The illustration that forms the center of the psalm shows how the blessing works: “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.” The illustration is, as we would expect, conditioned by Hebrew culture, in which the standard signs of happiness were a wife who had many children and children who gathered and grew around the table: fruitful vine and olive shoots.
