In the book of Jacob we find a Mormon prophet lamenting over his flock of people.
It’s laboriously long and that might be why Zenos forgot who/what he was talking about. In the beginning stages of his distressful outcry he uses a parable he just so happened to lift from the apostle Paul which is strange considering he [Zenos] lived five centuries before Jesus…
Nevertheless, his plea starts out by comparing the people to an olive tree which is what Paul used when describing how God was grafting the Gentiles into His covenant people in Romans chapter eleven.
What’s ‘interesting’ about all this is that halfway through his marathon lecture he began using grapes as his metaphor and somehow the picture of olive trees were either lost or forgotten. His montage about the grapes is eerily similar to what is known as the ‘Song of the Vineyard’ found in Isaiah 5.
Jacob 5:3; “For behold, thus saith the Lord, I will liken thee, O house of Israel, like unto a tame olive-tree, which a man took and nourished in his vineyard; and it grew, and waxed old, and began to decay.”
Jacob 5:41; “And it came to pass that the Lord of the vineyard wept, and said unto the servant: What could I have done more for my vineyard?”
Isaiah 5:4; “What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes?”
Romans 11:17; “And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive tree, were grafted in among them, and with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive tree.”