There is one servant at first. There were no more servants until the very end, when the final pre-harvest efforts are essential. When it was harvest time, they got everybody out there shaking the trees and collecting—they would actually catch the olives in nets or little cloths. They stood there and shook the trees. Interestingly, the psalmists refer to shaking the trees with no more information about why they were doing that, but they were harvesting. They called for all hands on deck. All the servants went out to harvest the fruit from the trees. The fruit of the olive tree was very valuable. It was pressed in an olive press (Figures 8 and 9) and used for many purposes: (1) for lighting temple lamps, anointings, and offerings, (2) skin ointment, medicine, burning in household lamps, cooking, eating, (3) the initial press residue was for burning in stoves, and (4) even the dregs were used for fertilizer, herbicide, and curing and sealing new pottery jars.
Figure 8 Michael Spencer and John W. Welch with Olive Press in Sepphoris, Galilee. Photo: Rita Spencer
Figure 9 Olive Press, near Peter’s home in Capernaum, Galilee. Photo: John W. Welch
In addition to the central tree of the allegory, there were lots of trees in the vineyard and in the nethermost part. We do not know how many there were, but they represent the whole world with all its people. Zenos, as an early Israelite prophet, may have seen Jerusalem as the high place where the tree was planted. The tree represented the people that were brought out of Egypt and planted in Jerusalem where they built the temple. Exodus 15:17 refers to the Lord planning to plant his people on a high mountain. That planting can be seen as a type of many plantings by the Lord of his people in many times and places, from the Old World to the New, from the East to the West, near and far.
For many other marvelous studies of the olive tree, see the full 625-page volume, The Allegory of the Olive Tree: The Olive, the Bible, and Jacob 5, ed. Stephen D. Ricks and John W. Welch (Provo and Salt Lake City, UT: FARMS and Deseret Book, 1994). In addition to the chapters already mentioned, see also Truman Madsen on the olive press as a symbol of Christ, Noel Reynolds on Nephite uses of the Zenos’s allegory, Paul Hoskisson on a detailed reading of Jacob 5 in connection with the history of Israel, Authur Henry King on language themes in Zenos’s brilliant scripture, and John Tvedtnes on olive oil as a symbol of the Holy Ghost.
In addition, for an update and review essay on olive horticulture, see Wilford M. Hess, "Recent Notes about Olives in Antiquity," BYU Studies 39, no. 4 (2000): 115–126.