Psalm 128:3 (NLT) of the Bible reads, “Your wife will be like a fruitful grapevine, flourishing within your home”.
When I read this verse, I have in my head a picture of a beautiful, flourishing vine growing up the side of a house. It reaches out and clings tightly to the house wherever it touches. It makes a plain wall pretty. It gives life to the home. It provides sweet food that is enjoyable and nourishing to the body.
The verse used a vine to illustrate a fruitful wife. She clings to her home. She gives it life. She makes it beautiful. She is productive. She is nourishing and pleasant to be around. She doesn’t let her emotions control her and she clings to what is Holy and acceptable to God.
I found “Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible” to be a beautiful description of the meaning behind it.
“Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of thine house,…. The vine being a weak and tender tree, which needs propping and supporting; and often is fastened to the sides of a house, to which the allusion here is; whereunto it cleaves, and on which it runs up, and bears very agreeable fruit; it is properly used to express the weakness and tenderness of the female sex, their fruitfulness in bearing children, and their care of domestic affairs, being keepers at home; see 1 Peter 3:7. Kimchi observes, that the vine is the only tree men plant within doors; which, when it is grown up, they bring out at a hole or window of the house without, to have the sun and air; and so its root is within the house, and the branches without: and he observes, that a modest woman is within the house, and does not go without, and is only seen by her husband; but her children, like the branches of the vine, go out to work “
Dr. Horne also,
“The vine, a lowly plant, raised with tender care, becoming, by its luxuriance, its beauty, its fragrance, and its clusters, the ornament and glory of the house to which it is joined, and by which it is supported, forms the finest imaginable emblem of a fair, virtuous, and fruitful wife“
She doesn’t waste time on social media. She doesn’t tear down her husband or children with her words. She doesn’t spend her days shopping needlessly. She doesn’t run to spend her husband’s money on expensive coffee, clothes, or decor. She doesn’t serve fast food for dinner. She doesn’t sacrifice time in her home, with her husband and children, to work a job in order to live an “ideal” lifestyle.
