Psalms 80King James Version
Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel. Turn us again, O God, and cause thy face to shine; and we shall be saved. The refrain repeats three times through the psalm.
A prayer for national restoration structured around the vine allegory. The Shepherd of Israel is asked to shine forth. The vine was brought from Egypt, planted, spread to the sea and river, and now is broken down, burned, cut. The refrain comes three times with escalating divine names: Turn us again O God / O God of hosts / O LORD God of hosts; cause thy face to shine. The man of God's right hand, the son of man God made strong, is the hope.
Israel as God's vine has been catastrophically broken, and the only restoration is the shining face of the God who planted it, not any human strategy.
verse: "Turn us again, O LORD God of hosts, cause thy face to shine; and we shall be saved." The threefold refrain with its escalating divine names is the psalm's structural spine.
Superscription: 'To the chief Musician upon Shoshannimeduth, A Psalm of Asaph.' Shoshannimeduth: possibly 'lilies of testimony' or an otherwise unknown tune. The northern tribal names suggest this lament arose in the context of the Assyrian destruction of the northern kingdom (722 BC) or addresses an audience from those tribes in exile.
Asaph and Israel as the destroyed vine; God as Shepherd, Planter, and the one whose face must shine; Joseph, Ephraim, Benjamin, Manasseh named as specific tribes; the man of God's right hand as a messianic figure.
Psalm 80's vine allegory is the most developed in the Psalter and anticipates Isaiah 5:1-7 (Song of the Vineyard) and John 15 (I am the true vine). The 'son of man' and 'man of thy right hand' in vv15, 17 pushed Christian interpretation toward Christ. The psalm's northern tribal focus (Ephraim, Manasseh, Benjamin) connects it to the Assyrian destruction of the northern kingdom.
For when what was flourishing has been reduced to ruins and you can only ask for the shine of God's face to reconstitute it. The psalm holds the desolation and the ask at the same time.
1[To the chief Musician upon Shoshannimeduth, A Psalm of Asaph.] Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, thou that leadest Joseph like a flock; thou that dwellest between the cherubims, shine forth.
2Before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh stir up thy strength, and come and save us.
3Turn us again, O God, and cause thy face to shine; and we shall be saved.
4O LORD God of hosts, how long wilt thou be angry against the prayer of thy people?
5Thou feedest them with the bread of tears; and givest them tears to drink in great measure.
6Thou makest us a strife unto our neighbours: and our enemies laugh among themselves.
7Turn us again, O God of hosts, and cause thy face to shine; and we shall be saved.
8Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt: thou hast cast out the heathen, and planted it.
9Thou preparedst room before it, and didst cause it to take deep root, and it filled the land.
10The hills were covered with the shadow of it, and the boughs thereof were like the goodly cedars.
11She sent out her boughs unto the sea, and her branches unto the river.
12Why hast thou then broken down her hedges, so that all they which pass by the way do pluck her?
13The boar out of the wood doth waste it, and the wild beast of the field doth devour it.
14Return, we beseech thee, O God of hosts: look down from heaven, and behold, and visit this vine;
15And the vineyard which thy right hand hath planted, and the branch that thou madest strong for thyself.
16It is burned with fire, it is cut down: they perish at the rebuke of thy countenance.
17Let thy hand be upon the man of thy right hand, upon the son of man whom thou madest strong for thyself.
18So will not we go back from thee: quicken us, and we will call upon thy name.
19Turn us again, O LORD God of hosts, cause thy face to shine; and we shall be saved.