Tehillim 128 – A Wife as the Temple Altar
Tehillim 128 – A Wife as the Temple Altar
Tehillim 128:3
- “Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine within the chambers of your home; your sons, like olive saplings, around your table.”
Midrash Tanchuma explains these words as follows: “May your wife be like a grapevine that grows in the home, with its branches extending beyond the home. May your wife remain at home and bear children who will be drawn to the world of Torah.
If a woman remains at home all the time, she atones for the sins of her entire family, just as the Temple altar atoned for the sins of the entire world.
May your children be like olive shoots—for all trees can be grafted with other kinds of trees (an apple tree can accept a pear tree, for example), but the olive tree does not accept a foreign species.
And may your wife likewise remain righteous and never unite with another man.
Then you will merit having your children anointed with holy oil.
In what way are they compared to olives?
Just as the fruit of an olive tree ripens over nine months, so a righteous woman carries her children for nine months, and they are born healthy.
There is another reason children are compared to olives: at first, olives are bitter, but later they become sweet. So it is with children: raising them involves much bitterness, but when they grow up to be worthy people, it is sweet.
(Midrash Tanchuma, Vayeishelach, 6)
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Tags: The Hidden Meaning of Tehillim, A Wife as the Altar of the Temple, Tehillim 128, Tehillim 128 – A Wife as the Temple Altar, wife – vine, children - olives
