the Third Week of Advent
Click here to join the effort!
Bible Dictionaries
Plane Tree
Hawker's Poor Man's Concordance And Dictionary
or The Hebrews were very partial to trees; and it is not to be wondered at, for those trees which formed shades, by their long growing and wide spreading branches, must have been highly grateful in sheltering them from the heat. The plane tree is supposed to have been the chesnut spoken of Genesis 30:37. The word Harmon, or Ormon, is so rendered in that Scripture. We have a lofty description of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, under the similitude of those elegant tress of the forest. (Ezekiel 31:8) But when the reader hath pondered over these beauties of nature, I beg him to observe how, in a yet far higher degree, the Holy Ghost is pleased to make use of them in setting forth the glories of grace, when describing the Lord Jesus under the similitude of the wide spreading branches of the trees of the wood, to represent the shelter he affords to his people. Hence the church sings of sitting under "his shadow with great delight, and his fruit becoming sweet to her taste." (Song of Song of Solomon 2:3) Hence the prophet describes Jesus as "a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in distress, a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat, when the blast of the terrible ones is as a storm against the wall." (Isaiah 25:4) And in many other parts of Scripture the same figures are beautifully chosen by way of representing the Lord Jesus as both a protecting power from every danger, and a source of refreshment in all good. Jesus is all this, and infinitely more; for like the wide spreading branches of some rich and fruitful tree of the desert, he forms every thing that is lovely to our view, and both shelters from the heat, and refresheth our thirst by his fruit in this desert of our nature, when from under his shadow "we revive as the corn, and grow as the vine, and his scent is more fragrant than the wine of Lebanon." (Hosea 14:7)
These files are public domain.
Text Courtesy of BibleSupport.com. Used by Permission.
Hawker, Robert D.D. Entry for 'Plane Tree'. Hawker's Poor Man's Concordance and Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/pmd/p/plane-tree.html. London. 1828.
