Your wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of your house: your children like olive plants round about your table.
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Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
4. Let us now come to the words, "Thy wife" (ver. 3): it is said unto Christ. His wife, therefore, is the Church: His Church, His wife, we ourselves are. "As a fruitful vineyard." But in whom is the vineyard fruitful? For we see many barren ones entering those walls; we see that many intemperate, usurious persons, slave dealers, enter these walls, and such as resort to fortune-tellers, go to enchanters and enchantresses when they have a headache. Is this the fruitfulness of the vine? Is this the fecundity of the wife? It is not. These are thorns, but the vineyard is not everywhere thorny. It hath a certain fruitfulness, and is a fruitful vine; but in whom? "Upon the sides of thy house." Not all are called the sides of the house. For I ask what are the sides. What shall I say? Are they walls, strong stones, as it were? If he were speaking of this bodily tenement, we should perhaps understand this by sides. We mean by the sides of the house, those who cling unto Christ. ...
5. "Thy ch...
Sides. Against which vines were planted. (Calmet)
The married people who fear God, shall commonly have a numerous posterity; or their souls shall produce many good works in the Church, which springs from our Saviour's side. Children denote such good works. (Worthington)
Plants. Psalm cxliii. 12. (Homer, Odyssey vi. 163.)
