Rabbi Levi taught that on the day Solomon carried the Ark into the Temple, something unusual happened to the wood. The beams of cedar that lined the walls and the ceilings, long since cut and dried and set into place, came back to life. Sap flowed through them. Buds swelled on the carved surfaces. The woodwork of the sanctuary began to bear fruit.
Rabbi Levi cited Psalm 92 to prove it. "Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God" (Psalms 92:13). The psalm was not speaking in metaphor. The Temple was planted ground. The cedar trees that had been cut down for its construction had been replanted in a different sense, and the place where they stood caused them to flourish again.
For generations, Rabbi Levi continued, the fruit of these beams fed the young children of the priestly families who grew up in the Temple precincts. Boys and girls too small to eat the offerings themselves ate what the walls of the sanctuary produced. This sweetness continued until King Manasseh, great-grandson of King Hezekiah, set up an idol inside the Temple itself. The Shechinah, the divine presence that had made the beams fruit, withdrew. The sap stopped. The buds shriveled on the wood. "The flower of Lebanon languisheth," as Nahum wrote (Nahum 1:4).
The trees could tell the difference between what belonged in that house and what did not. When the idol came in, the fruit went out. This teaching is preserved in Yoma 39b and expanded in the later midrashim.