Charles H. Spurgeon on Psalms 128:3

Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine, etc. The comparison would perhaps be brought out more clearly by arranging the verse as follows:

"Thy wife shall be in the inner part of thy house

Like a fruitful vine;

Thy children round about thy table

Like the shoots of the olive."

In the inner part, literally, "the sides of thy house", as in Am 6:10, i.e., the women's apartments, as marking the proper sphere of the wife engaged in her domestic duties, and also to some extent her seclusion, though this was far less amongst the Jews than amongst other Orientals. The "vine" is an emblem chiefly of fruitfulness, but perhaps also of dependence, as needing support; the "olive", of vigorous, healthy, joyous life. The same figure is employed by Euripides, Herc. Fur., 839. Med. 109S. —J. J. Stewart Perowne.