Psalms 80 - Introduction

LXXX.

That this plaintive cry for restoration to a state which should be indicative of the Divine favour, arose from Israel when groaning under foreign oppression which it was powerless to resist, is plain and incontestable. And if, with the almost unanimous consent of critics, we are right in rendering Psalms 80:6, “Thou makest us an object of strife to our neighbours,” we should be able to approximate very nearly to the date of the poem. For there are only two periods when Palestine became an object of dispute between rival powers: when Assyria and Egypt made it their battleground; and, at a much later date, when it was the apple of discord between the Ptolemies and the Seleucidæ. But at the earlier of these two periods the language of the poet descriptive of utter prostration and ruin (Psalms 80:16) would hardly have been suitable. We hear, too again, in Psalms 80:4, the pathetic “how long?” of the Maccabæan age. No argument for date or authorship can safely be drawn from the mode in which the tribes are mentioned and arranged in Psalms 80:2. (See Note.) The refrain at Psalms 80:3; Psalms 80:7; Psalms 80:19 indicates the structure of the poem.

Title. — See Psalms 45, 60, and comp. title of Psalms 69.