Psalm 128:3

The Message

Your wife will bear children as a vine bears grapes, your household lush as a vineyard, The children around your table as fresh and promising as young olive shoots. Stand in awe of God’s Yes. Oh, how he blesses the one who fears God!

Cross References

Psalm 127:3

Don’t you see that children are God’s best gift? the fruit of the womb his generous legacy? Like a warrior’s fistful of arrows are the children of a vigorous youth. Oh, how blessed are you parents, with your quivers full of children! Your enemies don’t stand a chance against you; you’ll sweep them right off your doorstep.

Psalm 144:12

Make our sons in their prime like sturdy oak trees, Our daughters as shapely and bright as fields of wildflowers. Fill our barns with great harvest, fill our fields with huge flocks; Protect us from invasion and exile— eliminate the crime in our streets.

Psalm 52:8

And I’m an olive tree, growing green in God’s house. I trusted in the generous mercy of God then and now.

Ezekiel 19:10

Here’s another way to put it: Your mother was like a vine in a vineyard, transplanted alongside streams of water, Luxurious in branches and grapes because of the ample water. It grew sturdy branches fit to be carved into a royal scepter. It grew high, reaching into the clouds. Its branches filled the horizon, and everyone could see it. Then it was ripped up in a rage and thrown to the ground. The hot east wind shriveled it up and stripped its fruit. The sturdy branches dried out, fit for nothing but kindling. Now it’s a stick stuck out in the desert, a bare stick in a desert of death, Good for nothing but making fires, campfires in the desert. Not a hint now of those sturdy branches fit for use as a royal scepter! (This is a sad song, a text for singing the blues.)