Ps. 80.1 (shepherd power)

O Shepherd / of Israel / give ear
the one / who guides Joseph / like a flock. 

The petition: Shepherd. A petition begins the psalm. And, as with every petition, it is perhaps illuminating to ask what condition the psalmist is petitioning God to move from. For example, here the petition to ‘give ear’ would seem to emerge from the present condition that he is not, in fact, listening right now, that he has removed himself from the psalmist and his people. It could be argued that stating it thus is too forceful. The opening could be more in the nature of a call to attention more than a call away from ‘deafness’. However, as the psalm progresses it is clear that whatever state God is in, it is one that the psalmist is energetically petitioning him to abandon. By verse 5 he will claim that God has “fed them tears for food and even made them drink tears by the keg.” Clearly, the psalmist is envisioning God in an active state of indifference to him and his people. It is for that reason that the particular image chose to address God in this opening line is worth pausing over: “Shepherd of Israel”. There is something about this designation in particular that is aimed to move God. It is interesting to note that this designation is nowhere found in the Scriptures except here. God is referred to, of course, as a shepherd and, of course, as the leader of Israel, but he is never called “Shepherd of Israel”. In a psalm that seems very concerned with how God is addressed, that fact is striking. To be a “shepherd” in the ancient world is often another way of describing kingship. It signifies the mission-centered reality of the king, as a being-for-the-sheep. His office is one of protective-moving-toward; it does not rest in itself. To offer this designation to God, immediately at the opening of the psalm, is to call him to enact this shepherding-power, to ‘move toward’ them in a protective and providing manner. That much, though, is present in every instance of God as ‘shepherd’. 

Why “of Israel”? I think what we see in this verse is something that will become more fleshed out as the psalm progresses. It is the image of primordial unity. The psalmist is, I think, looking back on the time when God created Israel and then dispensed that blessing of unity down through Israel’s (Jacob’s) sons. In Genesis 48.15 Jacob/Israel, having already blessed Ephraim and Manasseh turns to Joseph and refers to God as “the God who has been my shepherd all my life to this day”. What we see then is that as Jacob is offering his ‘final blessing’ he gather to himself his sons and, in a blessing-petition to God, prays the binding force of God’s shepherding power onto his sons (think, the ‘final discourse’ in John as Jesus gathers his ‘sons’ around him and delivers over his promise of the binding force of his family: the Holy Spirit). “Israel” will remain “Israel” only by and through this primordial blessing of shepherd power. Here we have Israel, Joseph, Ephraim, Benjamin and Manasseh (we will look later at perhaps why Benjamin would be included here…). So I think what we see here is a petition to God to (re)enact his creative-binding shepherd power on behalf of Israel because they are, in the present, in danger of losing their unity and of splintering off into disparate tribes through persecution. For God to give ‘ear’ to them is to provide them the blessing-power of Jacob, deliver them from their enemies and (re)constitute them again as his ‘flock’.