The character for “greed” or “greedy” is written with two “tree” characters above the character for “woman” or “female.”

TREE + TREE + WOMAN = GREED [Artwork​—Chinese characters]

The top part of the word, two trees side by side, is itself the character for “forest.” Nevertheless, pictorially, the entire character seems to represent a woman in front of, or perhaps looking up to, two trees. Why would the idea of “greed” be represented this way?

What about the idea behind the character for “greed”? Well, you may recall the Bible’s description of the garden of Eden, in which two trees were mentioned specifically by name: “The tree of life in the middle of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and bad.” (Genesis 2:9) Was it not Eve’s inordinate desire for the fruit of one of those trees that eventually led to mankind’s downfall?

Are these mere coincidences, or is there more to it? In a book entitled Discovery of Genesis, the coauthors, C. H. Kang and Ethel R. Nelson, analyzed dozens of ideographic Chinese characters, including the two mentioned above, and observed that “the characters when broken down into component parts time and again reflect elements of the story of God and man recorded in the early chapters of Genesis.”