“068. THE GROVE—GENESIS 21:33”

The Grove—Gen_21:33

In the history of Abraham’s descendants, the use of groves is continually represented as objectionable and idolatrous; and on entering the land of Canaan, they are particularly enjoined to cut down the groves of the inhabitants, or to burn them with fire. It is named among the most serious offences of the kings of Israel, and some of those of Judah, that they planted groves, or did not cut down the groves; Note: See Exo_34:13. Deu_12:13. 1Ki_14:15.] and those kings by whom groves were destroyed, are greatly applauded. Note: 2Ki_18:4; 2Ki_23:14. 2Ch_14:3; 2Ch_17:6; 2Ch_19:3; 2Ch_31:1; 2Ch_34:3.]

Yet we see Abraham planting a grove at Beersheba, where his camp had for some time been established, and which became afterwards one of the chief stations of his tribe. What can be more natural, it may be asked, than that a man should plant a grove for shade and refreshment near his camp, Yet it is not so. Planting trees is among the very last objects that a pastoral chief would think of, had he no farther views. And, indeed, it is expressly stated, that he had a religious object. “Abraham planted a grove in Beersheba, and called there upon the name of the Lord, the everlasting God.” How, then, did that, which was harmless or laudable in Abraham, become a crime to his descendants? The answer is not difficult to find.

We must regard Abraham, not as an isolated individual, but as the chief and master of many hundred persons, who worshipped God with him by sacrifice and prayer. They must have met together for these acts of worship, which the patriarch doubtless himself conducted. One tent could not have contained them all; but a grove of trees would afford all the shade and shelter required. Hence, when men had no fixed abodes, or afterwards, when they had not yet learned how to construct edifices large enough for many to join them in an act of worship, groves of trees became their temples—the first temples of mankind. It was also, it would seem, regarded as becomingly reverent, that the altar appropriated to sacrificial worship should not stand out among the common objects of the way-side, but should be decently veiled from careless notice by a screen of trees.

This seems obvious and natural, and is alone sufficient to account for the use of groves in worship. But as things rapidly tended to corruption in those early ages, the worship in groves became idolatrous, and ideas came to be connected with them which were in the eyes of God abominable. It was then as with the brazen serpent, which in the first instance was preserved as a monument of a memorable transaction, but which, when it began to be looked to by the people with idolatrous eyes, was very properly destroyed by the good king Hezekiah, 2Ki_18:4.

So, the worship in groves was no harm in itself. It was even usefully solemnizing; and it appears to have involved a recollection of Eden, to which, as simply understood, it would be difficult to ascribe any other than a salutary and useful influence. But when gross idols arose around, and the groves were considered proper to their worship, it behooved God to make a distinction between his worship and theirs; and to show that he had no fellowship with the powers of darkness. Therefore groves were forbidden to be planted near his sanctuary or altar, and those which had been polluted by idol worship were to be destroyed. Let it also be recollected that it was in the highest degree important to check, among the Israelites, the universal tendency to multiply gods, and to localize them—which would have unfitted them for that testimony to the Divine unity which it was their special calling to bear, and for which they had been set apart among the nations. It was, therefore, strictly enjoined that there should be in their land but one altar, and one place of ritual service. Had groves and altars been allowed to be set up in every place that men thought proper, it is not difficult to see that a separate and distinct god would soon be assigned to every shrine; and the great doctrine, to uphold which Israel was made a nation, would in no long time have been utterly lost, so far as their agency in its conservation was concerned. Nothing but a stringent and absolute interdiction could have met the danger. Looking at the subject in this view, we find ample reasons; not only for the prohibition of groves near the altar of God, but for their general suppression throughout the land. With regard to the former interdiction, it may be added, that the existence of a grove near the sanctuary might not only have seemed to assimilate the Lord with the idols of neighboring lands, but may have tended to bring down his worship to a level with theirs. Nothing is more notorious than the shameful orgies that were celebrated in these sacred groves; and it might well be feared that the presence of a grove would soon bring around the sanctuary a crowd of idle devotees, coming, not to worship, but to enjoy themselves, and where the leafy screen and the cool and pleasant shade would soon allure to all kinds of licentious freedom. The many allusions to the subject in Scripture, show how general and how ancient was this addiction to worship in groves; and the difficulty with which the Israelites were kept from it appears throughout the sacred history. Indeed, so common was the practice, that the geographer Strabo, who lived in the century before Christ, states that in his time “all sacred places, even where no trees were to be seen, were called groves.”

That this practice probably originated in the traditions of the garden of Eden, and of the trees of life and of knowledge, we have had a former occasion of indicating, Note: Second Week—Saturday.] and some remarkable corroborations of this were then pointed out. From the nature of the case, the analogies of this kind are to be sought in the actual practices of the heathen, and not in the short allusions, mostly prohibitive, of Scripture. There is, indeed, one text which has been thought to bear strongly on this view. It is in Isa_66:17. “They that sanctify themselves and purify themselves in the gardens, behind one tree in the midst.” But the text will not bear this stress. The very word (“tree”) which is most important to this view, is not in the original, but is supplied; and the “one in the midst” does not appear to be a tree, but a person, behind whom the other worshippers in the grove arranged themselves, and whose worship he conducted, It is still the usual practice of worship in the East for a person to set himself in advance of the others, as a sort of fugleman, whose acts and motions are imitated by the others. In this, as in many other cases, support for particular views has often been sought in texts, which are seen to have a wholly different meaning when they come to be rightly understood.

It claims to be noticed that, although Beersheba is the only one of Abraham’s stations in Canaan where he is said to have planted a grove, yet there is evidence that there were trees at two of the three other stations which he frequented in that land. His first station on entering the land was near Shechem, under or hard by some great and famous tree, or collection of trees; for the place called the plain of Moreh, means properly the terebinth tree (or grove) of Moreh; and there is evidence to show that this spot was regarded as a place peculiarly appropriate to the worship of God. To this source may, indeed, be traced the figure which Shechem makes in the sacerdotal history of the Old Testament—probably long after the original terebinth grove in the neighborhood had ceased to exist, and when any attention to the place as a grove would have been against the law.

Then, again, at Mamre, by Hebron, the presence of a grove is clearly indicated. In Gen_13:18, it is said, “Abram removed his tent and came and dwelt in the plain of Mamre.” The word translated “the plain” is plural, and accordingly, in Gen_18:1, we read, “the Lord appeared unto him in the plains of Mamre.” The plural would be awkward if the word really meant plains; but it means trees—the same as at Moreh, that is terebinth trees—though some think oaks. In fact, immediately after, we read that the patriarch invited his guests to rest “under the tree”—that is, as we may conceive, the nearest, and probably the most conspicuous, near which his tent was pitched. In fact, the tree of Abraham at this place is historically famous; and on the spot there is still a most noble tree, locally regarded as representing that beneath which the angels were entertained by the patriarch.

Autor: JOHN KITTO