Literatura ng Ikalawang Templo sa Levitico 19:23: Concerning Noah's Work as a Planter & Allegorical Interpretation

(β) 94–139. Our planting (Lev. 19:23–25). Ere we can plant fruit trees we must migrate to the God-given land, i.e. the mind must find the way of Wisdom. The beginner bidden to prune, i.e. cut out all hurtful things, e.g. the harlot and the toady from Friendship, superstition from Religion. Jacob’s peeled rods and the leper’s flesh, both white all over, serve as a pattern. Philo attempts to explain the command to prune the fruit itself.

[52] Do you not see that, even if He bring us into virtue and even if, when brought in, we plant no fruitless thing but “every tree good for food,” He yet commands us “thoroughly to cleanse its uncleanness” (Lev. 19:23)? And this means the notion that we are planting, for it is the cutting away of self-conceit that He demands, and self-conceit is in its nature unclean.

[95] “When ye shall have entered into the land, which the Lord your God giveth you, and shall have planted any tree for food, ye shall cleanse away its uncleanness: for three years its fruit shall remain not cleansed away, it shall not be eaten: but in the fourth year all its fruit shall be holy for a thank-offering to the Lord: but in the fifth year ye shall eat the fruit; its crop shall be added to your store. I am the Lord, your God” (Lev. 19:23–25).