Jacob 5

I finally have an idea about this chapter.

The original tree initially had dying branches, so they worked on it and got some young and tender branches to grow. But they could only grow so much. So they cut them off, grafted them all over the place, and grafted in wild branches in an effort to let the roots put forth their strength into the new branches. Which worked. The fruit was good.

They let it go for a long time, and upon returning discovered the fruit to now be bad. The little tender branches had become wild and bad, and the wild grafts had stopped producing good fruit and were not producing bad fruit. So they systematically cleared away the bad branches and grafted back in those young and tender branches to their original tree, and put the wild grafts back to their original trees. It worked.

Parenting, perhaps? We have roots and they can be very strong. But our children can only grow so much with us. Their initial branches are young and tender, but need space to move. As they get older and more widespread, they can adopt wild grafts into their roots, which can be a good thing, as long as they don't overpower their roots. As soon as they do, the produce bad fruit. In which case, they need a pruning, and an re-insertion of the original young tender branches that worked in harmony with their roots. I'm already getting bored typing this out, but it's perhaps an idea.