Interesting Central article

THE GREEN TREE … AND THE DRY

OF the Gospel writers, Luke alone records the incidents of what others call the Via Dolorosa, the way of the cross. All write of the crucifixion, the other synoptics of Simon carrying the cross, but Luke alone of the women who “bewailed and lamented him”.

Pilate, Annas, Caiaphas and Herod had done as they would; the Jewish hatred had spilled over, Barabbas was freed by Pilate, “but Jesus he delivered to their will”. The picture is of a man worn out by suffering, by long nights in prayer, by the scourging, the torments and the like, and whilst it is recorded that “he went out bearing the cross for himself” it is evident that at some stage he became unable, and it was laid on one Simon, “coming from the country” (Luke 23:26). So Simon won immortal recognition by his part, and the event leaves some with the difficulty that the Lord called upon his followers to take up their cross, yet did not himself carry it to the end. It is a thought to dismiss quickly: the record says that he started bearing it, and certainly he took it up. We do well to weep with the daughters of Jerusalem rather than follow such thoughts.

Luke records that Jesus in his conversation with the daughters of Jerusalem turned unto them in response to their reactions. Could, say some, the Lord have turned to see the women if he had still been carrying the cross? Perhaps not; so it seems that Simon continued to Golgotha, whilst the Lord, even in the extreme state of mental and physical exhaustion, continued to act as the Gospels had always revealed. Here, in this state, he turns the sympathy away from himself to the women in the crowd. The daughters of Jerusalem were not to weep for him but for themselves.

Five days previously the multitudes had shouted “Hosanna to the son of David” and cast their garments in the way; now a great multitude followed, among them the women who bewailed and lamented him. The Lord spoke to these women using the phrase “Daughters of Jerusalem”. Strangely enough, though it might be expected that this was a well-used Scripture phrase, it is not, being found only in the Song of Songs. Isaiah (3:16) refers to the daughters of Zion, but that is not quite the same. If the form of address is one used infrequently, the message is not. The daughters of Jerusalem were to weep for themselves and for their children, and explanation is given in terms those women would understand. The wives of former days had pleaded for seed—Sarai, Rebekah, Rachel, Hannah and Elisabeth—but in future the barren could consider themselves blessed. Jesus had already spoken of the wretched estate of those who would be nursing children in the days of Jerusalem’s trouble (Luke 21:23) and warned that the people of the day should be dashed to the ground “and thy children within thee” (Luke 19:44). No wonder the daughters of Jerusalem received his sympathy and were told to weep for themselves and for their children; they would weep when they realised what would be the estate of their daughters and grand-daughters.

The Lord thus prepares the women for the lessons of A.D. 70 in terms they could understand, and also with a saying which was no doubt common among them. “If they do these things in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry?” None can fail to understand the reference to even worse things to come; but some may find difficulty in deciding whether the reference is to Roman or Jewish acts—or even both. Does it mean that, if the Romans could act with such discrimination and so unjustly when there was little to inflame their passions, what enormities could be perpetrated when fully roused? Or if the Jews could act so spitefully with so little provocation, what would happen when tempers ran high? But for ourselves the difficulty is in regarding that which happened to Jesus as the act in “the green tree”. Never, before or since—we would argue—has so heinous a deed been done against a man so completely innocent. And yet it is the act done in “the green tree”. So the Lord turns the sympathy away from himself, and calls upon his hearers to regard the events to come.

Ezekiel seems to have provided the basis of the Lord’s quotation about green and dry trees, but he does not use the terms in the straightforward way the Lord himself does, that is, a way already suggested as the obvious meaning of a well-known phrase. But there is connection between the days of Ezekiel and the days of Jesus Christ, and particularly with the events of A.D. 70. In the days of Ezekiel there was a delusion both at Jerusalem and with those in captivity, and Jeremiah refers to it also, that the calamities which had come on the house of David would soon come to an end, and that Jerusalem would be spared and the captives allowed to return. Jeremiah even sent a letter to the captives in Babylonia, but they had not accepted that 70 years had to go over them. And so Ezekiel too is called upon to set his face toward Jerusalem (21:2) and prophesy against the land of Israel; and in this chapter also comes his great prophecy of the time of the end of Israel’s king, for that era at least (v. 25). The end of the previous chapter sets forth in more enigmatic terms what is spelt out in the 21st chapter. The prophecy is against the south—the forest of the field in the south, which in the next chapter becomes Jerusalem, the sanctuaries and the land of Israel; and the forest fire of 20:47 becomes the sword of 21:3. The sword was to devour the righteous and the wicked, and the forest fire to devour every green tree and every dry tree; and the prophet was accused of being a speaker of parables. Strangely, here the difference between green and dry trees is not remarked; they are put together and destroyed. Although the prophet comes under the scorn of the people, the phrase makes little impact. Indeed Brother W. H. Boulton says: “The simile of the green and dry trees is not again referred to; in fact the words scarcely figure at all”.

