Hey there, this is Tim at the Bible Project, and welcome to the Bible Project Podcast.

If you've been tracking with us in this series on the Tree of Life, we have been talking

about the theme of trees in the Bible, and specifically, at the places where God meets

His people at significant key junctures of the biblical story, by trees on high places.

This episode is our final stop in the Old Testament.

We're going to look at the stories of David and Solomon, and specifically, their desire

to build a temple for God on the high place of Jerusalem.

And lo and behold, the story really focuses in on the kinds of trees that went into the

making of the temple.

This is all about them creating a new kind of Eden, or a personalized Eden for themselves,

lots of layers to the trees and the temple in Jerusalem.

We're going to explore that.

We're also going to look at the theme of trees in the book of Isaiah, which is actually

one of the most difficult, at least I think, in challenging books to make sense of and

how it works together as a whole.

One helpful way to make sense of the book of Isaiah is to follow the theme of trees.

To notice right at the beginning, Isaiah accuses the Israelites of creating faults, Eden's

on high places in Jerusalem.

He announces that the current temple of Jerusalem is going down in flames.

So that God can exalt and create a new Eden temple in the new Jerusalem that he's going

to create.

This theme is fascinating how it weaves together ideas of new creation, new temple, messianic

...