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Summary
- Wood in Scripture is what holy things are made of and what people are killed on — the same material at both ends of the Bible.
- The ark and the tabernacle furniture are acacia (Exodus 25:10), the thorny desert tree that grows in the Sinai: local scrub overlaid with gold.
- Genesis 22:6 places the wood for the offering on Isaac’s back, and Christian readers have seen the shape of something else in it since the earliest centuries.
- Galatians 3:13 quotes Deuteronomy 21:23 — “cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole” — and the New Testament writers keep choosing the ordinary word for timber rather than the technical word for a cross.
- Wood is never precious in Scripture, which is why Isaiah 44 mocks the man who cooks his dinner with half a log and worships the rest.
Bibliography (Click to show)
Sources: Scripture quotations from the NIV via BibleGateway (Exodus 25:10; Genesis 3:24; 22:6-7; Deuteronomy 21:23; Galatians 3:13; 1 Peter 2:24; Isaiah 44:14-17; Revelation 22:2). The Greek xylon, used for both a tree and a piece of timber, is given as in standard lexicons; the properties and range of Sinai acacia are standard in reference works on biblical flora.
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