The Sycamore Fig Tree

​The following essay is excerpted from Christine Norvell’s recent book The Sycomore Fig Tree: Biblical Botany & Scriptural Truth.

I read the Book of Amos several times one summer, drawn in by how the land responded to what was spoken. Years ago, in my master’s thesis, I explored the land as a character in the early works of American author Willa Cather. Call it land, call it setting, in fiction it was not a very original thesis idea—I argued that the land was essentially human. Never neutral and never static, it could change its mind. It could act for good or ill for those who presumed to control it or who thought they could tend it. But the image of nature as a person is ancient.

In the Book of Amos, the land felt judgment, a human response. Amaziah the priest complained to Jeroboam, “The land cannot bear all [Amos’s] words” (7:10 NIV). It could not sustain or endure it. The land trembled with agitation, rising and falling like the Nile River (8:8). It was as if the land God created knew that He would release an unimaginably horrific famine. No one would be able to hear the words of Adonai (8:11). Amaziah was right.

In my early research I quickly realized that Amos drew the attention of many biblical scholars for one reason, a reason I was eager to investigate as well—no one knew for certain what he did for a living. What was his true occupation? Amos claimed, “I was no prophet, nor a prophet’s son, but I was a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore figs” (7:14 ESV). (Note that Sycomore is a kind of fig, deriving its spelling from the fruit syconium and the Greek word sykomoraia. It is not to be confused with the American sycamore, Plantanus occidentalis L., or the British sycamore tree, an actual maple, Acer pseudoplatanus L.) But what does that mean?
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Opinions swirled over centuries of research. . . .

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