The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree. To an Oriental the palm is the queen of trees. "Of all vegetable forms," says Humboldt, "the palm is that to which the prize of beauty has been assigned by the concurrent voice of nations in all ages".
Its stately growth, and graceful form, its perpetual verdure, its lovely and luxuriant fruit, together with its manifold uses (Strabo, 16.1, § 14), give it precedence over all other vegetable growths in the eyes that are accustomed to rest upon it.
It is rather remarkable that, in the Old Testament, it is used as a figure for beauty only here and in So Psalms 7:7. Man, in his most flourishing growth, is ordinarily compared either to the cedar (2 Kings 14:9; So 2 Kings 5:15; Ezekiel 31:3-9; Amos 2:9, etc.
)or the olive tree ( 9:8, 9:9; Psalms 52:8; Jeremiah 11:16; Hosea 14:6, etc.). He shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon (see, besides the passages already quoted, 2 Kings 19:23; 2 Chronicles 2:8; Jeremiah 22:23; Zechariah 11:1).