Forest
Heb. ya’ar, meaning a dense wood, from its luxuriance. Thus all the great primeval forests of Syria (Eccl 2:6; Isa 44:14; Jer 5:6; Mic 5:8). The most extensive was the trans-Jordanic forest of Ephraim (2 Sam 18:6, 2 Sam 18:8; Josh 17:15, Josh 17:18), which is probably the same as the wood of Ephratah (Ps 132:6), some part of the great forest of Gilead. It was in this forest that Absalom was slain by Joab. David withdrew to the forest of Hareth in the mountains of Judah to avoid the fury of Saul (1 Sam 22:5). We read also of the forest of Bethel (2 Kgs 2:23, 2 Kgs 2:24), and of that which the Israelites passed in their pursuit of the Philistines (1 Sam 14:25), and of the forest of the cedars of Lebanon (1 Kgs 4:33; 2 Kgs 19:23; Hos 14:5, Hos 14:6).
“The house of the forest of Lebanon (1 Kgs 7:2; 1 Kgs 10:17; 2 Chr 9:16) was probably Solomon’s armoury, and was so called because the wood of its many pillars came from Lebanon, and they had the appearance of a forest. (See Baalbec.)
Heb. horesh, denoting a thicket of trees, underwood, jungle, bushes, or trees entangled, and therefore affording a safe hiding-place. place. This word is rendered “forest” only in 2 Chr 27:4. It is also rendered “wood”, the “wood” in the “wilderness of Ziph,” in which david concealed himself (1 Sam 23:15), which lay south-east of Hebron. In Isa. 17:19 this word is in Authorized Version rendered incorrectly “bough.”
Heb. pardes, meaning an enclosed garden or plantation. Asaph is (Neh 2:8) called the “keeper of the king’s forest.” The same Hebrew word is used Eccl 2:5, where it is rendered in the plural “orchards” (R.V., “parks”), and Song 4:1–16: 13, rendered “orchard” (R.V. marg., “a paradise”).
“The forest of the vintage” (Zech 11:2, “inaccessible forest,” or R.V. “strong forest”) is probably a figurative allusion to Jerusalem, or the verse may simply point to the devastation of the region referred to.
The forest is an image of unfruitfulness as contrasted with a cultivated field (Isa 29:17; Isa 32:15; Jer 26:18; Hos 2:12). Isaiah (Isa 10:19, Isa 10:33, Isa 10:34) likens the Assyrian host under Sennacherib (q.v.) to the trees of some huge forest, to be suddenly cut down by an unseen stroke.
From Easton’s Bible Dictionary (1897), by Matthew George Easton.
