Cedars of Lebanon, The Trees God Planted By Michael A. Bengwayan, Ph. D.

Cedars of Lebanon, The Trees God Planted

By Michael A. Bengwayan, Ph. D.

God, besides creating the trees, planted trees.

In the book  of Ezekiel 17:22-24, God said: “ I myself will take a shoot from the very top of a cedar and plant it; I will break off a tender sprig from its topmost shoots and plant it on a high and lofty mountain. On the mountain heights of Israel I will plant it; it will produce branches and bear fruit and become a splendid cedar. Birds of every kind will nest in it; they will find shelter in the shade of its branches. All the trees of the forest will know that I the LORD bring down the tall tree and make the low tree grow tall. I dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish. I,  the LORD have spoken, and I will do it.” 

The Lebanon Cedar or cedrus libani is one of the most majestic trees of the world. They grow exclusively on Mount Lebanon, a mountain range that extends along the entire length of the country, and once covered the entirety of the mountain.

Lebanon Cedars have imposing trunks with dense, iconic crowns that become characteristically flat-headed as the trees age, and fairly level branches. Their bark is dark gray but the wood is beautiful light tone, hard and astonishingly decay resistant. The gum they secrete has a sweet aroma. Despite their exposed position, the trees remain ever green, never shed their leaves, and are always fragrant.

According to Amusing Planet, “the cedars of Lebanon were known since historical times. Indeed, the cedars played a key role in creating the name of Lebanon and its glory, for the Lebanese cedar was one of the most valued construction material in the antique world. 

The Phoenicians used cedars to build ships in which they sailed the Mediterranean, making them one of the first sea trading nations in the world. The cedars of Lebanon were also used by the Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, and Persians to construct houses and temples, the most famous of which are the temple of Jerusalem, and David's and Solomon's Palaces. The Egyptians used cedar resin for the mummification process, and Jews used the peel of the Lebanese Cedar in circumcision and treatment of leprosy. The Ottomans used cedar wood as fuel for railway engines because it burned much better than traditional oak, since cedar contains oil.”

“Egypt  cut large amounts of cedar for ship construction and for export. This continued for several thousand years until the 20th century when British troops of the Second World War finished off most of the remaining forests by using cedar wood to build railroad,” Amusing Planet said. 

The website added that “the Roman Emperor Hadrian, in the second century AD, had attempted to protect the forest with boundary markers carved into rocks. Over 200 such markers have been identified allowing scholars to make an approximation of the extent of the forest in those times. 

In 1876, Queen Victoria of Great Britain, ordered a protective wall to be built around a 102-hectare grove, but deforestation continued despite this. It wasn’t until the late 20th century that the cedars were declared a protected natural resource. By then, this immense forest had been reduced to just a couple of hundred specimens that grew in a handful of isolated patches.” 

According to Cedars Forever, a cedar preservation and reforestation program, there are 18 such patches of cedars in the country today. One of these groves, called the Cedars of God, stand in a sheltered glacial pocket of Mount Makmel, in the Kadisha Valley. This grove of about 375 trees are thought to be the oldest in Lebanon. Four of them, many hundreds of years old, have reached a height of 35 meters and their trunks are between 12 and 14 meters around. About a thousand young saplings were planted at the entrance of the grove in recent decades, but because of their slow growth it would take a long time before they mature. 

This site was added to the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites in 1998. The tree is  the symbol of Lebanon,  its pride, and features prominently on the Lebanese flag.