Hosea 14:5-7 I will be as the dew to Israel: he shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon.… Anybody that has ever seen a grove of olives knows that their beauty is not such as strikes the eye. If it were not for the blue sky overhead, that rays down glorifying light, they would not be much to look at or talk about: The tree has a gnarled, grotesque trunk, which divides into insignificant branches, bearing leaves mean in shape, harsh in texture, with a silvery under side. It gives but a quivering shade and has no massiveness nor sympathy. Ay! but there are olives on the branches. And so the beauty of the humble tree is in what it grows for man's good. The olive is crushed into oil, and the oil is used for smoothing and suppling joints and flesh, for nourishing and sustaining the body as food, for illuminating darkness as oil in the lamp. And these three things are the three things for which we Christian people have received all our dew, and all our beauty, and all our strength — that we may give other people light, that we may be the means of conveying to other people nourishment, that we may move gently in the world as lubricating, sweetening, soothing influences. The question, after all, is, Does anybody gather fruit of us, and would anybody call us "trees of righteousness the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified"? (A. Maclaren, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: I will be as the dew unto Israel: he shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon. |
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