Charles H. Spurgeon on Psalms 52:8

(first clause):

"But I am olive charged with fruit

In fertile soil that grows."

This appears to express of the Hebrew words, which our translators render, like a green olive tree, but which in reality have no reference to the colour, but to the flourishing, vigorous, and thriving state of the plant; just as Homer gives it the epithet of "luxuriant, "and "flourishing; "and Ovid that of "ever flourishing." The fact is, the colour of the leaves of this tree is not a bright lively green; but a dark, disagreeable, or yellowish one. Scheuchzer describes the leaves, as "superne coloris atrovirentis, vel in viridi flavescentis." An English traveller, writing from Italy, thus expresses his disappointment about the olive tree: —"The fields, and indeed the whole face of Tuscany, are in a manner covered with olive trees; but the olive tree does not answer the character I have conceived of it. The royal psalmist and some of the sacred writers, speak with rapture of the `green olive tree, 'so that I expected a beautiful green; and I confess to you, I was wretchedly disappointed to find its hue resembling that of our hedges when they are covered with dust." I have heard other travellers express the same feeling of disappointment. "The true way of solving the difficulty, "as Harmer properly remarks, "is to consider the word translated `green, 'not as descriptive of colour, but of some other property; youthfulness, vigour, prosperity, or the like." Richard Mant.