Thou shalt have olive trees throughout all thy coasts, but thou shalt not anoint thyself with the oil; for thine olive shall cast his fruit.
Thou shalt have olive trees throughout all thy coasts ... Syria, especially that part of it which the Israelites inhabited, was the native country of the olive. So valuable were olive trees, that almost all classes of that people possessed oliveyards (1 Samuel 8:14; 1 Chronicles 27:28; Nehemiah 5:11).
'It is a curious and interesting fact, that during more than 2,000 years Hebrews, Romans, Moslems, and Christians have been successively in possession of the rocky mountains of Palestine; yet the olive vindicates its paternal soil, and is found at this day on the same spot which was called by the Hebrew writers the mount of Olives eleven centuries before the Christian era' (Dr. Edward Clarke's 'Travels in Palestine;' Dr. Wilde's 'Travels in Palestine.' 2:, p. 184).