May 13

Hewing Down Trees

Jeremiah 6:6

It is observable, that in predicting military operations against Jerusalem or other places, the processes described are always in conformity with the usages of the foreseen besiegers, and not with those of the Jews themselves. This extends even to the weapons and the personal appearance of the besiegers, and to their distinctive national characters, although these are facts which often could not well have been known from ordinary information by those who gave the descriptions and uttered the prophecies. This we have repeatedly had occasion to show in our Readings in Isaiah, and it will again come often under our notice.

It will be observed, that the military proceedings to which chiefly the prophecies of Jeremiah have reference, are those of the Babylonians—whose usages, at least in war, are now less known to us than those of any other great foreign nation mentioned conspicuously in Scripture—from the connection of their history with that of the Jews. We know, indeed, more of the ancient Babylonians historically than of the Assyrians and the Persians, though less so than of the Egyptians; but this knowledge has reference chiefly to their political history and their social institutions and condition, whereas the sculptures which have been found in the palaces and temples of the other nations bring their warriors bodily before us, acquaint us with the details of their military proceedings, and disclose to us all the circumstances of regal life. This is an advantage for the illustration of Scripture, in which these nations are brought before us under those very aspects—as warriors, invaders, besiegers—which the nations themselves have delighted to record, and which nations do still delight to record, in their marbles. It suggests some painful reflections, that the art whose monuments are the most enduring has been, and is still, mainly consecrated to the registration of man’s strife with man, and his homicidal violences against his brother: and the people of future times may dig up out of the mounds of ruin which may then mark the sites where the great cities of Europe now flourish, monuments of the same essential purpose and character as those which we now discover among the remains of the world’s ancient capitals. Man has been in all time anxious to record the fulfillment of the prevision which the archangel is, by the poet, represented as affording to the first of men—

“For in those days might only shall be admir’d,
And valor and heroic virtue call’d.
To overcome in battle, and subdue
Nations, and bring home spoil, with infinite
Manslaughter, shall be held the highest pitch
Of human glory; and for glory done
Of triumph, to be styled great conquerors,
Patrons of mankind, gods, and sons of gods;
Destroyers rightlier called, and plagues of men.
Thus fame shall be achieved, renown on earth;
And what most merits fame in silence hid.”

Paradise Lost, b. xi.

These old sculptures do now, however, in the providence of God, subserve purposes but little contemplated by those who caused them to be wrought as monuments of their own greatness; they serve to illustrate the Scripture, and to confirm its authority and truth against all gainsayers, by furnishing the pictorial realities of written facts and descriptions, and thus evincing the minute accuracy of the sacred writers; by enabling us to perceive that the condition of the ancient contemporary nations was such as these writers describe; by making clear to our apprehension matters that were formerly obscure, by reason of our imperfect knowledge of ancient times; and by the record of facts which have already helped much, and, it may be hoped, will soon help much more, to the understanding, of some parts of the Scripture narrative: thus altogether adding materially to the constantly-increasing stores of information which, from year to year, gather around the Bible, and render that Divine book, contrary to all others, the more intelligible and the better understood the older it becomes.

We have said that Babylon is, in a great measure, an exception to this statement, especially as regards military affairs. But we are strongly persuaded that this will not much longer be the case. The mounds of Babylon probably hold in their womb monuments and records no less important, perhaps more important, than those which have, after thousands of years, been discovered in the mounds of Nineveh; and we confidently expect that many years will not pass before these also are made to yield up their hidden treasures for the illustration of the sacred volume. Meanwhile, we must be content to believe, as is in every way probable, from the near neighborhood and close connection of the two places and nations, that their usages in public life, in matters of state and of war, were exceedingly similar, if not identical; and that hence the sculptures of Nineveh may be safely and freely cited to illustrate the Babylonian customs and practices, which the sacred historians and prophets bring under our notice.

