Psalms 79-81 (Week 27)

1. Psalm 79: How Long, Lord?

A year in the Psalms, Psalm seventy nine. O God, the nations have come into your inheritance, your holy temple they have defiled. They have laid Jerusalem in heaps, the dead bodies of your servants, they have given as food for the birds of the heavens, the flesh of your saints to the beast of the earth. Their blood they have shed like water all around Jerusalem, and there was no one to bury them. We have become a reproach to our neighbors, a scorn and a derision to those who are around us. How long, Lord? Will you be angry forever? Will your jealousy burn like fire? Pour out your wrath on the nations that do not know you, and on the kingdoms that do not call on your name, for they have devoured Jacob and laid waste his dwelling place.

O do not remember former iniquities against us. Let your tender mercies come speedily to meet us, for we have been brought very low. Help us, O God, for our salvation, for the glory of your name, and deliver us and provide atonement for our sins for your name’s sake. Who should the nations say, Where is their God? Let there be known among the nations in our sight the avenging of the blood of your servants which has been shed. Let the groaning of the prisoner come before you, according to the greatness of your power. Preserve those who are appointed to die, and return to our neighbors sevenfold and to their bosom, their reproach with which they have reproached you, O Lord. So we, your people and sheep of your pasture, will give you thanks forever.

2. Give Ear, O Shepherd of Israel

We will show forth your praise to all generations. This psalm is the collective lament of the community of Jerusalem in a time of national disaster. The description of the defiling of the temple and the devastation of the city points to a serious destruction, such as the Babylonian conquest in 586. There is also close affinity to the background of Psalm 74, where the Babylonian destruction seems most appropriate. The Jews have long connected these two points for use on the fast day which commemorates the two destructions of Jerusalem in 586 BC and in AD seventy. A year in the Psalms, Psalm eighty. Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock. You who dwell between the cherubims shine forth before Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh.

Stir up your strength and come and save us. Restore us, O God, cause your face to shine, and we shall be saved. O Lord God of hosts, how long will you be angry against the prayer of your people? You have fed them with the bread of tears and given them tears to drink in great measure. You have made us strife to our neighbors, and our enemies laugh among themselves. Restore us, O God of hosts, cause your face to shine, and we shall be saved. You have brought a vine out of Egypt. You have cast out the nations and planted it. You prepared room for it, and caused it to take deep root, and it filled the land. The hills were covered with its shadow, and the mighty cedars with its boughs, and sent out her boughs to the sea and her branches to the river.

Why have you broken down her hedges, so that all who pass by the way pluck her fruit? The boar out of the woods uproots it, and the wild beasts of the field devours it. Return, we beseech you, O God of hosts. Look down from heaven and see and visit this vine, and the vineyard which your right hand has planted, and the branch that you made strong for yourself. It is burned with fire, it is cut down, they perish at the rebuke of your countenance. Let your hand be upon the man of your right hand, upon the Son of Man whom you made strong for yourself. Then we will not turn back from you. Revive us, and we will call upon your name. Restore us, O Lord God of hosts.

Cause your face to shine, and we shall be saved. Here we find another expression of national lament in a time of distress. The psalmist has sincere interest in the northern kingdom, either as an outsider or as an inhabitant of that area. The former is probably the case, for the distress appears to be associated with the exile.

Verses one through three. The cry of the shepherd, give ear, O shepherd of Israel. Although the phrase shepherd of Israel is not used elsewhere in the Old Testament, the figure occurs frequently. The three tribes, Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh, were all descended from Rachel and represent the northern kingdom. The cry is designed to call God into action to restore his people. Verses 4 through 7, the plight of the flock, thou feedest them with the bread of tears, as in Psalm 74 and 79. The psalmist cries out, How long? He wants to know how much longer God is going to keep on fuming in anger. Although the Lord is not mentioned as shepherd in these verses, the metaphor is continued in the reference to his feeding them with tears.

In verses 8 through 13, the nurture of the vine, thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt. Another metaphor is used here to show how God nurtured his chosen people after transplanting the vine from Egypt to Canaan. The Lord caused it to cover the hills and spread out from the Mediterranean to the Euphrates. With verse 12, the past nurture is compared with the present rejection. The vine has been ravaged by man and beast as they have passed by. Verses 14 through 19, the appeal to the husbandman, return and visit this vine. Since God planted and cared for the vine, he should continue to look down on it and visit it. It is God’s wrath which has caused the vine to be burned, and hence the people are in danger of annihilation.

3. Psalm 81: Sing Aloud to God Our Strength

If God will revive and restore his people, they will worship him. The last occurrence of the refrain is heightened by the use of the covenant name for God, the man of thy right hand. The psalmist prays for help for God’s people, Israel, depicted as the man of God’s right hand. Ultimately, of course, the Messiah became the fulfillment of this prayer. The use of Son of Man in the Gospels and references to Christ as being at the right hand of the Majesty on high. A year in the Psalms Psalm eighty-one. Sing aloud to God our strength, make a joyful shout to the God of Jacob, raise a song and strike the timbrel, the pleasant harp with the lute. Blow the trumpet at the time of the new moon, at the full moon on our solemn feast day.

For this is a statute for Israel, a law of the God of Jacob. This he established in Joseph as a testimony when he went throughout the land of Egypt, where I heard a language I did not understand. I removed his shoulder from the burden, his hands were freed from the baskets. You called in trouble, and I delivered you.

I tested you at the waters of Mebiah. Hear, O my people, and I will admonish you. O Israel, if you listen to me, there shall be no foreign God among you, nor shall you worship any foreign God. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt. Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it. But my people will not heed my voice, and Israel would have none of me. So I gave them over to their own stubborn heart to walk in their own counsels. Oh that my people would listen to me, that Israel would walk in my ways. I would soon subdue their enemies and turn my hand against their adversaries. The haters of the Lord would pretend submission to him, but their fate would endure forever.

He would have fed them also with the finest of wheat, and with honey from the rock I would have satisfied you. A hymn of praise opens Psalm 81, and a prophetic utterance concludes it. The abrupt change at the end of verse 5 has suggested to many commentators that fragments of two Psalms are joined together here. However, this view is not imperative, for a Solomon festival would be a logical time for such a recital of God’s relation to Israel. The special term for festival, the blowing of the trumpet, the references to the new moon and to the full moon, probably give the poem double reference to the feast of trumpets and the feast of tabernacles.