What Does Tree Worship Have to Do with Injustice?

… you shall appoint judges and officials throughout your tribes to administer true justice for the people. You must not distort justice: you shall not show partiality; you shall not take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes even of the wise and twists the words even of the just. Justice, justice alone shall you pursue … You shall not plant an asherah or any kind of tree next to the altar of the LORD, your God, which you will build.

An obvious question, of course, is about the proximity of these verses: what does the tree have to do with perverted justice? Why is a tree antithetical to justice and impartiality?

Perhaps we need to better understand why people worship trees in the first place? And the consequences of worshipping trees (or nature)?

The natural world lacks concepts of kindness or loyalty, love or compassion. Trees, like any plant or animal in the natural world, are implacable objects, seeking only their own self-interest. Every tree and bush, every cat and bird and ant works to maximize itself and its kind, without any consideration for others. These creatures compete endlessly, sometimes by themselves, and sometimes in cooperation with others of their species or their parasites. The idea of an animal deliberately and consciously favoring a different animal would be nonsensical.

Man is not necessarily any better, of course. As Hobbes put it, the natural state of mankind without society is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” In a state of nature, man is merely another animal.

The problem with worshipping nature is that we also come to make what happens in nature into something that people ought to emulate. For example, if one worships nature and seeks to imitate it, then what arguments are there for altruism or kindness? What arguments are there for acting outside of our own natures, to choose, for example, to dampen our anger or encourage our empathy for others? If “natural” is good, then acting against our nature must be bad. More than that: is it not against nature not to accept “might makes right?”

A key symbol of nature is the tree. Trees are the largest living things a normal person ever sees, and they reflect (or even lead) the seasons and the natural cycles. Trees are essentially a proxy for a concept of an underlying life force in the world around us. Trees are about natural life, from generation and growth to renewal. Trees (and poles made from trees) were also broadly worshipped in their own right in the ancient world, as representative of a deity, Asherah.

Perhaps the Torah is making a specific point: that the way of the natural world, the way of every living creature in a state of nature to seek its own maximization to the exclusion of everything else, the way of “might makes right,” is antithetical to the Torah?

After all, isn’t justice about doing what is right, not merely affirming the privileges of the powerful?

Justice needs to be impartial and blind. A judge cannot decide the winner of a case by choosing whichever party paid the bigger bribe. Yet a natural way to act would be in naked self–interest. If we worship nature, then we cannot pursue justice. If we put a tree in the place where we worship G-d, then aren’t we accepting that nature is a deity, and that acting naturally is emulating the divine?

By forbidding us from putting a tree or pole next to the altar (note that nothing in the Mikdash had visible wood, and nothing was even the color green), is the Torah telling us that a Torah society must act in contrast against, not in consonance with, nature? If we worship nature, then we will seek to emulate it. And if we do that, then we will seek our self-interest, solicit bribes, blinding ourselves to what is good and right. A society that worships trees cannot be just.

Would this explanation also help explain why so much of the Torah’s prohibitions against idol worship is about things found in nature: animals, the sun, moon, stars, etc.? That putting nature on a pedestal is incompatible with being a holy people?