Seeds For Thinking

Link: http://seedsforthinking.oldgleaner.com/

* Tumbling Tumbleweeds
* Scripture: " . . . Like the chaff of the mountains before the wind,
Like a rolling thing before the whirlwind."
Isaiah 17:13b, NKJV

"The Sons of the Pioneers," a western-style musical group, were noted for singing the song "Tumbling Tumbleweeds."

"Lonely but free I'll be found;
Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds."

The song paints a graphic picture of the old west, and the independence of the cowboy, at least in myth and media. A word search on the internet for "tumbleweed" will generate pages of 'hits' for everything from botany to music and names for all types of establishments, including restaurants and child care centers. The rolling bush has literally become the symbol of the American west.
In fact, the tumbleweed is not an American plant at all, but is believed to have arrived in this country in 1877 along with flax seed imported by settlers from Ukraine. One common name is 'Russian Thistle'!
Growing and flowering quickly in the spring when conditions are favorable, the plant has a built in 'disconnect' mechanism that turns it into a rolling thing when the winds of winter buffet it.
Isaiah also wrote about a rolling thing in prophecies concerning Damascus and Samaria. I find that very few commentaries pursue the full depth of meaning in that reference. It is easy to picture threshing in the mountains where the chaff mixed with the grain is easily blown away by the wind, but to skip over the image of the 'rolling thing.'
The rolling thing of Isaiah is also sometimes referred to as a tumbleweed, or a galgal plant. Like the Russian Thistle, it quickly grows into a beautifully flowering but formidable looking plant that nothing would desire to dislodge. The galgal also shares the trait of disconnecting from its root, rolling into a ball, and drifting before the wind. Thus, whether chaff, tumbleweed, or rolling thing, the simile describes something that is easily dislodged and blown about by the slightest breeze of opposition.
Damascus, Syria, and Ephraim/Samaria had formed an alliance. Isaiah warned that Ephraim had forgotten the God of their salvation, and had "set out foreign seedlings" (17:10) which would briefly flourish, and, like the galgal, appear to be unconquerable.
The word of God is clear; all those who are not firmly rooted in the LORD will become as a "rolling thing" before the whirlwind."
March 26, 2006