Psalms 80

Psalms 80:1-19

Revival sought and restoration of the glory of God through the Revived Branch, the Man of His right hand. To the chief musician upon Shoshannim-Eduth: a psalm of Asaph.
The outburst in the eightieth psalm is singularly beautiful. It is still a prayer, and as to much of it a lamentation, but Israel has caught sight of the way of blessing, and is proportionately expectant of the blessing itself. Even the Targum finds Messiah in it, and the title “upon Shoshannim-Eduth,” or “concerning the lilies of testimony,” reminds us of what we have had, with some variations, in the forty-fifth, sixtieth, and sixty-ninth psalms, already. Christ and His people are here together again; and their testimony, while so different as to the witnesses themselves, combines in absolute perfection in the final result, in which God does indeed, according to the burden of the repeated prayer, “shine forth,” -and for more than Israel. Her revival -the turning of her heart to Him, -and the preparation of the Branch in and through which the nation alone revives, -are all of Him. He is the Saviour-God, the God and Father of Him in whom salvation is wrought out and comes into their possession; as into ours.

1. The psalm opens with a cry to the Divine Shepherd who of old led Joseph like a flock. The reference is to the wilderness journey to the promised land, and the mention of Joseph in this prominence has nothing to do with the divided kingdom of Israel long afterward, which by the fact of its division separated itself from the cherubic throne as here referred to. The true reason of Joseph’s prominence has been already shown in the seventy-eighth psalm. After Reuben’s loss of the birthright for his sin, it came naturally to Joseph, Rachel’s first-born; the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh being the two-fold witness of this, as well as the tabernacle in Shiloh in the land of Ephraim. This lasted till the captivity of the ark in Eli’s time, when Ichabod was written upon the nation; and out of this ruin emerged a new state of things, the prominence of Judah and the divine choice of Zion and David.

It is no wonder, therefore, that Asaph, going back to the beginning of the nation; as he does, should make Joseph prominent. With the kingdom of the ten tribes, with which many would for this reason connect these psalms, Asaph had nothing to do. It is natural for the psalmist to go back to the wilderness, when the tribes advancing under their Almighty Leader were preparing to take possession of their land. He is looking now to another possession of it, when the whole nation would come into line once more, following their great Shepherd. But for this He must take the throne as of old, and in the old relationship, as when the ark went before the tribes of Rachel’s offspring, its accustomed place. But for this they too must be turned to Him; and, (just because they are in fact turning, but in the consciousness of their own feebleness of will and waywardness, with their old history facing them -starting aside as a deceitful bow,) they ask, in the person of the psalmist, to be turned. God alone could make effective this desire of theirs. The work in them, as the work for them, must be His: the two, therefore, are joined together in the cry, “Turn us again, O God! cause Thy face to shine on us, and we shall be saved.” But with this comes also the consciousness of His present and long-continued anger. How long shall it continue to smoke against those who cry to Him? Their present circumstances are a sorrowful contrast to that glorious time to which they are looking back. 2. This leads to a sorrowful pleading of their condition. He who was once their Shepherd has fed them with the bread of tears, and given them in abundance tears to drink. And this breach has made them a matter of contention to their neighbors, a derision to those hostile to them. And again they utter their sad, yet expectant cry: “Turn us again; O God of hosts; and cause Thy face to shine, and we shall be saved.” 3. This is, however, but a preface to a longer pleading, in which their case is set before God. They go back to the deliverance out of Egypt, in which He had separated them to Himself for fruit. The vine is good for nothing else but fruit, and with its trailing branches is the very image of dependence. The prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 5:1-30) uses the same figure in the same way, although speaking from the divine side, as the psalmist does from the human; and the brief appeal in Jeremiah (2: 21) is similar to Isaiah. Here the appeal is to God on the ground of what He had done for them, that that work should not be in vain. He had brought a vine out of Egypt. -brought it out, as is implied, to yield Him fruit: shall it not yield Him fruit? He had dispossessed nations, to make way for it; and He having made room, it rooted itself and filled the land. Next, we see its glory: it rose, shadowing the mountains, with a growth as solid as the mighty cedars. Lastly, we have its extension to the sea and to the River (Euphrates), -in these directions its divinely-given boundaries. 4. But in spite of all this progress, ruin had followed where success seemed fully assured. The causes of this are shown in Isaiah to be moral and spiritual failure on the part of the people. It was not possible that the failure could be in God. He could appeal to themselves whether He could have done anything for His vineyard that He had not done. Yet when He looked for His vine to bring forth grapes, it brought forth wild grapes.

