#Psalms#Psalms128http://biblebitbybit.blogspot.com/2016/02/psalms-128-v-3.html
Posted by Psalms on Friday, 12 February 2016
Psalms 128:3
Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of thine house: thy children like olive plants round about thy table.
128:3. Thy wife. To reach the full of earthly felicity a man must not be alone. A helpmeet was needed in Paradise, and assuredly she is not less necessary out of it. He that finds a wife finds a good thing. It is not every man that feareth the Lord who has a wife; but if he has, she will share in his blessedness and increase it.
Shall be as a fruitful vine. To complete domestic bliss children are sent as the lawful fruit of marriage. Good wives are also fruitful in kindness, thrift, helpfulness, and affection: if they bear no children, they are by no means barren if they yield us the wine of consolation and the clusters of comfort.
By the sides of thine house. She is a fruitful vine, and a faithful housekeeper. It is her husband’s house, and she is her husband’s; as the text puts it, thy wife and thine house—but by her loving care her husband is made so happy that he is glad to own her as an equal proprietor with himself, for he is hers, and the house is hers too.
Thy children like olive plants round about thy table. The psalmist never intended to suggest the idea of olive plants round a table, but of young people springing up around their parents, just as olive plants surround the fine, well-rooted tree. The figure is very striking, and would be sure to present itself to the mind of every observer in the olive country. How beautiful to see the gnarled olive, still bearing abundant fruit, surrounded with a little band of sturdy successors, any one of which would be able to take its place should the central olive be blown down, or removed in any other way. The notion of a table in a bower may suit a cockney in a tea-garden, but would never occur to an oriental poet; it is not the olive plants, but the children, that are round about the table. Moreover, note that it is not olive branches, but plants—a very different thing. Our children gather around our table to be fed, and this involves expenses: how much better is this than to see them pining upon beds of sickness, unable to come for their meals! What a blessing to have sufficient to put upon the table! Let us for this benefit praise the bounty of the Lord. The wife is busy all over the house, but the youngsters are busiest at meal-times; and if the blessing of the Lord rest upon the family, no sight can be more delightful. Here we have the vine and the olive blended—joy from the fruitful wife, and solid comfort from the growing family; these are the choicest products earth can yield: our families are gardens of the Lord.
The Treasury of David by Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892)
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