This topic is about the spiritual symbolism of trees seen in the Bible. Special focus is on two trees in the Garden of Eden…the Tree of Life (TL), and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (TKGE). We’ll reflect on tree significance in Bible history, and also on two ‘Adams’ in two gardens.
The people of ancient Israel were familiar with the crops and vegetation of the Holy Land. It was an agricultural society. In scripture, God gave symbolic meaning to various crops, plants and trees indigenous to the Land. Olives, figs, grapes are some of the produce which grows there (De.8:8).
Having a grape vine and a fig tree was symbolic of peace & safety and plenty in the Land. 1Ki.4:25 “Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under his vine and fig tree, all the days of Solomon.” The Zec.3:10 prophecy, “In that day each of you will invite his neighbor to sit under his vine and fig tree’, declares the Lord”. This was expanded in the prophecy of Mic.4:2, 4. “Many nations will go up to the mountain of the Lord. The law will go out from Zion. Each of them will sit under his vine and fig tree, and none shall make them afraid.” Peace and plenty are a result of following God’s principles & ways.
In the 1st century AD, a large golden vine (paid for from Judah’s tithes) hung over the Temple door in Jerusalem. This vine was an emblem of Israel. Ps.80:7-8 “O God, restore us. You did remove a vine from Egypt; You did drive out the nations and did plant it.” After the exodus from Egypt, God drove out most Canaanítes and settled the Israelites in the Land. Ho.10:1 “Israel is a luxuriant vine.” But God later rebuked them in Je.2:21. “I planted you a choice vine; how did you turn against Me into a degenerate foreign vine?” Israel turned to infidelity and apostasy from their God.
The nation of Israel was also portrayed as a fig tree. Ho.9:10 the Lord said, “I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness; I saw your forefathers as the earliest fruit on the fig tree”. Is.5:7 “The vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and Judah is His delightful plant [fig].” The Lord said of the locust devastation in Joel.1:7, “It has made My vine a waste and My fig tree a stump”. Je.8:12-13 was a prophecy upon ancient Judah. “They shall be brought down. There will be no grapes on the vine and no figs on the fig tree.” No peace and plenty then. (cf. Mt.21:19 the fig tree Jesus cursed withered.)
But long before there was the nation(s) of ancient Israel, from the beginning God’s word gave symbolic meaning through trees. Ge.2:8-9 “The Lord God planted a garden in Eden; and there He put the human. And the Lord God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing and good for food; the Tree of Life, and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil [Bad].” These were the two most significant trees in that first Garden. God commanded the first human/(adám) in Ge.2:16-17, “Of every tree you may freely eat; but from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat it you will surely die”.
Adam was free to eat from all trees, including the cosmic TL. This TL symbolized God’s provision of immortality. That would be the result of continued obedience to God. By partaking of the TL, Adam & Eve would be following the lead of God’s voice/Word and the Holy Spirit (HS) of Wisdom. Pr.3:18 “Wisdom is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her. The Lord by wisdom founded the earth.” Adam & Eve could have submitted to the Spirit of eternal life in God’s presence continually.
But one tree was not permitted them, the TKGE. The consequence of disobedience to God, eating from that tree, is death. That tree represented disregarding God’s voice/Word and the HS. That tree wasn’t called just the Tree of the Knowledge of Evil. It’s a mixture of Good and Evil. Yet it’s not obedience to God. The serpent tempted Eve in Ge.3:5. “In the day you eat from it [TKGE] your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” God is just, truly knowing what’s good and what’s evil/bad. The TKGE would enable mankind to assume moral self-determination, to set their own standards of right and wrong, good and evil…as if they were God. In a word…humanism.
Ge.3:6 “She [Eve] took from its fruit and ate, and gave to her husband, and he ate.” It looked good! They ate from the forbidden tree, in disobedience to God. Sin! And humanity has done so ever since.
We think we know good and evil, and by such knowledge have devised our own humanistic laws and justice/injustice systems. Over the centuries, man has made some laws which in principle are based on God’s revealed laws from His HS & word. But man has also enacted laws and sought religions apart from or contrary to God’s written laws/HS. A mixture of good and evil. Human misery has resulted.
{Sidelight: A government or ruler is ‘good’ to the extent their laws are based in principle upon God’s moral laws/standards. e.g. the USA Constitution to an extent in past decades of its history. Christians have been free in this nation. But living as a Christian can be very difficult in dictatorships and underdeveloped nations where man’s laws are based on whatever keeps the present regime in power!}
Continuing with the first Adam & Eve in Ge.3:7, “Then their eyes were opened and they knew they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loin coverings”. Nakedness can be both physical and spiritual, being unclothed or symbolic of sin & shame. Re.16:15 “Blessed is the one who keeps his garments, lest he be naked and they see his shame.” But prior to their sin…Ge.2:25 the two humans “were both naked and were not ashamed”. Sin brought guilt and shame to their psyche. (Note: This doesn’t mean that human bodyparts and normal sexual relations between husband & wife is sin.)
