PSALM 80      LET THY FACE SHINE

29^TH NOVEMBER 2020 – ADVENT SUNDAY

As the psalms often show we humans are ‘Janus’ faced: we look forward to the coming times, and backward to the past and combine them in our thoughts and decisions. This poem looks to the distant past – some have a ‘good times’ view, but some in more recent times are of major dislocation.

Because of the mention of Joseph, Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh the psalm’s writing can safely be dated to the time of the Assyrian invasion when the Assyrians conquered the northern tribes of Israel and threatened Jerusalem. In this critical situation the tribes have assembled in the sanctuary to bring before God their lament, their supplications, and their intercessions

1     Hear O Shepherd of Israel you that led Joseph like a flock:
you that are enthroned upon the cherubim shine out in glory;

2     Before Ephraim, Benjamin and Manasseh:
stir up your power and come to save us.

These two verses are an invocation to the Almighty because a disaster has already overtaken them (Assyrians, drought, famine) led to the calling of the people together to lay their common complaint to God. It follows the pattern of communal payer. The first part is a remembrance or a reminder to God of his care for them in past ages. Having presented that picture to God the people respond with the first request in the chorus, probably said by all the people, for God to act.

3     Restore us again O Lord of hosts:
show us the light of your countenance and we shall be saved.

In his power he merely must shrug his shoulder and the people are saved. Verse 3 shows the strong faith of the community who believe this is possible on God’s part if he turns again and brings about that encounter in the theophany from which all divine blessings flow.

4     O Lord God of hosts:
how long will you be angry at your people’s prayer?

5     You have fed them with the bread a of tears:
and given them tears to drink in good measure.

6     You have made us the victim of our neighbours:
and our enemies laugh us to scorn.

Verses 4-6 reflect the affliction of God’s people is fundamentally a trial of their faith. They suffer from being separated from God, from being subject to his anger, though they are probably not without a sense of their own guilt. The faithful who have lost confidence in their God give vent to their bitter disappointment in the supressed irony of the statement that the food and drink that they are indebted to their God consisted in a full measure of tears. The land that they had been promised was now wrenched away and given to those ‘who laugh us to scorn’.

7.    Restore us again O Lord of hosts:
show us the light of your countenance and we shall be saved.

Despite the preceding picture of dislocation, the people still cry out in faith.

17   Let your power rest on the man at your right hand:
on that son of man whom you made so strong for yourself.

18   And so we shall not turn back from you:
give us life and we will call upon your name.

The cult community envisages once more the seriousness of their position. They do not shun the bitter truth that their very existence is imperilled, not only their material position but their innermost being; for he who threatens them is God himself. In this situation the faithful thus threatened make one last effort, a last bold venture, and in supplication throw themselves into the arms of this God. It is precisely because it is God who threatens them that he is their only help and that their affliction cannot be his final word. Verse 17 echoes the new testament picture of Jesus, the one at the right hand of God the Father – no wonder this was a popular psalm for Christians who saw their fulfilment in the coming of Christ Jesus.

19   Restore us again O Lord of hosts:
show as the light of your countenance and we shall be saved.

The affliction of their life of prayer, movingly expressed in the lament in verse 4, is thus overcome. Only now, too, the radiant light of the divine presence appears in all its fullness in the refrain’s petition, in which the people of God, assured of their salvation, find their way back to God and to themselves.

Thank you Fr Graham Alston for your weekly commentary on the appointed psalm.