Deuteronomy 8:8

wheat and barley Not the most characteristic products of Palestine, but put first as the staple food of man and the principal distinction of the cultivated soil from the desert, the land not sown(Jeremiah 2:2). On the distribution of wheat and barley in Palestine see Jerusalem, i. 298 f. These two grains are followed by four fruits.

vines and fig trees and pomegranates … oil olives -Far more than any grain the staple products of the Judaean range have been its fruit-trees and especially the great triad of the Olive, Vine and Fig, the three which in the ancient parable the trees desire in turn to make their king" (Jerusalem, 1:299 ff. which see for the distribution of these trees and their power as factors in civilisation and human wealth). Here the Olive is taken apart from its usual companions Vine and Fig either because of its importance or for the rhythm of the prose. Oil olives, lit. the olive of oil, the cultivated and grafted, as distinguished from the wild, olive. Cp. 2 Kings 18:32 with the other word for oil, yiṣhar, used above Deuteronomy 7:13 (q.v.); here it is shemen.

honey See on Deuteronomy 6:3.