Ps. 80.8 (petition: enacting dissonance)

You transplanted / a vine / from Egypt
you drove out nations / and replanted it. 

In context. The tone of this verse strikes a (seemingly) very strong dissonance with what has preceded. So strong, in fact that it is tempting for the reader, when they get to this portion of the psalm, to break it off from what has preceded and read it in isolation. (There may be evidence that, in fact, this part of the psalm was inserted; but that is beside the point.) The ‘story of the vine’ begins strongly triumphant and joyous. The psalm up to this point has been dark and full of anguish, both in its imagery and its tone. Furthermore, the psalmist has just concluded his plea for redemption from his “enemies” whereas now the action centers on God’s “driving out the nations” in order to make space for Israel. One point to seeing this portion flow from the opening is that the disconnect, the sense of dissonance, is itself part of the meaning. The reader is supposed to be thrown off kilter by the change in tone. For that reason, this seemingly triumphant and joyous opening is, in fact, a reason, and cause, for the darkness and anguish of the opening. And, perhaps, we have actually missed something key when we say the ‘reader’ is supposed to be thrown off kilter—because the psalm is addressed to God, not the reader. So, in fact, God is supposed to experience this ‘dissonance’ and disconnect. This is a profoundly important point—the dissonance of the psalm is supposed to, because it is aimed at God, heal that dissonance. This relates back to an observation we have made often: that the petition psalms (at least) are not meant to be descriptions. They are not describing a state-of-affairs, but rhetorically attempting to change/alter/redeem the state-of-affairs, because they are petitions directed to God. If the petitions are read as being primarily for a ‘reader’ and not to be heard by God, then this central aspect is lost and the psalm is (perhaps irretrievably) altered. Again, how the dissonance of the psalm is heard is profoundly affected by this understanding. If the dissonance is ‘reader-centered’, it moves much closer to being a type of (existential) description. When it is God-centered (which it clearly is), it becomes dramatic and rhetorical. The point is not ‘us’, but God. The psalmist knows man cannot heal this dissonance. It is, rather, being ‘offered up’ into God’s presence in order to compel him to change and redeem it. Which calls for a further important observation. 

Recounting history. We have observed the psalmist complaint that the Lord of Hosts (Yhwh Sabaoth) is shrouded in a fumes so thick that his holy ones’ prayers cannot be heard (vs. ). Here, when the psalmist hopes God is listening, he attempts to lift up into his presence not a further cajoling, but an historical recounting of God’s actions toward his people. It is as if he was lifting a painting into God’s presence; or, perhaps more accurately, ‘telling God a story’. What we see, in light of what we said above, is that this is no mere recounting. To retell history into God’s presence is to understand that that history has the power of petition; here, history is petition. It is told and narrated in order to compel movement. For the psalmist, then, the past has an abiding (not ‘value’ but) power. It is living; it radiates; it is dialogue (not (scientific) monologue). It ‘reminds God who he is’ so as to make him become ‘who he was’. As we have said, God’s anger creates a duality (both in himself toward Israel and in Israel toward herself). This recounting of history as petition is meant to overcome that duality, to heal the breach, to, in a sense, overcome God’s anger with God’s loving-kindness toward Israel. History is a beautiful beguiling of God to act. It is an aesthetic argument.   

The vine. The image the psalmist resorts to is one of gardening. On the part of Israel, she is a ‘vine’ that has been uprooted from Egypt and then trans-planted into the Promised Land. On one level, this image conveys the profound sense of Israel as not being ‘native’ to the Land. She is, in her being, ‘trans-planted’. The soil she now grows in—and grows in so luxuriantly—is not her native soil. She has been…engrafted. Israel then, to her core, sees herself as ‘gifted’, as ‘provided for’. When she looks down into herself, she does not see her own face looking back at her, but, rather, the shining face of God. By removing her, clearing the land, and planting her, Israel is lovingly passive. Her life, her well-being, is not in herself, but, historically and entirely, premised on her ‘being redeemed’. She was ‘transplanted from Egypt’. The act conveys an entirely gracious act on God’s part, like a gardener attempting to save a plant from dying. 

The clearing. In a rather eloquent image, the conquest of the land is, first, attributed entirely to God as he, with one hand, holds Israel while with the other, he clears the ground of weeds (the nations). It is probably not a stretch to imagine God removing Israel from the barrenness of Egypt and placing them within the fertility of the Promised Land. In Egypt, God had to save them from withering; in the Promised Land, he had to save them from the tangle of weeds (nations). For Egypt, exile(exodus) is necessary; for the Promised Land, conquest was necessary. Each of their soils representing opposite obstacles to Israel’s well-being and fruitfulness (so, each requiring a different form of redemption). That, though, does not get to the depth of this image. God is here a loving gardener passionately concerned about the well-being of his vine. He is, in essence, weeding. One cannot help but find this image reminiscent of Genesis, and the Lord-Gardener of Eden. There, there is no need for the violence of weeding. Creation itself is an act of ‘blessing-without-violence’. Here, the Gardener again is at work for his creation except now there is a necessary cleansing that must take place in order for his creation to take root. We can see in this an echo of the fact that this ‘vine’ has now come to be a type of Eden. As we will see later, she is also a type of new Adam. God is participating her into his primal act of planting. In other words, Israel’ replanting is not merely the redemption of one-nation-among-the-nations. It is, rather, the recreation of creation. She is to become, in the Land (and Zion), the ‘navel of the world’; the center and source of the cosmos.