Bible Strands
Psalms 128:3
Your wife will be like a fruitful vine flourishing within your house, your sons like olive shoots sitting around your table.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The psalmist addresses a man who fears the LORD, describing the domestic fruit of the blessed life set out in verses 1–2.
The words — פֹּרִיָּה (pōrîyyāh), a stative participle of פָּרָה (H6509), "to be fruitful, to sprout"; it marks a continuing state of fruitfulness rather than a single event.
The thread — The same vine-and-olive domestic imagery recurs in Genesis 49:22 (Joseph, "a fruitful vine by a spring") and Ezekiel 19:10 (a vine planted by water, fruitful and full of branches); Psalms 52:8 transposes the olive image to the worshipper in the house of God.
Why it lands — Blessing here is not abstract wealth but embodied, relational flourishing: a wife who produces and children who sit at the table. It asks the reader to measure a life's fruit by what is present in the household, not by external markers.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of thine house: thy children like olive plants round about thy table.
Cross-references
- Ezekiel 19:10 Your mother was like a vine in your vineyard, planted by the water; it was fruitful and full of branches because of the abundant waters.
- Psalms 52:8 But I am like an olive tree flourishing in the house of God; I trust in the loving devotion of God forever and ever.
- Genesis 49:22 Joseph is a fruitful vine—a fruitful vine by a spring, whose branches scale the wall.
- Proverbs 5:15 Drink water from your own cistern, and running water from your own well.
- Romans 11:24 For if you were cut from a wild olive tree, and contrary to nature were grafted into one that is cultivated, how much more readily will these, the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree!
- Jeremiah 11:16 The LORD once called you a flourishing olive tree, beautiful with well-formed fruit. But with a mighty roar He will set it on fire, and its branches will be consumed.
- Psalms 127:5 Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. He will not be put to shame when he confronts the enemies at the gate.
- Psalms 144:12 Then our sons will be like plants nurtured in their youth, our daughters like corner pillars carved to adorn a palace.
- Hosea 14:6 His shoots will sprout, and his splendor will be like the olive tree, his fragrance like the cedars of Lebanon.