Psalms 80:14

80:8-16 The church is represented as a vine and a vineyard. The root of this vine is Christ, the branches are believers. The church is like a vine, needing support, but spreading and fruitful. If a vine do not bring forth fruit, no tree is so worthless. And are not we planted as in a well-cultivated garden, with every means of being fruitful in works of righteousness? But the useless leaves of profession, and the empty boughs of notions and forms, abound far more than real piety. It was wasted and ruined. There was a good reason for this change in God's way toward them. And it is well or ill with us, according as we are under God's smiles or frowns. When we consider the state of the purest part of the visible church, we cannot wonder that it is visited with sharp corrections. They request that God would help the vine. Lord, it is formed by thyself, and for thyself, therefore it may, with humble confidence, be committed to thyself.

Return, we beseech thee, O God of hosts,.... The Lord had been with his vine, the people of Israel, when he brought them out of Egypt, and planted and settled them in the land of Canaan, and made them a flourishing people; but had departed from them when he suffered the hedges about them to be broken down, and the boar and wild beast to enter and devour them; and here he is entreated to return and restore them to their former prosperity.

So the Lord sometimes departs from his church and people, and hides his face from them; and may be said to return, when he manifests himself, shows his face and his favour again, and grants his gracious presence, than which nothing is more desirable; and if he, the Lord of hosts and armies, above and below, is with his people, none can be against them to their hurt; they have nothing to fear from any enemy: look down from heaven: the habitation of his holiness, the high and holy place where he dwells, and his throne is, from whence he takes a survey of men and things; where he now was at a distance from his people, being returned to his place in resentment, and covered himself with a cloud from their sight; and from whence it would be a condescension in him to look on them on earth, so very undeserving of a look of love and mercy from him: and behold; the affliction and distress his people were in, as he formerly beheld the affliction of Israel in Egypt, and sympathized with them, and brought them out of it: and visit this vine; before described, for whom he had done such great things, and now was in such a ruinous condition; the visit desired is in a way of mercy and kind providence; so the Targum, "and remember in mercies this vine;'' so the Lord visits his chosen people by the mission and incarnation of his Son, and by the redemption of them by him, and by the effectual calling of them by his Spirit and grace through the ministration of the Gospel; and which perhaps may, i

Verse 14. - Return, we beseech thee, O God of hosts ; i.e. "come back to us, to be our Helper and Defender." Look down from heaven, and behold . Condescend to "look down" upon us "from heaven," thy dwelling place, and "behold" - take note of our condition, see how we suffer, and thou wilt be sure to visit this vine; i.e. to "visit" it, not in wrath, but in loving kindness and compassion - to "visit it with thy salvation" ( Psalm 106:4 ). Psalm 80:14

Return, we beseech thee, O God of hosts - Again come and visit thy people; come back again to thy forsaken land. This is language founded on the idea that God had withdrawn from the land, or had forsaken it; that he had left his people without a protector, and had left them exposed to the ravages of fierce foreign enemies. It is language which will describe what seems often to occur when the church is apparently forsaken; when there are no cheering tokens of the divine presence; and when the people of God, discouraged, seem themselves to be forsaken by him. Compare Jeremiah 14:8 . Look down from heaven - The habitation of God. As if he did not now see his desolate vineyard, or regard it. The idea is, that if he would look upon it, he would pity it, and would come to its relief. And behold, and visit this vine - It is a visitation of mercy and not of wrath that is asked; the coming of one who is able to save, and without whose coming there could be no deliverance.

The complaint now assumes a detailing character in this strophe, inasmuch as it contrasts the former days with the present; and the ever more and more importunate prayer moulds itself in accordance therewith. The retrospective description begins, as is rarely the case, with the second modus, inasmuch as "the speaker thinks more of the bare nature of the act than of the time" (Ew. 136, b). As in the blessing of Jacob ( Genesis 49:22 ) Joseph is compared to the layer (בּן) of a fruitful growth (פּרת), whose shoots (בּנות) climb over the wall: so here Israel is compared to a vine ( Genesis 49:22 ; גּפן פּריּח, Psalm 128:3 ), which has become great in Egypt and been transplanted thence into the Land of Promise. הסּיע, lxx μεταίρειν, as in Job 19:10 , perhaps with an allusion to the מסעים of the people journeying to Canaan ( Psalm 78:52 ). (Note: Exod. Rabba, ch. 44, with reference to this passage, says: "When husbandmen seek to improve a vine, what do they do? They root (עוקרין) it out of its place and plant (שׁותלין) it in another." And Levit.

Rabba, ch. 36, says: "As one does not plant a vine in a place where there are great, rough stones, but examines the ground and then plants it, so didst Thou drive out peoples and didst plant it," etc.) Here God made His vine a way and a place (פּנּהּ, to clear, from פּנה, to turn, turn aside, Arabic fanija, to disappear, pass away; root פן, to urge forward), and after He had secured to it a free soil and unchecked possibility of extension, it (the vine) rooted its roots, i.e., struck them ever deeper and wider, and filled the earth round about (cf. the antitype in the final days, Isaiah 27:6). The Israelitish kingdom of God extended itself on every side in accordance with the promise. תּשׁלּח (cf. Ezekiel 17:6, and vegetable שׁלח, a shoot) also has the vine as its subject, like תּשׁרשׁ. Psalm 80:11-12 state this in a continued allegory, by the "mountains" pointing to the southern boundary, by the "cedars" to the northern, by the "sea" to the western, and by the "river" (Euphrates) to the eastern boundary of the country (vid., Deuteronomy 11:24 and other passages). צלּהּ and ענפיה are accusatives of the so-called more remote object (Ges. 143, 1). קציר is a cutting equals a branch; יונקת, a (vegetable) sucker equals a young, tender shoot; ארזי־אל, the cedars of Lebanon as being living monuments of the creative might of God.