Isaiah 41:19

I will plant in the wilderness. — A picture as of the Paradise of God (Isaiah 51:3), with its groves of stately trees, completes the vision of the future. The two groups of four and three, making up the symbolic seven, may probably have a mystic meaning. The “shittah” is the acacia, the “oil tree” the wild olive, as distinguished from the cultivated (Romans 11:17), the “fir tree” is probably the cypress, the “pine” stands for the plane, always — as in the opening of Plato’s Phœdrus, and the story of Xerxes in Herod. vii. 31, — the glory of Eastern scenery and the “box-tree” is perhaps the larch, or a variety of cedar. The “myrtle” does not appear elsewhere in the Old Testament till after the exile (Nehemiah 8:15; Zechariah 1:8; Zechariah 1:10), but then it appears as if indigenous. It supplies the proper name Hadassah (Esther) in Esther 2:7.