Psalm 80 (1928 BCP)
Psalm 80 (1928 BCP) is the Prayer Book Psalter's corporate plea for restoration. Addressing God as the Shepherd of Israel, it remembers the Exodus and Israel's planting as a vine, names the anguish of a people under judgment, and repeatedly asks that God's countenance may shine so that his people may be made whole. In the 1928 Book of Common Prayer (1928), it is appointed in the sequence of Psalms for the Sixteenth Day at Morning Prayer.
Prayer Book Text
HEAR, O thou Shepherd of Israel, thou that leadest Joseph like a flock; * show thyself also, thou that sittest upon the Cherubim. 2 Before Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh, * stir up thy strength, and come and help us. 3 Turn us again, O God; * show the light of thy countenance, and we shall be whole. 4 O LORD God of hosts, * how long wilt thou be angry with thy people that prayeth? 5 Thou feedest them with the bread of tears, * and givest them plenteousness of tears to drink. 6 Thou hast made us a very strife unto our neighbours, * and our enemies laugh us to scorn. 7 Turn us again, thou God of hosts; * show the light of thy countenance, and we shall be whole.
The refrain is the prayer's grammar: it asks not first for changed circumstances but for God to turn, show his face, and heal. The three tribal names recall Israel as a people gathered before the divine presence; the name “Shepherd” makes the complaint an appeal to the God who has already led his flock. The movement from “O God” to “God of hosts” and finally “LORD God of hosts” heightens the invocation without changing its confidence.
Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt; * thou hast cast out the heathen, and planted it. 9 Thou madest room for it; * and when it had taken root, it filled the land. 10 The hills were covered with the shadow of it, * and the boughs thereof were like the goodly cedar-trees. 11 She stretched out her branches unto the sea, * and her boughs unto the River. 12 Why hast thou then broken down her hedge, * that all they that go by pluck off her grapes? 13 The wild boar out of the wood doth root it up, * and the wild beasts of the field devour it.
The Vine and the Lament
The vine image prevents the lament from becoming vague. Israel's life in the land is remembered as a gift of the God who brought, planted, made room, and guarded. The question about the broken hedge is therefore a petition grounded in covenantal memory, not a claim that suffering is unintelligible or that God has ceased to be Lord.
Under the figure of a vine, the singular grace which God was graciously pleased to exercise towards his people after he had redeemed them is celebrated; and this powerfully contributed to inspire them with the hope of being heard. For which of us can be so presumptuous as to dare to come into the presence of God until he himself has previously invited us?
Calvin's emphasis is useful here because it locates the Psalm's bold speech in remembered grace. The passage does not invite a church to annex Israel's history carelessly; rather, it teaches those who pray it to appeal to the God whose prior mercy creates the possibility of prayer. The vine also gives a direct biblical context for Jesus' words about abiding in him.
I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit. ... Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.
John 15 does not erase Psalm 80's historical voice. It does, however, give Christian prayer a Christological way of receiving its vine imagery: fruitfulness is inseparable from abiding in the Son, and the Father's care is neither absent from discipline nor exhausted by it.
Restoration and Christian Reading
Turn thee again, thou God of hosts, look down from heaven, * behold, and visit this vine; 15 And the place of the vineyard that thy right hand hath planted, * and the branch that thou madest so strong for thyself. 16 It is burnt with fire, and cut down; * and they shall perish at the rebuke of thy countenance. 17 Let thy hand be upon the man of thy right hand, * and upon the son of man, whom thou madest so strong for thine own self. 18 And so will not we go back from thee: * O let us live, and we shall call upon thy Name. 19 Turn us again, O LORD God of hosts; * show the light of thy countenance, and we shall be whole.
The last petition joins visitation, preservation, life, and invocation of God's Name. “The man of thy right hand” and “the son of man” first belong within the Psalm's plea for the people and their God-given representative. Christians have also read these words in light of Christ, but that reading ought to preserve—not bypass—the Psalm's corporate intercession for Israel.
The song here is of the Advent of the Lord and of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of His vineyard. ... this testimony does confess both Christ and the vineyard; that is, Head and Body, King and people, Shepherd and flock, and the entire mystery of all Scriptures, Christ and the Church.
Augustine's reading is a historic Christian interpretation, not a substitute for the Psalm's literal and communal setting. Its enduring value lies in holding together Christ and his people: the Shepherd's advent is not private consolation, but the restoration of a flock and vineyard called to live and invoke God's Name.
The seventh verse is a repetition of the third; and this repetition is undoubtedly intended as a means of surmounting every obstacle. God did not here intend to endite for his people a vain repetition of words: his object was to encourage them, when bowed down under the load of their calamities, boldly to rise up, heavy though the load might be.
Use in the Daily Office
In the 1928 Daily Office, Psalm 80 is appointed among the Psalms for the Sixteenth Day at Morning Prayer. Its repeated refrain makes it especially fitting for corporate penitence, intercession in times of ecclesial distress, and prayer that God's people may be renewed for faithful worship. Read with the lessons and canticles of the Office, its images of shepherding, face, vine, and life train a congregation to bring both loss and hope into the praise of God.
See Also
- Book of Common Prayer (1928)
- The Psalter (1928 BCP)
- Daily Office (1928 BCP)
- Psalm 79 (1928 BCP)
- Psalm 81 (1928 BCP)
External Links
References
- ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church (New York: Church Pension Fund, 1928), Psalter, Psalm 80, Qui regis Israel, vv. 1-7, in the 1928 Prayer Book text.
- ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church (New York: Church Pension Fund, 1928), Psalter, Psalm 80, Qui regis Israel, vv. 8-13, in the 1928 Prayer Book text.
- ↑ John Calvin, Commentary on the Book of Psalms, vol. 3, trans. James Anderson (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1849), Psalm 80:8-13, on v. 8, in the Christian Classics Ethereal Library edition.
- ↑ The Holy Bible, Authorized (King James) Version (Cambridge: University Press, 1769), John 15:1-2, 4, in the Bible Gateway text.
- ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church (New York: Church Pension Fund, 1928), Psalter, Psalm 80, Qui regis Israel, vv. 14-19, in the 1928 Prayer Book text.
- ↑ Augustine of Hippo, Exposition on Psalm 80, sec. 1, trans. J. E. Tweed, in Philip Schaff, ed., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 8 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1888), in the New Advent transcription.
- ↑ John Calvin, Commentary on the Book of Psalms, vol. 3, trans. James Anderson (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1849), Psalm 80:4-7, on v. 7, in the Christian Classics Ethereal Library edition.