Trees as Beloved Life-Giving Creatures
Photo by redcharlie on Unsplash
Consider the last line of Joyce Kilmer’s sentimental, often heard poem, Trees:
“Only God can make a tree.”
The Torah voices one commandment concerning trees that is practical and realistic:
If you besiege a town for a long time, making war against it in order to take it, you must not destroy its trees by wielding an ax against them. Although you may take food from them, you must not cut them down. Are trees in the field human beings that they should come under siege from you? You may destroy only trees that you know do not produce food; you may cut them down for use in building siegeworks against the town that makes war with you, until it falls (Deuteronomy 20:19-20).
As is often the case in Deuteronomy, verse 19 lays down a general principle, and then what follows refines the principle in order to make required distinctions. The commandment recognizes that war is a historical reality and war requires the utilization of many trees. But it exempts from such military destructiveness fruit trees because they are bearers of food. Moses knows that the delicate supply of food now on offer must be honored and protected, and draws a limit against military objectives. We may take “trees” as representative of God’s good provision for the earth:
-Trees are a source of food. They are the producers of sustenance that must be treasured and protected. In a pre-scientific mode, it could be readily recognized that trees are part of the ecosystem that makes all of life, including human life, possible. Thus at the very outset, food is on offer through the generativity of creation:
God said, “See, I have given you every plant seedling that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every plant for food” (Genesis 1:29-30).
-Trees as a source of food are not autonomous. They are creatures who receive life from the creator, so that the life of a tree is everywhere referred back to God. It is the God of blessing who gives trees the generative force to produce fruit:
I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its produce, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit (Leviticus 26:4).
-The prophet Ezekiel offers a seminar on trees. Trees are finally subject to the governance of the creator:
All the trees of the field shall know that I am the Lord.
I bring low the high tree, I make high the low tree;
I dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish.
I the Lord have spoken; I will accomplish it (Ezekiel 17:24).
Trees are a stand-in for worldly power, in this case the empire of Assyria (Ezekiel 31:4-18). Thus the mighty cedar, Assyria, grows tall above all other trees, presides mightily over other nations, and waxes in beauty. But it grows too tall, too proud, and too arrogant, and so has to be curbed by the rule of God. After that harsh judgment, however, the prophet circles back to offer fruit that is a gift from the good creator who provides abundance that will counter every famine:
I will make the fruit of the tree and the produce of the field abundant, so that you may never again suffer the disgrace of famine among the nations (36:30).
Even the harsh conquest of the land of promise is remembered as an opportunity to delight in the richness of its trees, made possible by God’s great goodness:
And they captured fortress cities and a rich land, and took possession of houses filled with all sorts of goods, hewn cisterns, vineyards, olive orchards, and fruit trees in abundance; so they ate, and were filled and became fat, and delighted themselves in your great goodness (Nehemiah 9:25).
It is not an abrupt surprise that Israel can voice a great doxology in acknowledgement and celebration of the creator God who makes earthly life abundant:
You cause the grass to grow for the cattle,
and plants for people to use,
to bring forth food from the earth,
and wine to gladden the human heart,
oil to make the face shine,
and bread to strengthen the human heart.
The trees of the Lord are watered abundantly,
the cedars of Lebanon that he planted.
In them the birds build their nests;
the stork has its home in the fir trees (Psalm 104:14-17).
God causes grass to grow, grapes to prosper, olive oil to be shared, and bread to strengthen, and waters the trees that host other creatures! The trees are sustained by God’s good gift of rain. All creatures, even the birds, find the trees hospitable, as the creaturely life of the world prospers.
For good reason, trees along with all other creatures, can respond in praise for the good sovereignty of God. The trees have many ways to offer praise to their creator. The first is to provide fruit according to their kind, thus fulfilling their share of the work of creation. They also praise God with the soft rustle of leaves, the glow of sunshine in bright leaves, and in their hosting of wildlife. Thus trees join in doxological applause for the goodness of the creator:
Then shall the trees of the forest sing for joy
before the Lord, for he comes to judge the earth (I Chronicles 16:33).
Then shall all the trees of forest sign for joy
before the Lord; for he is coming,
for he is coming to judge the earth (Psalm 96:12).
The scene that evokes doxology is an ecosystem that is sustained by God for the wellbeing of all creatures.
