Reeds

Reeds and rushes grew thick along the Nile and the Jordan, and baby Moses was laid in 'an ark of bulrushes' among the flags by the river's brink. Because reeds bend and snap so easily, they became pictures of weakness and unreliability: the Assyrian envoy mocked Egypt as 'the staff of this broken reed,' and Jesus asked whether the crowds had gone out to see John the Baptist as 'a reed shaken with the wind.' Isaiah promised that the Servant would not break 'a bruised reed.' At Jesus' trial the soldiers put a reed in his hand as a mock scepter and struck him on the head with it, and a measuring reed appears in the visions of Ezekiel and John.