Sunday, November 14, 2021

On Every High Hill and under Every Green Tree

I read some chapters of 1 Kings a couple weeks ago (after seeing a citation of 1 Kings 11:3 in my edition of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales), and I came across the phrase "on every high hill and under every green tree" in 1 Kings 14:23.  A couple years ago, I'd run across a somewhat expanded version of this phrase in Ezekiel 6:13 ("on every high hill, on all the mountain-tops, under every green tree, and under every leafy oak, wherever they offered pleasing aroma to all their idols").  At the time, I knew this sounded familiar, and I eventually found what I was thinking of, in Jeremiah 2:20:  "on every high hill and under every green tree."

These constructions may not fit a strict definition of a merism, but the nearly opposite senses of "high" and "under" do provide a sense of breadth.  This is also indicated more clearly by "wherever" in the verse in Ezekiel.

At the time, I didn't consider this significant enough to write about, but since I found a third occurrence of this phrase, I thought I would note it.