Textual: This is the beginning of the citation of Zenos. It may be presumed that these are Zenos’ words, not Jacob’s.
Literary: As we saw with Isaiah (Isaiah 5:7), the connection between Israel and the olive tree is made explicit in the beginning of Zenos’ allegory. The essential elements of the allegory are also presented in this introduction. First, it is the Lord who introduces the allegory. this not only establishes the ultimate authority of the description, but clearly establishes the Lord as one of the characters of the allegory. The Lord is the “man” who nourished the tree.
Israel is the tree. It is fitting that Israel be designated as an olive tree not only because it makes the analogy work but because this was a traditional connection to Israel, with overtones of the Tree of Life. (Widengren, Geo. The King and the Tree of Life in Ancient Near Easter Religion. Uppsala: A.-B Lundequistaska Bokhandeln. 1951, p. 38; Ginzberg, Louis. The Legends of the Jews. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America. 1909, 1:93; 5:119).
It is because Israel is the tree that the appearance of the man who cares for it becomes so clearly the Lord. All of Israel understood their special covenant with the Lord, so that the caretaker could be no other. The connection between the covenant of the Lord and Israel is an essential element of the allegory. Without the basis of the covenantal relationship between the Lord and his people, the efforts for the salvation of the tree loose their power.
Paul Hoskisson has analyzed Jacob’s allegory in detail, and notes that there are two possibilities for the identification of the caretaker of the orchard, particularly in relation to the servant who is sent to effect the changes. One interpretation is that the master of the vineyard is Christ and the servant is a collective image of prophets. The second possibility, which Hoskisson favors, is that the master is the Father, and the servant the son. (Hoskisson, Paul. “The Allegory of the Olive Tree in Jacob.” In: The Allegory of the Olive Tree, FARMS, p. 71). As noted, I agree with his reading, but for perhaps a much different reason. Hoskisson reasons on the basis of theology:
“ I think there is reason to propose that the Lord of the vineyard represents our Heavenly Father and that the servant is Christ. For example, like the Lord of the vineyard, the servant throughout the allegory seems to be a single person and therefore cannot easily be made over into multiple prophets. Moreover, the servant in Jacob 5 can be associated with the ”righteous servant“ of Isaiah 53, whom Abinadi explicitly identifies as Christ (Mosiah 15:5-7). In addition, the working relationship between the Lord of the vineyard and the servant in the allegory accurately reflects the relationship between the Father and the Son, in that Christ does not act alone, but in all things follows the instructions and example of the Father.” (Hoskisson, p. 71).
This argument is compelling theologically, but one needed look nearly so far. As an Old World prophet, Zenos’ sensibilities would have been in accord with the known understandings of God and Messiah. Under those more ancient sensibilities, neither the master nor the servant are clearly Messianic, and the Lord would be associated with Jehovah (without the fine points of LDS discussion of the identification of that name to a pre-moral Jesus). In Zenos’ terms, concepts and Father and Son would be anachronistic. Therefore, the Lord, or Jehovah, becomes the identification of the master of the vineyard.
The question of the identification of the servant raises an important question about the nature of allegorical interpretation. How much of the allegory will fit into a precise “translation” into more identifiable people or events? Hoskisson is clearly an interpreter on the literal end of the scale, as he assigns rather specific time periods to various events in the allegory. While clearly applicable to the real world (else the allegory holds no meaning whatsoever) the absolute applicability of allegory is not required for instructional value, and indeed, virtually any allegory distorts “history” into “story.” Pushed to precision, virtually all allegories fail to make a precise match to the events the symbolize. It is essential to understand that the creation of allegory provides some modicum of literary license to the creator, in that events and times may be generalized rather than clearly delineated. Indeed, even in Hoskisson’s reading, single events in the allegory become assigned to multiple events in history, a process demonstrating the inability of a one-to-one reading of the story (Hoskisson, p. 76 where the Assyrian and Babylonian captivities are part of the scattering process).
This inherent imprecision in the assignment of “values” to allegorical elements is the reason that there is no clear identification of the servant. The servant is used as a literary device for providing the action of the story, in keeping with the idea that the master of the vineyard would not be the one who actually worked the vineyard. Both the actions, and at times the pleadings of the servant will be best seen as literary devices than symbolic of any relationship between Jehovah and either Jesus Christ or a symbolic representation of prophets.
The last element we see is that the tree “waxed old.” This is not only a literary description of the long time that the Lord had watched over Israel, but it is an important predecessor to the next phrase, that it “began to decay..” In the context of the natural world, this is a known result of age. By placing the tree in this state, the Lord both declares the essential righteousness of the beginning of the tree (a given, since the Lord planted it) but now places Israel in a state of apostasy, described as decay. The allegory will spend little time worrying about the causes of the apostasy (though it will be discussed at the end of the allegory), and much more on the efforts of the Lord to save the tree.
This allegory is therefore not a specific call to repentance, but the assumption that the apostate state will occur, as “naturally” as decay to an aged tree. The apostasy is a foregone event, not one that will be changed through repentance. The function of this allegory is not to forestall, but to predict in a way so as to reveal the hand of the Lord in the story of the recovery from the apostasy.
Historical: One of the questions about the olive tree is what it might be doing in a vineyard, as indicated in this verse. John Tvedtnes has examined the terminology of the ancient near east and found that vineyard was not only a term for the vineyard, but for the entire planting area which might also include other trees. For instance: “The Encyclopedia Miqráit notes that ”The Egyptian k3mu could be used for both a vineyard of vines and a plantation of mixed fruit trees… . The scribe Any counted twelve vines that he planted in his garden, and alongside them 100 fig trees, 170 date palms, and the like.“ (Tvedtnes, John. ”Vineyard or Olive Orchard?" In: The Allegory of the Olive Tree. FARMS, p. 481).