Adam & Eve themselves tried to cover their physical nakedness & sin with fig leaves…maybe from the same tree they’d eaten?! Sewn fig leaves, or human devices, are inadequate to cover sin. Ge.3:21 so “The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.” God Himself covered them with animal skins, perhaps leather garments of calfskin or kidskin. In so doing, God showed that to cover the nakedness symbolic of sin, man must be ‘clothed’ by means of the death of another! Those first skins from an animal sacrifice foreshadowed the temporary sacrificial system and ultimately Jesus the Lamb of God’s perfect final sacrifice to cover humanity’s sins!
Ge.3:22-23 “The Lord said, ‘The human has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, lest he eat also from the Tree of Life and live forever’ – therefore the Lord drove him from the garden.” Man was now in a fallen state of disobedience, having chosen to decide for himself what constitutes right and wrong, in rebellion against God. For that time, God mercifully separated man from becoming immortal and living forever as humans in the misery of self-rule with a disobedient sinful heart & mind.
Moving far ahead in history to the nation of Judah in the 580s BC…in Je.24 the Jews were portrayed as good and evil figs. v.1-3 “Two baskets of figs set before the Temple of the Lord. One basket had very good figs, the other basket had very evil [bad] figs.” The people then were a type of the TKGE (eaten by those disobedient). v.4-10 the Jews taken captive to Babylon in 597 BC were now characterized by good figs; those Jews remaining in the Land were as bad rotten figs. A mixture of good and evil.
Separated from the TL & water of Life, most people in disobedient Israel and Judah hadn’t been given the HS. Only a small minority (prophets, some priests and kings) had the HS. Israel and Judah had instead the Mosaic sacrificial rituals. But rituals (without the HS) proved inadequate for eternal salvation, not changing the heart or removing the sin nature.
When Christ came into the holy land in the 1st century AD, He told the parable of the fig tree. Lk.13:6-9 “For three years I have looked for fruit on this fig tree, without finding any. Cut it down. But let it alone for this year and I’ll fertilize it, and if it bears fruit, fine! But if not, cut it down.” Jesus’ ministry in the Land was 3–4 years. By His Person, He nourished, so to speak, the people/fig tree of the Land.
But by Mt.21:43-46, Jesus declared, “The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation producing the fruit of it. The chief priests and Pharisees understood He was speaking about them.” Accordingly, the kingdom was taken from the physical nation of Judah in 70 AD; and given to a spiritual “nation” bearing fruit. 1Ch.28:5 the old Kingdom. Ro.10:19 & 1Pe.2:9-10 the new “nation”.
Jesus said in Jn.15:1, 5, “I Am the true vine. He who abides in Me and I in him, bears much fruit.” Unlike Israel, Jesus the true vine remained obedient. By virtue of the sinless Jesus’ sacrifice, believers may now receive the HS. The HS produces fruit that we in the “holy nation” are to bear (1Pe.2:9-10).
Mt.21:1 “Jesus approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphagé at the Mount of Olives.” Bethphage meant ‘house of unripe figs’. v.19-20 “Seeing a lone fig tree by the road, He found nothing on it but leaves only. He said to it, ‘There shall be no fruit on you again.’ The fig tree withered.” This fig tree, a type of the TKGE, was cursed four days before the cross. The fig tree was an emblem of Judah.
Most of Judah rejected Jesus. They set Him up to be crucified. Jerusalem, the Temple, and Judea were destroyed in 70 AD. (see the topic “Babylon the Great’ in Revelation”.) Their sacrificial rituals and oral traditions were insufficient. Denying Jesus’ ultimate sacrifice, those Jews couldn’t completely cover their sins to receive eternal Life. He.10:4 animal sacrifices cannot forever take away sins or the sin nature. (That doesn’t mean the Jewish people won’t have salvation, e.g. Ro.11:23-26.)
God had placed the first created human/adam in a garden. Immediately prior to Jesus’ crucifixion, the greatest drama in history, concerning God’s only begotten Son, began in a later garden! Jn.18:1 “Jesus went to a garden, He and His disciples.” Mk.14:32-33 “They came to Gethsemané. He became deeply distressed and troubled.” The garden was at the foot of the Mt. of Olives. Gethsemane meant ‘oil or wine press’. That night Jesus prayed fervently. In Luke’s account, Lk.22:44 “His sweat became like drops of blood falling on the ground”. (Hematidrósis is rare.) Jesus even sweated blood in mental agony from the pressure He felt…at the place of the wine press. Blood resembles red wine in color.
After day came, Christ was crucified, shedding His blood. Peter later said to the high priest in Ac.5:30, “Jesus, whom you had put to death by hanging Him on a tree”. Jesus’ cross is symbolic of the Tree of Life. Jesus hung on a type of the TL, near the Mt. of Olives…perhaps even within distant view of the fig tree He’d cursed, symbolizing the TKGE which represented disobedient Judah!
