Bramble & Bush

The bramble was a low, thorny, worthless shrub — good for little but kindling, and a hazard that snagged and scratched. Jotham built a biting parable on it: when the useful trees declined to reign, the worthless bramble accepted, threatening fire to all who would not shelter in its non-existent shade — a portrait of an unfit ruler.

Jesus used the same kind of plant to test character by fruit: “of thorns men do not gather figs, nor of a bramble bush gather they grapes.” What a plant produces reveals what it is, just as a person’s deeds reveal the heart.

Yet the humblest desert bush became holy ground when “the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed,” and God spoke to Moses from its midst. The same lowly scrub that pictures worthlessness became the place of the great revelation of the divine name — a reminder that God delights to meet people in the most unlikely, ordinary places.