Tuesday 5 August 2008

Egkentrizo


Graft (egkentrizo; the Revised Version (British and American) "graft"; the King James Version, "graff"):

The word occurs 6 times in Rom 11. Paul assumed that those living about Rome were familiar with the process of grafting olive trees, for olive culture had been adopted by the Greeks and Romans in Paul's time. The wild olive trees (Arabic colloquial, zeitun berri) are cut back, slits made on the freshly sawed branch ends, and two or three grafts from a cultivated olive (Arabic colloquial, zeitun jouwi) are inserted in such a way that the bark of the scion and of the branch coincide. The exposed ends are smeared with mud made from clay, and then bound with cloth or date straw, which is held by thongs made from the bark of young mulberry branches. The fruit thus obtained is good. Wild olives cannot be made cultivated olives by engrafting, as Paul implies (Rom 11:24), but a wild olive branch thus grafted would thrive. So Gentiles would flourish spiritually when grafted into the fullness of God's mercy, first revealed to the world through Israel.
James A. Patch


This website i've found really helpful in understanding my place in relation to the people of the promise, Gods chosen Israel. I think its interesting that grafting can't happen without wounding. The process of joining, of uniting, is a painful one and requires wounds.
Just something to ponder...

2 comments:

Ami said...

I've just returned from Zakynthos, a greek island that is home to an olive tree that is supposed to be dated at just under 2000 years old.
There is a town on the island that is named after Mary Magdelene who supposedly visited the island to petition for Jesus and consequently brought Chrsitianity to the island. Its a bit weird to think that the olive tree would have been around when she was travelling through the small towns, telling people about the amazing things she had seen in Jerusalem.

Oh, and the Olive tree - it's pretty big now. It's grown big with time, kinda like the faith of the people on the island.

Levi_grafted_in said...

Wow! thats really awesome. I knew that olive trees were tough, but thats pretty impressive :-D and quite poignant. I'm really into the idea of grafting/joining right now as you may have discovered ;-)