and destruction (Isaiah 34:4, Jeremiah 8:13). Conversely, the lively vine producing new shoots can be used as an image of future happiness.”[ref]Ibid., 77 [/ref]
Wine was also used in the Canaanite fertility cults, in the form of getting drunk and having sex beneath trees. More on this below.
Destruction of the vine was a symbol of disaster.
The Fig Tree
The third most important fruit tree is often referred with the vine. They were often planted side by side, and the fig tree could act as the climbing frame of the vine. Figs were a favorite, either picked directly from the tree or used in fig cakes. Fig plasters were used in the event of sickness. Destruction of fig trees was a symbol of disaster.
The Tree as Holy
Trees were conceived of as holy not just in Israelite religion, but in a lot of ancient religions. According to Ameisenowa and Mainland, “When the patriarchs first came to Canaan, they found the cult of the sacred stake on the hill (ashera). The stake was probably originally a living tree, which became in the course of time a tree-stump, inhabited by the goddess of fertility, Asira.”[ref]Zof’ja Ameisenowa and W.F. Mainland, “The Tree of Life in Jewish Iconography,” Journal of the Warburg Institute, Vol. 2, No. 4 (Apr., 1939), pp. 326-345.[/ref]
The idea that gods – powerful spiritual beings who were worshiped – inhabited trees was widespread in the ancient world… and apparently today.
That trees were a symbol of life makes sense in arid and semi-arid regions as in Israel. Where a tree grows there is water, and with water there is life. Yahweh was the giver of life, thus where a tree grew was blessed by Yahweh.
It was preferable to bury the dead under trees (Genesis 35:8, 1 Samuel 31:13), and even a tree stump or a carved wood pole could be thought of as a symbol of life (Judges 6:25, Deut 16:21).
Many deities were associated with trees. In Baal worship, says Nielsen, “the holy grove, with its life-giving spring and fertility-giving trees formed a framework to a number of sexual rites which the prophet Hosea condemns to the utmost… the people appear to fornicate under every green tree” [ref]Ibid., 80.[/ref]. Talk about pornography everywhere.
King Ahaz even sacrificed under green trees. One wonders if the babies conceived in cultic sex beneath trees were later sacrificed beneath trees.
Yahweh permitted himself to be viewed as a tree because he’s the giver of all life and trees represented life, and some prophets and prophetesses sat beneath trees to hear God’s voice. Tree imagery certainly conveyed the Garden of Eden – God’s home on earth, where humans partake of divine life.
When executing someone for a crime, according to the Hebrew Law, the Israelites would hang (likely this meant they were impaled) someone on a tree or pole until they died. Since a tree (or pole) was a symbol of life from God, and the person cursed dies, the person was removed from the symbol of life before nightfall rather than defiling the land with his death (Deuteronomy 21:22-23).
The Tree of Life and the King
Behind this imagery stands the concept of the Tree of Life, and its close association with the king. The tree of life describes the coming king, the Messiah (Isaiah 11:1, Isaiah 53:2). Similarly, the tree of life can also be identified with the king’s people (Psalms 80:9, Jeremiah 6:10). Individuals can be described as tree metaphors, both positively (Psalms 1:3) and negatively (Psalms 34:35).
The Tree of Life concept isn’t limited to ancient Israel and its neighbors. Again from Ameisenowa and Mainland:
The conception of the mighty tree which touches the sky with its topmost branches or itself forms the firmament, the tree in which the sun dwells and the fruits of which give immortality, is founded on the prehistoric Iranian religion, which combines the Indo-Aryan and Semitic myths of the Near East; it is common to all the peoples of Asia. The Chaldaeans knew of the giant tree which grew in Eridu and was guarded by the sun-bird. The oldest representations of the Tree of Life come from the region of the Euphrates and Tigris-the cylinders recently discovered in Ur representing the Tree of Life with a goat on each side, which Legrain assigns to the period of the first dynasty, ca. 2850 B.C.; a thousand years later the Tree of Life appears in its classical form as a fruit-laden date-palm, accompanied by two astral symbols, the sun-bird and the winged disc of the sun on the seal which is now preserved in New York.
