Olive-Tree
Easton's Bible Dictionary [1]
Genesis 8:11 Deuteronomy 6:11 8:8 Judges 9:9 Psalm 52:8 Jeremiah 11:16 Hosea 14:6 Revelation 11:4 Zechariah 4:3,11-14
The "olive-tree, wild by nature" ( Romans 11:24 ), is the shoot or cutting of the good olive-tree which, left ungrafted, grows up to be a "wild olive." In Romans 11:17 Paul refers to the practice of grafting shoots of the wild olive into a "good" olive which has become unfruitful. By such a process the sap of the good olive, by pervading the branch which is "graffed in," makes it a good branch, bearing good olives. Thus the Gentiles, being a "wild olive," but now "graffed in," yield fruit, but only through the sap of the tree into which they have been graffed. This is a process "contrary to nature" (11:24).
Kitto's Popular Cyclopedia of Biblial Literature [2]
It is more than probable that the olive was introduced from Asia into Europe; and though it continues to be much cultivated in Syria, it is yet much more extensively so in the south of Europe, whence the rest of the world is chiefly supplied with olive-oil.
