Myrtle

The myrtle tree appears in scripture as a festival branch, a sign of restoration in the wilderness, and the setting for one of Zechariah's night visions.

Branches for Booths

When Ezra's generation rediscovers the Feast of Booths during the public reading of the law, the proclamation goes out for festival greenery: "and that they should publish and proclaim in all their cities, and in Jerusalem, saying, Go forth to the mount, and fetch olive branches, and branches of wild olive, and myrtle branches, and palm branches, and branches of thick trees, to make booths, as it is written" (Neh 8:15). Myrtle takes its place among the prescribed festal woods.

A Sign of Wilderness Restoration

In Isaiah's oracles of redemption, the myrtle is one of the trees Yahweh promises to plant where there had been only barren ground: "I will put in the wilderness the cedar, the acacia, and the myrtle, and the oil-tree; I will set in the desert the fir-tree, the pine, and the box-tree together" (Isa 41:19). The same reversal carries the closing image of the prophet's later vision: "Instead of the thorn will come up the fir-tree; and instead of the brier will come up the myrtle-tree: and it will be to Yahweh for a name, for an everlasting sign that will not be cut off" (Isa 55:13). The myrtle is the tree that displaces the brier.

The Myrtle-Trees in the Bottom

Zechariah's first night vision opens in a stand of myrtles: "I saw in the night, and, look, a man riding on a red horse, and he stood among the myrtle-trees that were in the bottom; and behind him there were horses, red, sorrel, and white" (Zech 1:8). The grove provides the setting where the patrolling horsemen of Yahweh report on the earth.