But I am like. — The flourishing olive alternates with the vine, in Hebrew poetry, as an emblem of prosperous Israel. (See Jeremiah 11:16; Hosea 14:6.) The epithet “green” hardly refers to the colour so much as the “vigour” of the tree, for the foliage of “wan grey olive wood” cannot be called verdant. But though the olive is scarcely, to our Western eyes, a beautiful tree, “to the Oriental the coolness of the pale-blue foliage, its evergreen freshness, spread like a silver sea along the slopes of the hills, speaks of peace and plenty, food and gladness” (Tristram, Nat. Hist. of the Bible, p. 374).
In the house of God. — Here and in the more elaborate simile (Psalms 92:13) the situation, “in the house of God,” is added to show that the prophecy has come of religious trust. It is quite possible that trees were actually planted in the precincts of the Temple, as they are in the Haram area now, so that the rendering, “near the house of God,” would express a literal fact. Or the whole may be figurative, as in the verse, “like the olive branches round about Thy table.”