More than one instance for which this process is available occurs in the sixth chapter of Jeremiah. In Jeremiah 6:6, the prophet, referring to the future siege of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, says: “Hew ye down trees, and cast a mount against Jerusalem.” In all ancient sieges, even in those conducted by the Jews themselves, so early as the time of Moses, trees in the neighborhood of the besieged cities were unsparingly cut down by the besiegers, to aid in filling up ditches and in the construction of mounds and embankments, and of towers and military engines. It is, however, a beautiful incident in the law of Moses, that the destruction of fruit-trees for any such purpose is strongly interdicted. Note: “When thou shalt besiege a city a long time, in making war against it to take it, thou shalt not destroy the trees thereof by forcing an axe against them; for thou mayest eat of them, and thou shalt not cut them down (for the tree of the field is man’s life), to employ them in the siege: Only the trees which thou knowest that they be not trees for meat, thou shalt destroy and cut them down; and thou shalt build bulwarks against the city that maketh war with thee, until it be subdued”—Deuteronomy 20:19-20. The importance of this is felt, when we recollect how much larger a proportion of man’s subsistence than in our climates is in the East derived from fruit-bearing trees—whence the destruction of such trees is, among the Syro-Arabian nations, regarded as something of a sacrilege.

It is related that, in one of his wars, Mohammed cut down the date-trees of the Beni Nadi (a tribe of Jews in Arabia). This act must have been viewed with abhorrence even by his own followers, for he found it advisable to produce a pretended revelation from heaven sanctioning the deed—“This revelation came down: What palm-trees ye cut down, or left standing on their roots, were so cut down or left by the will of God, that he might disgrace the evil-doers.” Note: Koran, chap. lix. Mischat ul Masabih. Plutarch says there was a similar regulation against the destruction of fruit-trees among the Egyptians; and this is so far confirmed that we do not find any fruit-trees among those which are represented as hewn down in military operations. Other nations were less scrupulous, and among them the Assyrians (and doubtless the Babylonians also); for in at least one instance, we have noticed a palm-tree being cut down outside the walls of a besieged city. Perhaps this may impart an emphasis to the mention of the hewing down of trees here by the prophet; and we incline to think it may be still more distinctly alluded to in Isaiah 7:19, where the wasting of foreign invaders being represented under the symbol of flies and bees (with a special reference in the latter to the Assyrians), it is said in conclusion that they shall rest (destructively) upon “all thorns, and upon all bushes,” which latter term is, in the margin, rendered by “commendable trees,” and is generally taken to mean cultivated trees—that is, fruit-trees, as distinguished from wild timber-trees. Barnes translates it by “shrubbery of pleasure,” to which we somewhat demur, though rather to the term than the essential signification. Even so, however, as indeed in every other application, this denunciation has been remarkably accomplished at Jerusalem, the neighborhood of which had become so entirely divested of trees in the course of the successive sieges to which it had been exposed, that the later besiegers had to fetch the timber required from a long distance. Josephus expressly records the destruction of trees by the Romans—Titus, indeed, commencing his proceedings by leveling all the orchards and gardens between the hill Scopas and the city, to clear the ground for his operations. No doubt this destruction of trees was repeated in subsequent sieges. Certain it is, that when the crusaders under Godfrey commenced their siege, no timber could be found for the construction of their engines. William of Tyre Note: De Bell. Sac. lib, viii. cap. 6. declares that the district was altogether destitute of wood, and describes the Christian princes as greatly perplexed, until at length a native Christian offered to show them a low valley, from three to four leagues distant, where they would find what they needed. A proper force was accordingly dispatched to the place, with a number of hewers and carpenters. The trees even here, however, were small, and little suited to the purpose for which they were required. There was, however, nothing better to be had; so they were cut down and removed, at great expense and labor, to the camp, where several engines of different kinds were made with them for assaulting the walls. This circumstance illustrates both the need of timber in assaulting walled towns, and the great scarcity of it which repeated sieges had produced in the neighborhood of Jerusalem.