Scripture Daily

Context No. 364 of 4322 · Psalms

Context · Reflection

Psalms 80:1-19: in context

1Hear us, Shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock, you who sit above the cherubim, shine out. 2Before Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh, stir up your might! Come to save us! 3Turn us again, God. Cause your face to shine, and we will be saved. 4LORD God of Armies, how long will you be angry against the prayer of your people? 5You have fed them with the bread of tears, and given them tears to drink in large measure. 6You make us a source of contention to our neighbors. Our enemies laugh among themselves. 7Turn us again, God of Armies. Cause your face to shine, and we will be saved. 8You brought a vine out of Egypt. You drove out the nations, and planted it. 9You cleared the ground for it. It took deep root, and filled the land. 10The mountains were covered with its shadow. Its boughs were like God’s cedars. 11It sent out its branches to the sea, its shoots to the River. 12Why have you broken down its walls, so that all those who pass by the way pluck it? 13The boar out of the wood ravages it. The wild animals of the field feed on it. 14Turn again, we beg you, God of Armies. Look down from heaven, and see, and visit this vine, 15the stock which your right hand planted, the branch that you made strong for yourself. 16It’s burned with fire. It’s cut down. They perish at your rebuke. 17Let your hand be on the man of your right hand, on the son of man whom you made strong for yourself. 18So we will not turn away from you. Revive us, and we will call on your name. 19Turn us again, LORD God of Armies. Cause your face to shine, and we will be saved.

This psalm is a communal cry out of a dark time, and it keeps returning to the same plea. Three times, like a chorus, the people sing: restore us, O God; let your face shine, and we shall be saved. That refrain is the heart of the whole song, and it is worth noticing what it asks for. Not first for the enemies to be defeated or the crops to return, but for God's face to shine on them again. They are echoing the old priestly blessing, may the LORD make his face shine upon you, and they are confessing that their real trouble is the sense that his face has turned away.

The middle of the psalm makes the pain vivid with a picture. God once brought a vine out of Egypt, they say, cleared the ground, planted it, and it took deep root and filled the land, its branches reaching to the sea. And then the accusation, spoken honestly to God: why have you broken down its walls, so that everyone who passes by tears at it, and the wild boar ravages it? They do not pretend the exposure is an accident or someone else's fault. They lay it before God as something he did, and they beg him to return, to look down from heaven, and to tend the vine again. It is a raw, unguarded prayer, and it refuses to let go, coming back a third time to the same plea for his shining face.

What strikes me is where the psalm locates the deepest ache. Underneath all the visible trouble, the exposed vine and the mocking enemies, what they most want back is God's face turned toward them. When I am in a dark stretch, is my truest cry for the circumstances to change, or is it, like theirs, for God's face to shine on me again, the sense that he is turned toward me and not away, which they believed was the whole of salvation?

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