Today we’re going to talk about trees.
We’ll be looking mostly at the Tree of Life, which is the focus of v. 22, our current location in the story. But first I’d like to say a few words about the two special trees in this story.
Why do I call them special? Let’s look again at Gen 2:9, where the trees first appear:
YHWH God caused to sprout from the ground every tree desirable for seeing or good for eating, and the Tree of Life was also in the garden, and so was the Tree of Sorting.
I discussed those translations here and here; now I want to talk about a bigger subject. What exactly are these trees doing here?
In order to answer that question, permit me to take you on a quick side trip to the book of Ruth, where our guide will be Adele Berlin, a professor (now emerita) at the University of Maryland. The plot of the book hinges on the fact that Ruth’s Israelite husband has died, and his remaining male relatives have some responsibility for her. The technical details seem to interact with those in the Genesis 38 story about Judah and Tamar and also with the laws in Deut 25:5–10 about a man who dies childless.
Many people who are interested in the Bible, scholars included, have tried hard to reconcile those three different sources. You can add a fourth source if you consider the rules about levirate marriage (that is, marrying your brother-in-law) as they evolved from Deuteronomy 25 into the Jewish laws applicable today, along with more general laws elsewhere in the Torah about the “redeemer” (גואל go’el), the relative who is supposed to have your back in certain situations.
Berlin’s insight was that it is the story that is primary. The legal situation in the book of Ruth works perfectly for the story the author wanted to tell for the simple reason that she shaped the legal situation for the demands of her narrative. The rules that apply in a narrative do not have to make legal sense. What they have to make is story sense.
Now back to our trees. Even if you believe that these two trees actually existed, or perhaps even still exist in some metaphysical, no longer accessible reality, it makes no sense to ask what scientific names we should give to them or what their precise botanical characteristics are. They are in our story for story purposes.
The proof, even for the most traditional Bible readers, is in Genesis 1, when trees are created on Day Three:
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Bible Guy to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.