Psalms 80: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

This psalm is a national prayer for rescue. It calls on God as the Shepherd of Israel to shine on his people, asking how long he will stay angry while he feeds them the bread of tears and gives them tears to drink and their neighbors mock them. The middle section pictures Israel as a vine that God dug up from Egypt and planted, which grew huge and then had its walls torn down so passersby and wild animals could ruin it. The prayer asks God to come back to this vine, to strengthen the man at his right hand, and it repeats a refrain three times: restore us, make your face shine, and we will be saved.

Claim by Claim

1. 80:1
   • The speaker asks the Shepherd of Israel to listen.
   • God is addressed as the Shepherd of Israel.
   • God leads Joseph like a flock.
   • God is enthroned above the cherubim.
   • The speaker asks God to shine forth.
2. 80:2
   • The speaker asks God to shine forth before Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh.
   • The speaker asks God to rouse his might.
   • The speaker asks God to come and save them.
3. 80:3
   • The speaker asks God to restore them.
   • The speaker asks God to make his face shine.
   • The speaker says that then they will be saved.
4. 80:4
   • God is addressed as the LORD God of hosts.
   • The speaker asks how long God will be angry against the prayer of his people.
5. 80:5
   • God has fed them with the bread of tears.
   • God has given them tears to drink in full measure.
6. 80:6
   • God makes them an object of contention to their neighbors.
   • Their enemies mock them.
7. 80:7
   • The speaker asks God of hosts to restore them.
   • The speaker asks God to make his face shine.
   • The speaker says that then they will be saved.
8. 80:8
   • God brought a vine out of Egypt.
   • God drove out nations.
   • God planted the vine.
9. 80:9
   • God cleared ground before the vine.
   • God caused it to take root deeply.
   • The vine filled the land.
10. 80:10
    • The mountains were covered with the vine's shade.
    • Its boughs were like the mighty cedars.
11. 80:11
    • The vine sent out its branches to the sea.
    • The vine sent out its shoots to the River.
12. 80:12
    • The speaker asks why God has broken down the vine's walls.
    • All who pass along the way pluck at the vine.
13. 80:13
    • The boar from the forest ravages the vine.
    • The creatures of the field feed on it.
14. 80:14
    • The speaker begs the God of hosts to return.
    • The speaker asks God to look down from heaven and see.
    • The speaker asks God to attend to this vine.
15. 80:15
    • The speaker asks God to attend to the stock his right hand planted.
    • The speaker asks God to attend to the son he made strong for himself.
16. 80:16
    • The vine is burned with fire.
    • The vine is cut down.
    • They perish at the rebuke of God's face.
17. 80:17
    • The speaker asks that God's hand be upon the man of his right hand.
    • The speaker asks that God's hand be upon the son of man he made strong for himself.
18. 80:18
    • The speaker says they will not turn back from God.
    • The speaker asks God to revive them.
    • The speaker says they will call upon God's name.
19. 80:19
    • The speaker asks the LORD God of hosts to restore them.
    • The speaker asks God to make his face shine.
    • The speaker says that then they will be saved.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

80:1

"Shepherd" was a standard title for a king or ruler across the ancient Near East, not a rustic image: it meant the one responsible for feeding, guiding and defending a people. "Joseph" stands for the whole nation by naming one part of it, Joseph's sons Ephraim and Manasseh headed the largest tribes of the north. The cherubim were the winged figures whose outstretched wings over the ark in the sanctuary formed the seat of an invisible throne; they were composite guardian creatures, not infant angels. "Show yourself" translates a verb used of light breaking out, as at a sunrise.

80:2

Ephraim, Benjamin and Manasseh were three tribes descended from Jacob's wife Rachel, and in the wilderness camp lists they traveled together as one group directly behind the ark. Naming these three points the psalm at the northern part of the country rather than at Judah in the south.

80:3

"Let your face shine on us" is an idiom for favor and attention, the look a face takes on when it greets someone gladly. Its opposite is hiding the face, meaning refusal or neglect. "Bring us back" can mean bring us home from exile, restore our fortunes, or turn us back to yourself; the Hebrew verb covers all three and the psalm does not settle which. This whole line comes back as a refrain in verses 7 and 19, dividing the poem into sections.

80:4

Printed as LORD in capitals, this stands for the personal name of Israel's God, four Hebrew letters usually written YHWH, which readers of the text traditionally did not pronounce aloud. "God who commands armies" renders "LORD of hosts", a title picturing God as commander of massed forces, whether Israel's armies or the heavenly ones. The Hebrew behind "stay angry" literally says "smoke," the image being anger smoldering like a fire.

80:5

Bread and drink here are what grief consists of, not what relieves it: their whole diet is weeping. The word behind "by the bowlful" is a measuring vessel of uncertain size, perhaps holding a third of some larger unit, the point is that tears are served out in bulk, like rations.

80:6

The Hebrew is ambiguous. It can mean the neighboring peoples quarrel with us, or that we have become the thing they quarrel over, a prize fought about by stronger nations.

80:7

This line is the same as verse 3. Songs often repeat a line, the way we sing a chorus again.

80:8

The vine is the nation itself, dug up in Egypt and replanted in Canaan; "You drove out the nations" refers to the peoples already living in the land. Where the King James Version says "heathen" it simply means foreign nations or peoples, with no suggestion about their religion, the word's modern sneer is not in the original.

80:9

Clearing ground, breaking it up and pulling out stones is the ordinary first work of planting a vineyard; the image treats the conquest of the land as that preparation.

80:10

The cedars of Lebanon were the tallest and most valuable timber trees known to the region, the standard comparison for great height and grandeur. The Hebrew literally reads "cedars of God," which in this construction most likely functions as a superlative, the mightiest cedars of all.

80:11

"The Sea" is the Mediterranean, the western limit; "the River" with no name attached is the Euphrates, the eastern one. Together they mark the widest boundaries the kingdom ever claimed, so the line means the vine grew to fill the whole territory from edge to edge.

80:12

Vineyards were ringed with a low stone wall or a thorn hedge to keep out animals and passers-by; breaking it down left the fruit free for anyone. A walled vineyard was private property, an unwalled one effectively abandoned.

80:13

Wild boar were a real and hated menace to vineyards, capable of rooting up vines overnight. In the Hebrew manuscripts the middle letter of the word for "forest" is written raised above the line, an old scribal marking whose purpose is no longer certain.

80:15

The Hebrew word here means "son," and translators divide over it: some read it as a horticultural term for a shoot or stock continuing the vine image, which is the way the King James took it in printing "the branch"; others keep "son," taking it of the king or the nation. The ambiguity is in the text itself.

80:16

"The rebuke of thy countenance" means the anger on God's face. It is the exact opposite of the shining face asked for in the refrain at verses 3, 7, and 19.

80:17

To be at a ruler's right hand was to hold the position of honor and delegated authority beside him. There is also a play on names: Benjamin, one of the tribes named in verse 2, means "son of the right hand." "Son of man" is ordinary Hebrew for a human being, a mortal, it stresses the frailty of the person being asked for, not a title.

80:18

"Quicken" in 1611 English meant to make alive or bring back to life, not to speed something up. "Call upon thy name" means to worship and pray to God publicly, as the people who belong to him.