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The Forestry of the Prophets [1920] Though Leopold did not profess adherence to any organized religion, he had participated in a Bible study group at Yale, and early in his career he occasionally quoted from the prophets. Here he studies the books of the Old Testament prophets for evidences of their understanding of forests, forest fires, wood utilization, and tree growth. The article was published in the Journal ofForestry. Who discovered forestry? The heretofore accepted claims of the European nations have of late been hotly disputed by the Piutes. I now beg leave to present a prior claim for the children of Israel. I can hardly state that they practiced forestry, but I believe it can be shown that they knew a lot about forests. (Also, ifany ofthem set fires, they knew better than to admit it.) The following notes, gleaned from a purely amateur study of the Books of the Prophets of the Old Testament,l may be of interest to other foresters, and may possibly suggest profitable fields of research for competent Hebraists and physiographers. The most interesting side of forestry was then, as it is now, the human side. There is wide difference in the woodcraft of the individual prophetsthe familiarity with which they speak offorests, and especially the frequency with which they use similes based on forest phenomena. It appears that in Judaea, as in Montana, there were woodsmen and dudes. Isaiah was the Roosevelt of the Holy Land. He knew a whole lot about everything, including forests, and told what he knew in no uncertain terms. He constantly uses the forest to illustrate his teachings, and in doing so calls the trees by their first names. Contrast with him the sophisticated Solomon, who spoke much wisdom, but whose lore was city lore-the nearest he comes to the forest is the fig tree and the cedar of Lebanon, and I think he saw more ofthe cedars in the ceiling of his palace than he did in the hills. Joel 1. Quotations are from Moulton's Reader's Bible, which is based on the Revised English Version. 71 72 The Forestry of the Prophets knew more about forests than even Isaiah-he is the preacher of conservation of watersheds, and in a sense the real inventor of "prevent forest fires." David speaks constantly and familiarly about forests and his forest similes are especially accurate and beautiful. Ezekiel was not only a woodsman and an artist, but he knew a good deal about the lumber business, domestic and foreign. Jeremiah had a smattering of woods lore, and so did Hosea, but neither shows much leaning toward the subject. Daniel shows no interest in forests. Neither doesJesus the son ofSirach, who was a keen business man, a philosopher, and a master of epigram, but his tastes did not run to the hills. Strange to say the writer of the Book ofJob, the John Muir ofJudah, author of the immortal eulogy of the horse and one of the most magnificent essays on the wonders of nature so far produced by the human race, is strangely silent on forests. Probably forests were his background, not his picture, and he took for granted that his audience had a knowledge of them. Forest Fires in the Holy Land Every forester who reads the Prophets carefully will, I think, be surprised to see how much they knew about fires. The forest fire appealed strongly to their imagination and is used as the basis for many a simile of striking literary beauty. They understood not only the immediate destructive effects of fires, but possibly also the more far reaching effects on watersheds. Strangely enough, nothing is said about causes offires or whether any efforts were ever made toward fire suppression. The book ofJoel opens with an allegory in which the judgment ofGod takes the form of a fire.2 This is perhaps the most convincing description of fire in the whole Bible. "Alas for the day!" says Joel. "The herds of cattle are perplexed, because they have no pasture; Yea, the flocks of sheep are made desolate. 0 Lord, to thee do I cry, for a fire hath devoured the pastures ofthe wilderness, and a flame hath burned all the trees of the field. Yea, the beasts of the field pant unto thee, for the water brooks are dried up. Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain; let all the inhabitants in the land tremble! For. . . a...

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