Christ had instructed Moses (in the Law). De.21:22-23 “If a man is put to death and you hang him on a tree, he who is hanged is accursed by God.” The Jewish apostle Paul wrote in Ga.3:13-14, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us; it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”. (The curses for disobedience declared in Christ’s law were in De.27:15-26, De.28:15-ff, Le.26:14-ff, e.g.) As the ultimate sacrifice for sin, Christ Himself became the curse for all humanity! 1Pe.2:24 “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, for by His wounds you were healed.”
Christ’s life was a living sacrifice according to His Father’s will, thereby enabling believers to receive the HS. Our human nature & self-will has descended from the disobedient first human Adam, who ate from the TKGE. Paul wrote in 1Co.15:45, “The first human, Adam, became a living soul. The last Adam [Jesus, symbolically] became a life-giving spirit.” Paul refers to the obedient Jesus as the “last Adam”, through whom we inherit the spiritual nature and a future spiritual body in eternal life. Ro.5:19 “Through one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, through the obedience of One many are made righteous.” (see “Life and Death – for Saints” and “Universal Salvation in the Bible”.)
The dramas of two ‘Adams’ and two gardens play out unto eternal life for mankind! Our salvation comes only by Jesus’ final sacrifice. He.10:10 “By the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”
Israel has twice received grace. Jn.1:15-17 “For in His fullness we all received grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth through Jesus Christ.” Christ was the Rock, the God of ancient Israel, according to Paul and John (ref De.32:3-4, 18, 1Co.10:4, 9, Is.6:1, 5, Jn.12:41-44). The pre-existent Christ as the primordial Word of God had given His righteous Law to Moses & Israel. No other ancient nation received such unmerited favor/grace as did Israel (e.g. De.4:8)! (Moses’ face shined, Ex.34:30 & 2Co.3:7.) Jesus is Lord! Zec.4:6-7 LXX “By My Spirit’, saith the Lord Almighty. ‘I will bring out the Stone of the inheritance, its grace equaling My grace.” By double grace – Christ’s law/Tabernacle/Temple, and Christ the CornerStone with HS amplitude become available to all.
In addition to the vine and the fig tree…there’s another very significant tree. Continuing in Zec.4:11-14 LXX, “What are the two olive trees on the right and left side of the lampstand? These are the two anointed ones that stand by the Lord of the whole earth.” Unlike the fig tree, the olive tree symbolizes real Life; and is an emblem of peace. Olive oil is a type of the HS, and was used in God’s ancient Tabernacle, foreshadowing the availability of the ‘oil’ of the HS for all humanity. Theologian A.B. Simpson wrote of the olive tree. “The tree itself seems almost indestructible. It is usually crooked, gnarled, twisted, and almost torn to pieces. Some of the olive trees of Gethsemane must be at least 1,000 years old; indeed the olive seems as if it could scarcely die.” Gethsemane, the second garden.
Perhaps the Tree of Life in the first garden was a type of olive tree?! A 1,000-year-old olive tree will still produce fruit! It’s an evergreen, continually renewing its leaves. In the metaphorical Jdg. 9:8-13, “The trees went forth once to anoint a king over them. They said to the olive tree, ‘Reign over us.” The olive tree was the first choice as king of the trees. (Second choice was the fig tree, third was the vine.)
Paul said, Ro.11:16-25 “If the root be holy, the branches are holy. You [gentiles] become partaker with them [Israel] of the rich root of the olive tree.” The HS is the holy root of the (olive) tree of Life. The church branches, with Jews re-grafted in, become holy via the indwelling HS, symbolized by oil from the olive. (Christ is the root of Jesse, Is.11:10, the root and offspring of David, Re.22:16.)
Ep.2:7-9 “By grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not the result of works, that no man should boast.” It’s by God’s grace…not sewing fig leaves or our own humanistic works based upon the tree of man’s (supposed) knowledge of good & evil. Instead….
He.8:10 “This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel’, saith the Lord: ‘I will put My laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God and they will be My people.” In the New Covenant, the HS puts God’s laws into our minds & hearts. (see “Two Covenants – Heart of the Matter”.) Gentiles are grafted-in, Ro.11:17. Again, Mic.4:2 “The law will go out from Zion.” Societal justice will be determined and governed by God’s completely just morality & principles…not man’s contrary laws based on human values from the TKGE.
Ps.1:1-3 “Blessed is the man whose delight is in the law of the Lord. He will be like a tree planted by streams of water which yields its fruit in its season.” Man is figuratively a tree bearing fruit from the living water of the HS; it won’t wither. (see “Living Water Produces Spiritual Fruit”.) Concluding….
Re.22:1-3 “He showed me a river of life flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb. On each side of the river was the Tree of Life; the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.” (cf. Ezk.47) In Paradise restored there’s no humanistic tree of the knowledge of good and evil by the river! We’re obedient to God’s (better) ways. Re.14:12 “Here is the steadfastness of the saints, they that keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.” Re.2:7 Jesus says, “To him who overcomes I will give the right to eat of the TL which is in the Paradise of God”. The Tree of Eternal Life…Halleluyah!
Bible Topic Exposition 