All His care and cultivation of it had gone for nothing in the result: why, then, should He go on with it? He tells them; therefore, what He will do in consequence of all this: “I will take away the hedge thereof,” He says, “and it shall be eaten up; and break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down; and I will lay it waste.” It is this action of God which the psalmist sees, and which he laments. He says nothing directly of the moral causes: they are implied, no doubt, in the very need which they now have of Him; but his argument goes back of all this, to the Immutable God and His purposes. He leaves out the people, as if they were of no account. Certainly, when God took them up, He knew what was in man: He could not be deceived. He had brought this vine out of Egypt; He had taken abundance of pains with it.

He had linked Himself openly, before the eyes of men; with this people of His choice. After all, could He be defeated? It is the argument of Moses in the wilderness, when God proposes to him that the people should be consumed as a stiff-necked people, and He would make of Moses himself a great nation. Nay, says Moses, “then the Egyptians shall hear it, (for Thou broughtest up this people in Thy might from among them,) and they will tell it to the inhabitants of this land, . . . and the nations that have heard the fame of Thee will speak, saying, Because Jehovah was not able to bring this people into the land which He sware unto them, therefore He hath slain them in the wilderness” (Numbers 14:13-16). Here is the same effectual argument, in which the sin of the people itself is omitted, to plead with God as to the undoing of His own acts, as if it were mutability in the Immutable, or powerlessness in the Omnipotent. “Why hast Thou broken down its enclosure, so that all who pass by the way may pluck it? The boar out of the wood doth ravage it, and the wild beasts of the field feed on it.” So he cries now to God as the all-powerful, “the God of hosts” ready at all times to execute His will, to return and visit this vine, which through His power alone had been all that it had ever been -“the stock which Thy right hand hath planted, and the branch that Thou madest strong for Thyself.” It is here that the Targum renders," and upon the King Messiah, whom Thou hast established for Thyself." Literally it is “the son,” but which in relation to a vine would be a branch, according to Hebrew usage. Delitzsch and Moll apply it still to the nation; as they do also the expressions in verse 18; the Christian here falling behind the Jewish expositor, and the point and power of the closing appeal being lost. The psalm thus becomes tame and colorless enough. Doubtless, “the Son of man; whom Thou madest strong for Thyself,” is intended to remind us of the previous “branch” or “son; whom Thou madest strong for Thyself”: but the argument can work also the other way. God does, as we know, call Israel His son; and the first passage could in that way be explained of the nation; but the Son of man; and Man of God’s right hand, cannot be made so to apply according to Scripture, while the first title expressly and the second by the easiest possible inference apply to Christ: who is also as plainly the “Branch” which is strengthened of God for Himself. And here is Israel’s hope, as well as the hope of any. The place of the psalm in this series, and the numerical structure also, are in the fullest confirmation of this application, which alone gives worthy meaning to the whole. Yet the “branch” of verse 15 may not be directly Christ, but David’s house,with the desolation of which the promise connected with it would seem in danger of being lost; and this interpretation preserves consistency throughout. With the seed of David the national hope is plainly identified; and Christ is, according to the flesh, the seed of David. All seems to be over: “it is burned with fire, it is cut down: they perish at the rebuke of Thy countenance.” God seems to be against Himself, undoing the work which He has done. But it is the sense of man’s ruin which, after all, enables the soul to rise to the conception of the divine thoughts, and the psalmist concludes with renewed confidence. 5. The number 5, in its essential significance of “man with God,” breathes here, assuredly, the Name of Names, Immanuel." And it is with this that the fifth section begins. While the language is still that of prayer, yet faith has risen to clear sight of the answer. “The Man of Thy right hand” may connect itself with Benjamin; but only as Benjamin is connected typically with Christ. Benjamin speaks indeed, as we have elsewhere seen; of Christ in power upon earth, and God’s hand upon Him cannot surely be in wrath, as some have suggested, but to strengthen or put Hint in the place which is His due. The direct reference is to the 110th psalm; “Sit Thou on My right hand,” for Christians a scripture easy enough to read in this connection, even if we had not the confirmation of the latter half of the verse. “The Son of man” was, as we know, the title which the Lord most commonly assumed. It was that which proclaimed Him in wider sympathy than merely with the Jew, His nature truly human; and come into humanity by the lowly entrance by which other men come, though that for Him indeed implied a miracle. Thus He was fit to be also the Judge of men (John 5:27), and as such comes in the clouds of heaven to His kingdom. Here is One whom God has indeed “made strong for Himself”; and God’s hand setting Him in His place is the proclamation of the hour that strikes for Israel’s deliverance. Thus all is in harmony. Power is in His hands for them, and in His hands only who has made atonement in the Manhood He has taken; and in Him, too, is security for the future which nothing else could give. Saved with so marvelous a salvation; they may now say without self-confidence, “So will we not go back from Thee”; and in recognition of the need of the Spirit’s work, -“quicken us, and we will call upon Thy Name.” Once more the cry, but with increased confidence to Him who has made the Son of man strong for Himself: -“Turn us again, Jehovah, God of hosts! make Thy face to shine on us, and we shall be saved.”