Friday, October 3, 2014

Old Testament last Sunday

Last Sunday in church my husband was a Scripture reader. The passage he read was Judges 6:11-27, a militaristic story about Gideon meeting the angel of the Lord sitting under a terebinth. The angel says to Gideon "The Lord is with you, O mighty man of valor." (Gideon is skeptical).  And then the Lord said to him; "But I will be with you, and you shall strike the Midianites as one man."  I don't know how the Midianites felt about that, they might have been trying to conquer the Israelites but weren't they in the land first? It's a long complicated story in more ways than one.
My attention was caught by the word terebinth. The angel sat under the terebinth? What is a terebinth? My first thought was that it was an architectural term, a type of column.
I pulled out my smart phone, (in church!),  looked it up, and found out it is a kind of tree. A large leafy spreading branches sort of tree. Outside the church windows is a very tall leafy spreading maple tree with wonderfully interesting branches.  I thought of the angel of the Lord waiting under the terebinth and how appropriate to the day and our church to have our own terebinth outside the front doors.
Sketched on my android phone using SketchBook for Galaxy.