Apple

The apple appears in scripture as one of the named fruit-trees of the land, prized for its shade, its sweet fruit, and its fragrance. It surfaces in two registers: as the lover's emblem in the Song of Songs, where the tree itself and its fruit carry the weight of romantic awakening and longing, and as a figure for the well-spoken word in Proverbs. Joel completes the picture by naming the apple-tree among the orchard species whose withering signals the failure of the land's joy.

A Tree Among the Trees of the Forest

The apple stands in the catalog of named trees as one of the orchard varieties of Israel, set alongside the fig, the pomegranate, the palm, the vine, and the olive. The lover of the Song of Songs draws the contrast between the apple-tree and the rest of the forest: "As the apple-tree among the trees of the forest, So is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, And his fruit was sweet to my taste" (So 2:3). Two qualities mark the tree: the welcome shade it casts and the sweetness of its fruit.

Restorative Fruit

The same lover, sick from love, calls for the fruit itself as a remedy: "Stregthen⁺ me with raisins, refresh me with apples; For I am sick from love" (So 2:5). The apple here keeps company with the raisin as a restorative — food brought to the lovesick to revive them. The fragrance of the fruit carries the imagery further: "Let your breasts be as clusters of the vine, And the smell of your breath like apples" (So 7:8). Taste, scent, and shade all converge on the tree as a figure for the beloved.

Awakening Under the Apple-Tree

The Song closes its apple-tree imagery with a scene of awakening: "Who is this that comes up from the wilderness, Leaning on her beloved? Under the apple-tree I awakened you: There your mother was in travail with you, There she who brought you forth was in travail" (So 8:5). The tree that gave shade in chapter 2 becomes the place of rousing in chapter 8, linking the lover's site to the place of birth-pangs and origin.

Apples of Gold

Outside the Song, the apple appears once in Proverbs, where it figures the well-placed word: "A word fitly spoken Is [like] apples of gold in network of silver" (Pr 25:11). The image draws on the form, color, and preciousness of the fruit — a finely-wrought ornament that pairs the gold of the apple with a silver setting. Wise speech is measured by the same standard.

The Withered Apple-Tree

Joel names the apple-tree last in his list of orchard species struck by the locust and the drought: "The vine is withered, and the fig tree languishes; the pomegranate-tree, the palm-tree also, and the apple-tree, even all the trees of the field are withered: for joy has withered away from the sons of man" (Joe 1:12). The catalog inverts the orchard of delight: the same trees that yield shade, sweetness, and fragrance in the Song stand here as the failed witnesses of a land whose joy has withered with them.