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Ezekiel describes Assyria as a towering world tree whose top reaches into the clouds, sheltering all the nations. The Christian author Pseudo-Hippolytus echoes this imagery for the cross, whose top touches heaven and embraces the world.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Ezekiel 31:3
Hebrew Bible
2 “Son of man, say to Pharaoh king of Egypt and his hordes:“‘Who are you like in your greatness? 3 Consider Assyria, a cedar in Lebanon, with beautiful branches, like a forest giving shade, and extremely tall; its top reached into the clouds. 4 The water made it grow; underground springs made it grow tall. Rivers flowed all around the place it was planted, while smaller channels watered all the trees of the field.
Pseudo Hippolytus Easter Homily 1:5
Early Christian
1 This tree is heavenly. It sprouted from earth toward heaven, an immortal plant set fast between heaven and earth. 2 It is the support of all things and the resting place of all things, the foundation of the inhabited world, the bond that binds the cosmos. 3 It holds together within itself every variation of human nature. 4 It is fastened by the invisible nails of the Spirit, that it may not break away from the divine. 5 Its top touches the heights of heaven; its feet are fixed in the earth; its measureless arms embrace the air between. 6 It was wholly in all places and through all things.
Date: 200-300 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
“... The merged vision of tree, stump, and beast offers another example of a multiplicity of biblical allusions. The most common of these is the prophetic trope of the proud king as a tall tree that must be ‘cut down to size’ by God. Isaiah 2 is the best known example: ‘For the Lord of hosts has a day / against all that is proud and lofty, / ... against all the cedars of Lebanon, / lofty and lifted high’ (2:12-13). Nebuchadnezzar is an example of such pride and must be brought down. The allusion’s moral lesson is equally clear. This reference is conjoined midrashically to Ezekiel 31, where the Assyrian Empire is likened to a great tree providing shelter to the birds of the air. When in its pride it is toppled by ruthless foreign kings, the remaining trunk is all the beasts of the field have (31:13). This second passage deliberately relates the pagan rise and fall to the story of salvation: the great tree is the envy of the Edenic garden (31:8-9), and the kingdom, when it is felled, tumbles all the way to Sheol (31:15-17). ...”
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