But then, almost in passing, the testimony of scripture acknowledges that Solomon, the great “developer” in ancient Israel, had little regard for the wonder, beauty, or generativity of trees. Rather he viewed trees as building material that would serve his acquisitive eagerness to enhance himself. Thus it is reported, without calling attention to it, that Solomon required from King Hiram many trees as material for his many building projects:
Hiram sent word to Solomon, “I have heard the message that you have sent to me; I will fulfill all your needs in the matter of cedar and cypress timber. My servants shall bring it down to the sea from the Lebanon; I will make it into rafts to go by sea to the place you indicate. I will have them broken up there for you to take away. And you shall meet my needs by providing food for my household.” So Hiram provided Solomon’s every need for timber of cedar and cypress… King Hiram of Tyre having supplied Solomon with cedar and cypress timber and gold, as much as he desired, King Solomon gave to Hiram twenty cities in the land of Galilee (I Kings 5:8-10, 9:11).
While the Hebrew term (‘ets) is the same, the English translation moves from “trees” to “timber.” The latter suggests large scale production in which the specificity of trees is lost in the volume of supplies. We may imagine that Solomon is a compelling stand-in for all in the modern world who regard the wondrous gifts of creation only as commodities, so that they serve only to satisfy the extension of human control and domination. One might quibble that Solomon did not utilize fruit trees for his building, but one can readily anticipate that Solomon would not have lingered over that distinction if he had wanted to use fruit trees, though fruit trees are not very usable for such extraction. Thus Solomon represents an important footnote to the wonder of trees in their doxological capacity as he readily converted them into a commodity to be bought, sold, traded or otherwise utilized for the greater good of the top-down royal economy. When trees cease to be creatures and are only commodities, then there will be no restraint in their use or destruction.
Thus is posed the acute either/or of “creature” or “commodity.” I have reflected on trees because it turns out that the protection of trees is an urgent contemporary matter. My son Jim, a top-rate wholesale lumber rep, has told me about the well-managed forests –pine and eucalyptus—in Chile where replanting trees is mandatory. Jim and the lumber company he represents secure their lumber from Chile. The protection of trees in Chile employs state of the art genetic engineering of carefully managed tree stands. The normal age for a tree crop is 12-18 years; they are seeded to resist disease. Such disciplined ways of nurturing trees of course falls short of seeing trees as creatures. But it is recognition of the vulnerability of trees and a strategy to protect an ordered sequence and production schedule to preclude deforestation. It is, moreover, a tacit reminder that trees are part of a larger ecology that cannot be safely violated.
Manuel Andreoni, “Brazil’s ‘Elegant Idea to Save Tropical Forests Needs Investors to Sign On,” The New York Times October 4, 2024 A4, has reported on a new fund, “Tropical Forests Forever Facility,” that aims to protect forests. The fund has the ambitious goal of $125 billion that could pay out annually four billion dollars to protect trees. The fund would effectively pay countries for services that tropical forests now perform for free, such as storing planet-warning carbon and regulating rain patterns.
This suggests something like a wakeup call to resist the long-running practice of deforestation, as though trees were an endless supply and therefore subject to undisciplined exploitation. Such plans for protection and reforestation are indeed a recognition that trees are inescapably essential for the proper functioning of creation as they help to counteract the impact of industrial pollution. Such an acknowledgement nudges us toward an awareness of a way in which trees participate in the grand process of creation that makes thriving life possible for all creatures.
Such reforestation projects are only the beginning of a necessary move away from the commoditization of trees toward a recognition that trees are creatures. We have been through a long season of industrialization that reduced everything to a commodity. To witness even a modest inversion of such development is most welcome. That inversion is helped along by the research of Colin Tudge, The Secret Life of Trees: What They Feel, How they Communicate—Discoveries from a Secret World (2016). He has lined out the amazing ways in which trees form communities and communicate with each other in a shared life of wellbeing. This is a significant move in the direction of creatureliness and away from the industrialization of trees. The Franciscan hymn, “Fairest Lord Jesus” (The United Methodist Hymnal 189) sees Jesus among the creatures of God. The second stanza refers precisely to trees:
Fair are the meadows, fairer still the woodlands,
robed in the blooming garb of spring:
Jesus is fairer, Jesus is purer,
who makes the woeful heart to sing.
“The woodlands” gleam with the break of spring, providing a safe place for other creatures. The hymn insists on the creatureliness of trees and resists any effort to reduce trees to a commodity as an important claim of faith. In the end, we come again to our most elemental affirmation of trees:
Only God can make a tree.
The creatureliness of trees invites our wonder and gratitude concerning the ways they attest to the power and artistry of the creator who grants wellbeing in and through our common creatureliness.
