Men will dwell in his shade. They will revive like the grain, And blossom like the vine. Their fragrance will be like the wine of Lebanon.
and the scent thereof [shall be] as the wine of Lebanon; like the wine of those vines which grow on Mount Lebanon, and judged to be the best. On Mount Lebanon, about the midway between the top and the bottom of it, there is now a convent called Canobine, situated in a very pleasant place; and Le Bruyn in his travels relates, that it is preferable to all other places on account of its wines, which are the richest and finest in the world; they are very sweet, of a red colour, and so oily that they stick to the glass. At Lebanon was a city called by the Greeks Ampeloessa, from the excellency of its wine, as Grotius from Pliny f observes. Gabriel Sionita g assures us, that even to this day the wines of Libanus are in good reputation. Kimchi relates from Asaph, a physician, that the wines of Lebanon, Hermon, and Carmel, and of the mountains of Israel and Jerusalem, and of the mountains of Samaria, and of the mountains of Caphtor Mizraim, were the best of wines, and exceeded all others for scent, taste, and medicine. Japhet interprets it, the smell of their vine afar off was as the wine of Lebanon; and so Kimchi, the smell of the wine of the vine, to which Israel is compared, is like the smell of the wine of Lebanon. This may denote the savouriness of truly converted gracious souls, of their graces, doctrines, life, and conversation. Some choose to render it, "their memory h [shall be] as the wine of Lebanon"; so the Targum interprets it of