While, according to Nielsen, “tree images have shown themselves to be well-adapted to expressing [theology] in a concise and assertive message that can be reused century after century,”[ref]Nielsen, 220[/ref] do you want to know what cannot be shown to express itself in tree imagery?
Tree spirits.
While deities and other spiritual beings were thought to inhabit trees, there’s no record from the biblical world that people thought of trees as having sentient spirits of their own.
This idea just isn’t in scripture… or anywhere else in the ancient world.
Talking Tree Spirits in Judges 9?
So what of the talking trees in Judges 9? In Judges 9, Gideon, a judge who delivered Israel, has died, but one of his sons, Abimelech, whose mother had been a concubine and was probably a Canaanite, identifies as a Canaanite.
Abimelech appealed to Canaanites living in Shechem to anoint him king over Israel (at this time Israel had no king). A temple of Baal finances his plot to assassinate the other heirs of Gideon, which he likely does as human sacrifices to Baal (Judges 9:4-5).
The Canaanite leaders then make him king by the oak of the pillar Shechem, which was one of these sacred trees dedicated to Yahweh: a particularly blasphemous act!
Gideon’s youngest son Jotham hid during the slaughter, however, and survived. Jotham shouts a parable to these people. The parable takes the form of a fable: a parable with supernatural animals or plants with a moral.
There are metaphors in the fable, since kings were thought of as trees to protect people, and Abimelech isn’t a tree, but a bramble – basically a shrub that offers no shade and is worthless except for fires and destruction.
And that’s the moral.
Jotham escapes and events eventually didn’t go well for Abimelech.
The idea that these are tree spirits is just made up; imported into the Bible to justify weird behaviors.
So, What are Tree Spirits?
I know some seers see spirits on, around, or in trees. Some hear them sing or whisper or even talk. What are they seeing and hearing? Tree spirits are not biblical, but that doesn’t mean these seers are crazy. I’ll offer 3 ideas:
- Spirits that have attached themselves to trees. Demons, watchers, territorial spirits, spiritual powers in heavenly places might be inhabiting or drawing power from these trees.
- People’s faith have created spiritual entities out of the life force that trees have by nature, and these spiritual entities are attached to these trees. This is a thought that needs developed and I can’t do it in this post.
- Tree spirits – well, maybe there are spirits of trees that are sentient.
If any of these are true, my thinking is so what?
Take your thoughts captive. Submit your thinking to God’s thinking. There’s no hint of nature spirits in the Bible, so proponents should cut it out. Why are they thinking about them?
To these proponents, I suggest: stop talking to them, stop consulting with them, stop interacting with them. There’s only one spirit you should be talking with: The Holy Spirit.
The seer gift is not for cavorting with other spirits, but to see what God or the enemy is doing and to act accordingly.
We are called to minister to people, not spirits. We are called to minister to God’s imagers: not plants.
We are called to represent Jesus in the physical realm, not the spiritual realm. Cultivating gardens to make earth look like heaven is wonderful. Asking or taking advice from the plants in the garden is foolish.
Our physical activities can impact the spirit realm, cleansing it of all demonic influences, so start with changing how you think about it. Get my book for more on that. The more people interact with tree spirits, the more they’ll find themselves lured into sexual activity outside the freedom God grants in a covenant marriage.
Discuss this at MeWe
What do you think about all of this? Comment below or on a social media group for seers.
Several people have asked where they can interact with other seers. I have a group on the privacy-conscious social media site called MeWe. You can join the group there.
The conversation there is often sparse – it’s certainly not like some Facebook groups I’m in. But it’s private, unlike Facebook. Please join and meet some of the others who lurk, waiting for seer-related conversation.
Story of the Bible Small Group Curriculum
Don’t forget the 7-part Youth Curriculum, which helps young people find their place in God’s supernatural story. I’m giving it away for free. Get it here.
Thank you for this post, Doug. It is a very logical and biblical conclusion. This is very needful because this whole perspective, the seer perspective, is so confusing. I often think of the ” Blind men and the Elephant ” story. We all see in part, but can’t find the whole truth on our own. Sometimes, what clues we hear aren’t even correct. I don’t know where else to begin other than GOD’s word! He truly is our foundation, isn’t He?!