Reflection
I Am Like an Olive Tree
Psalm 52
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An olive tree does not look like much when you first see one. It is not tall. The trunk is grey and twisted, split open in places, and it looks like it has been through something. But it is still standing, and it has been standing a long time. Longer than the man who planted it. Some of them in Israel were old when Jesus walked past them.
You cannot pull one out. The roots go too deep and spread too wide. Cut it down and it comes back up from the stump. It goes on bearing fruit when it is old — that is the strange thing about olives. Age does not finish them.
And it stays green. In a dry summer, when the ground has gone hard and the grass has given up, the olive is still green.
That is the picture David reaches for. Not a cedar, not something grand. An olive tree, growing in the house of God, where it has been put and where it will stay.
Just before this, he has been describing another man — the psalm is set against Doeg, who informed on the priests and then killed them. A man with a tongue like a sharpened razor, who loved evil more than good and lying more than speaking the truth. And then this, which is the heart of it: he trusted in the abundance of his riches.
That is what the man leaned his weight on. It held him up, or seemed to. He had done well. He had enough.
David says: God will break him down. Snatch him away. Uproot him from the land of the living.
Uproot. Pull him out by the roots. Hold that word, and then read the next line.
But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God. I trust in the steadfast love of God for ever and ever.
The same word sits under both men. Batach — to lean your weight on something, to rest on it, to let it take you. He leaned on what he had. I lean on this. Two men, the same posture, different ground.
One of them gets pulled up. One of them is a tree that cannot be.
Selah
Read it again and notice what David does not say.
He does not say I trust in God. He says I trust in the steadfast love of God.
That is not the same sentence.
I will thank you for ever, because you have done it. I will wait for your name, for it is good, in the presence of the godly.
Thank, and wait. He does both at once, which is odd until you see it. The thanks is for something already done. The waiting is for something not yet. He stands between the two, green, and does not move.
And he is not doing it alone. In the presence of the godly. The tree is in the house of God, and the house is full of people. Every one of them saying but I, and hearing it said back.
I have seen the picture. Not in a young man. In the ones near the end of it — men and women who have been standing a long time, whose bark is split in places, who have been through something. You would not call them impressive at first look.
But they are still bearing. They are still green.