Dale Pollard
“The forest devoured more people that day than the sword” (2 Samuel 18.8).
David’s son, Absalom, rebelled. He’s amassed an army and David’s been on the run. Finally, it all comes to a head and the battle spread over the face of all the country. In total, twenty thousand of Absalom’s followers are killed—but the bulk of the casualties fell in the forest of Ephraim. Wait, no, they didn’t fall. The text says that they were devoured.
Is it possible that thousands of men were eaten by trees?
Some of the oldest legends of man-eating trees come from Central and South America. According to local legends, the tree would lie perfectly still until an unsuspecting person walked over its roots. The tendrils would snap upward, wrap around the victim, and squeeze them to death. The tree’s leaves were said to be lined with sharp, tooth-like spines that pierced the skin to drain the victim’s blood
Similarly, British explorers returning from central Africa told tales of giant trees that produced a super-adhesive sap that coated their low-hanging branches. If a human brushed against the branch, they became completely glued to it. They would become helplessly stuck, and the tree would eventually absorb them.
The Greeks and Romans had several myths of trees being cut, bleeding real human blood, and screaming in agony. Specifically, the association of ancient oaks and terebinths with human sacrifice is deeply documented. The premier Roman historian Tacitus wrote extensively in the 1st century AD about how the Germanic tribes viewed some of these oak groves. In his work Germania, he describes the Semnones tribe, who spoke of a forest that nobody could enter unless bound with chains.
“At a stated period, all the tribes of the same blood gather by their delegations in a wood consecrated by the auguries of their forefathers and by ancient awe. There they publicly sacrifice a human being, celebrating the horrific opening of their barbarous worship” (Tacitus, Germania, Chapter 39).
Lucan describes a sacred grove near Massilia that Julius Caesar ordered his men to chop down. The Romans were paralyzed with fear because of the rumors of human blood feeding the ancient oaks
“There was a grove which from earliest times had never been violated… No woodland nymphs or Pan resided here, instead there were savage rites and barbarous worship, massive upright stones used as horrible altars; every tree was made sacred with human blood… Crude effigies of gods fashioned from fallen trunks were all around” (Lucan, Pharsalia, Book III, line 399ff).
Josephus records that the tree that Abraham met the three angels by (Gen. 18.1-2) was a terebinth that had stood there since the creation of the world. He noted that locals venerated it. The exact location of this encounter was identified as Ramat El-Khalil, just north of modern-day Hebron. For thousands of years, a single massive tree stood at this site drawing millions of pilgrims. Well, then came Constantine.
By the Roman era, Jews, Christians, and Pagans were all holding joint festivals at the tree, offering sacrifices, and pouring drinks down Abraham’s well. The Emperor Constantine was disturbed by these pagan rituals that he ordered the altars destroyed and built a massive Christian Basilica directly over the roots of the tree to claim it.
None of this proves that trees ate thousands of soldiers in the forest of Ephriam, but it does prove that the concept isn’t a new one. Trees were considered dark, holy, hungry, and special for some reason or another. However, at least one tree played a part in the death of a man, though. Following the verse describing a forest devouring people we read:
“…Absalom was riding his mule, and the mule went under the thick branches of a great oak, and his head caught fast in the oak, and he was suspended between heaven and earth, while the mule that was under him went on” (2 Sam. 18.9).
Joab and ten others would stab him and beat him to death while he hung from the tree.
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