Speaking in Parables

Again, the reference in Ezekiel 17 is different from the usage in the New Testament and from the simile of chapter 20. The prophet is now in the realms of parable. There are parables about eagles and trees, about Egypt and Babylon, and about the house of Israel; and at the end of the chapter, in verses which have a messianic ring about them, he speaks of green and dry trees—but now in terms with which we are familiar from the words of Hannah’s and Mary’s songs, of debasing the high and elevating the low. God would bring down the high tree and exalt the low tree, dry up the green tree and make the dry tree to flourish (17:22–24). So the nations around Israel would finally be conquered and God’s word would flourish.

The quotations of the New Testament are matters of wonder and of deep meaning. The references of Old and New Testaments are to the same, and yet the emphasis is moved. So Jesus, still in the context of Jerusalem and speaking to her daughters, speaks with definite and pointed reference to green tree and dry tree times; that is, he speaks of two periods of history. The prophet had put the green and dry together, or had spoken of the reversed estates of the green and dry. And yet the meaning becomes clear, especially with the history of A.D. 70 so readily available to us.

The years between A.D. 30 and A.D. 70 brought their varied times, a period of calm and then of rising tempo culminating in the work of Vespasian and Titus. So the besieged city went to its end. As one said “a profound silence and a sort of mortal night fell on the city”. Well might the daughters of Jerusalem weep for their children and the barren be more blessed than the fruitful.

The Lord had already warned the faithful about the time when Jerusalem would be compassed with armies, and instructed those in Judea to flee to the mountains. Eusebius, the historian, records that the faithful followed the Lord’s advice, and during some hiatus in the siege by Titus they escaped and found their refuge at Pella, a place not named in the Scriptures but a city on the east of Jordan in north Gilead not far from Jabesh; it was, in fact, one of the ten cities, the Decapolis, named in the Gospels. Here in the mountains they found refuge.

The Lord’s command to the faithful in Luke 21 is direct—they were to flee to the mountains. In chapter 23 he is not quite so direct, but quotes Hosea (10:8) “And they shall say to the mountains, cover us; and to the hills, fall on us”. Hosea is, of course, speaking of Israel. The Lord is perhaps also referring to Isaiah 2:19, although the direct quotation is not there, and there would seem also to be a future application (Rev. 6:16), when they in the earth flee from the wrath of the Lamb. It was not an unusual happening in Israel’s history; the men of Israel, in the days of Saul, so hid themselves from the Philistines, David escaped to the cave of Adullam, and three of his mighty men also repaired there. So at Pella the faithful of A.D. 70 were preserved, having fled from the desolation of Jerusalem. Here, can it be said, in the mountains of Gilead, the mountains fell on them, and in their fastness the hills covered them? The people would now begin to understand the things being done in the dry tree.

A Warning and a Provision

Even in the extremities of weakness, when physically unable to carry the cross, the Lord is thus teaching his disciples, warning the women of his day and providing for future generations. For who, having considered Ezekiel’s references to the green and dry in relation to the Jerusalem of the 6th century B.C., and then his references to the green and dry in the first century A.D. would not be looking for a parallel in the future? It is perhaps Peter who provides it when he speaks of the time being come “for judgement to begin at the house of God” (1 Pet. 4:17). It did in the past and can do so again. “If the righteous is scarcely saved, where shall the ungodly and sinner appear?” (v. 18). And Ezekiel, again, writes his commentary in advance. The man with the writer’s inkhorn set apart those who cried and sighed for the abominations done in Jerusalem (9:4). Those who followed were to slay the rest but leave alone those bearing the mark; and they were to “begin at my sanctuary”.

ARTHUR SHEPPARD


1979 The Christadelphian: Volume 116. 2001 (electronic ed.) (461–462). Birmingham: Christadelphian Magazine & Publishing Association.