a tree in the wilderness

 

The Hebrew Bible/Old Testament recounts the history of a loose familial federation of chieftain-led tribes uniting under a high king. The king, Saul, was initially popular, but over time became increasingly paranoid, consumed by jealousy towards one of his closest generals, David. His life now in danger, David flees to live as a hunted outlaw. When Saul, along with some of his sons, later dies in battle, and one of his surviving sons succeeds as king, civil war breaks out. Eventually, the rebel forces win, and David is proclaimed high king. Seven yeas later, he moves his capital to Jerusalem and consolidates his reign by bringing the tabernacle and the ark of the covenant – cultic symbols of the god Yahweh – there.

At one point as an outlaw chieftain, David and his men are living in a cave system at En Gedi, near to the Dead Sea – the lowest point on the surface of the earth, and the lowest point in David’s personal history. The Dead Sea, and flat lands along its southern parts, are so salty as to be lifeless. But En Gedi is an oasis. Here, acacia trees – the wood from which the tabernacle and its furniture, the altar and the ark of the covenant, were made – grow beside streams that run all year round, fed by an aquifer, a great underground reservoir. Elsewhere, lone acacia trees offer life in ephemeral riverbeds that run dry for much of the year, or whose streams run braided through shifting sediment.

Whenever you read about a tree or trees in the Bible, it stands as a symbol for a person or people. This is one of the key repeated symbols in these scriptures, or holy texts. And David reflects on the trees of En Gedi, declaring: ‘Blessed are they who have not walked in the counsel of the wicked, nor lingered in the way of sinners, nor sat in the assembly of the scornful. Their delight is in the law of the Lord and they meditate on his law day and night. Like a tree planted by streams of water bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither, whatever they do, it shall prosper.’ In time this image comes to open the five books of collected Psalms that will serve as the song book of the temple that David’s son, Solomon, will build in Jerusalem.

Some four hundred years after David, Jerusalem is besieged by the neo-Babylonian empire. The tribes that were united under David and Solomon were long torn in two, the northern tribes succeeding from southern rule, and later laid to waste by the Assyrians. And now an enemy has surrounded Jerusalem, which holds out, for now. Against this backdrop, the prophet Jeremiah draws on David’s imagery, declaring:

‘Thus says the Lord: Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength, whose hearts turn away from the Lord. They shall be like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when relief comes. They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.

‘Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.’

(Jeremiah 17.5-8)

There are some interesting points to note:

[1] The wilderness experience is non-negotiable, not optional, it is a given, part of life – and the opportunity to discover Yahweh’s faithfulness.

[2] In the preceding verses (17.1-4) Jeremiah criticizes the people for constructing wooden poles used for the cultic worship of Canaanite gods (compare using acacia poles in the cultic worship of Yahweh) and erecting them next to living trees, to secure their vitality.

[3] Those who rely on their own strength to get through the challenges of life are described as choosing to live in an uninhabited salt land. The word for to live is to tabernacle, evoking the presence of Yahweh in the middle of the community of their ancestors after the exodus from oppression in Egypt. Moreover, the word for salt is connected to the idea of craftsmanship, expressly used of the construction of the tabernacle in the wilderness. In other words, the outward activity of those whom Jeremiah calls cursed is indistinguishable from the outward activity of those whom he calls blessed.

It is possible (not only to misappropriate, as above, but also) to go through the ritual motions that help us draw on the lifegiving presence of the Lord while missing the lifegiving presence of the Lord. You can devote your time, skill, effort – your life – to it. We can even deceive ourselves, for ultimately only the Lord is capable to test the mind (in fact, the Hebrew is kidney, an organ that played a prominent role in the sacrificial system, and evokes, for us today, images of filtration, dialysis, and transplant surgery) and search the heart (17.9, 10).

Here is the thing: everybody wants to live a fruitful life. No one really wants to settle for a life that isn’t flourishing. The question is whether we think we can resource that from our own effort, or by dependence on some external source – and if an external source, what our god or gods of choice will be.

Jeremiah wants to know how his Iron Age contemporaries will answer this question. His words survive – despite being burnt at the king’s orders at the time and needing to be re-written – because the question still stands.