Oak

The oak appears across the UPDV as a landmark tree — a fixed point on the landscape where patriarchs camp, where Yahweh appears, where covenants are sealed, where the dead are buried, and where idolaters set up their altars. It is also a stock figure for what is tall and strong: the Amorite, the proud, the cedars and oaks of Bashan that fall when judgment comes.

Landmark Trees of the Patriarchs

The first oaks the UPDV names belong to Abram. He moves his tent and dwells "by the oaks of Mamre, which are in Hebron, and built there an altar to [the Speech of] Yahweh" (Gen 13:18). It is at these same oaks that he is found a chapter later — "now he stayed by the oaks of Mamre, the Amorite, brother of Eshcol, and brother of Aner; and these were confederate with Abram" (Gen 14:13) — and where the divine encounter takes place: "And [the Speech of] Yahweh appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day" (Gen 18:1).

A second named oak fixes Abram's earlier movement through the land. On entering Canaan he passes "to the place of Shechem, to the oak of Moreh" (Gen 12:6), and Moses later orients Israel to the same landmark: "across from Gilgal, beside the oaks of Moreh" (Deu 11:30). Shechem itself is associated with another oak in Jacob's generation, where Jacob hides the foreign gods and the rings of his household: "Jacob hid them under the oak which was by Shechem" (Gen 35:4).

A named oak also marks the burial of Rebekah's nurse: "And Deborah, Rebekah's nurse, died, and she was buried below Beth-el under the oak: and the name of it was called Allon-bacuth" (Gen 35:8).

Covenant, Calling, and Encounter

Joshua repeats the patriarchal pattern when he closes the covenant ceremony at Shechem: "And Joshua wrote these words in the Book of the Law of God; and he took a great stone, and set it up there under the oak that was by the sanctuary of Yahweh" (Jos 24:26). The oak is the place where the written covenant and the standing stone come together.

The angel of Yahweh chooses the same kind of site to commission Gideon: "And the angel of Yahweh came, and sat under the oak which was in Ophrah, that pertained to Joash the Abiezrite: and his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the wine press, to hide it from the Midianites" (Jdg 6:11).

A later prophetic encounter is sketched in similar shorthand. The old prophet who pursues the man of God from Judah finds him "sitting under an oak; and he said to him, Are you the man of God who came from Judah? And he said, I am" (1Ki 13:14). The oak is the meeting point where the conversation begins.

Burial Under the Oak

Two graves are marked by oaks. The first is Deborah's at Allon-bacuth, the "oak of weeping" below Beth-el (Gen 35:8). The second is Saul's: after the disaster on Gilboa, "all the valiant men arose, and took away the body of Saul, and the bodies of his sons, and brought them to Jabesh, and buried their bones under the oak in Jabesh, and fasted seven days" (1Ch 10:12).

A third death, though not technically a burial, stages itself in an oak. As David's army pursues Absalom through the forest of Ephraim, "Absalom was riding on his mule, and the mule went under the thick boughs of a great oak, and his head caught hold of the oak, and he was left hanging between heaven and earth" (2Sa 18:9). Joab finishes him there: "he took three darts in his hand, and thrust them through the heart of Absalom, while he was yet alive in the midst of the oak" (2Sa 18:14).

Figure of Strength

The oak's stature makes it a natural image for height and force. Amos's oracle pictures the Amorite this way: "whose height was like the height of the cedars, and he was strong as the oaks; yet I destroyed his fruit from above, and his roots from beneath" (Am 2:9). Isaiah's day-of-Yahweh oracle pairs the figure with Lebanon's cedars: judgment falls "on all the cedars of Lebanon, that are high and lifted up, and on all the oaks of Bashan" (Isa 2:13). Zechariah picks up the same Bashan-oak image in lament: "Wail, O fir-tree, for the cedar has fallen, because the majestic ones are destroyed: wail, O you⁺ oaks of Bashan, for the strong forest has come down" (Zec 11:2). What stands tallest is precisely what comes down.

The oaks of Bashan are also worked as timber. In Ezekiel's oracle against Tyre: "Of the oaks of Bashan they have made your oars; they have made your benches of ivory inlaid in cypress-wood, from the isles of Kittim" (Eze 27:6).

Oaks and Idolatry

The same shaded canopy that hosted patriarchs and angels is also the site Israel uses for the worship of other gods. Hosea names the practice plainly: "They sacrifice on the tops of the mountains, and burn incense on the hills, under oaks and poplars and terebinths, because their shadow is good: therefore your⁺ daughters go whoring, and your⁺ brides commit adultery" (Hos 4:13). Ezekiel adds the indictment: when slain men lie "round about their altars, on every high hill, on all the tops of the mountains, and under every green tree, and under every thick oak, the places where they offered sweet savor to all their idols" (Eze 6:13). Isaiah turns the chosen oak grove into an item of shame: "they will be ashamed of the oaks which you⁺ have desired, and you⁺ will be confounded for the gardens that you⁺ have chosen" (Isa 1:29).

Oak as Judgment Image

Beyond the idolatrous sites, the oak figures the fate of the unfaithful and the idol-maker. Continuing the indictment of Isaiah 1: "For you⁺ will be as an oak whose leaf fades, and as a garden that has no water" (Isa 1:30). Isaiah's vision-oracle deploys the felled oak as a figure of remnant: "as a terebinth or as an oak whose stump remains when it is felled; so the holy seed is its stump" (Isa 6:13). And in the satire on idol-makers: "He cuts down cedars, and takes the holm-tree and the oak, and strengthens for himself one among the trees of the forest: he plants a fir-tree, and the rain nourishes it" (Isa 44:14) — the same oak that elsewhere shelters worship of Yahweh is here stripped to fashion an idol.