FORESTRY OF THE PROPHETS 413 



SO did Hosea, but neither shows much leading toward the subject. 

 Daniel shows no interest in forests. Neither does Jesus the son of 

 Sirach, 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 of Job, the John Muir of Judah, author of the im- 

 mortal 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 pic- 

 ture, 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 of fires or whether any efforts were ever made toward 

 fire suppression. 



The book of Joel opens with an allegory in which the judgment of 

 God takes the form of a fire.- 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. O Lord, to thee do I cry, for 

 a fire hath devoured the pastures of the 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 fire devoureth before them ; and behind 

 them a flame burneth : the land is as a garden of Eden before them, and 

 behind them a desolate wilderness !" 



Joel's story of the flames is to my mind one of the most graphic 

 descriptions of fire ever written. It is "a day of clouds and thick 

 darkness," and the fire is "like the dawn spread upon the mountains." 

 The flames are "as a great people, set in battle array," and "the appear- 

 ance of them is as horses, and as horsemen, so do they run. Like the 



* Parts of Joel 1 and 2 have been used in printed matter issued by the South- 

 western District as fire prevention propaganda. 



