Commentary on Psalms Volume 2 John Calvin
JOHN CALVIN
did not here intend to endite for his people a vain repetition of words: his object was to encourage them, when bowed down under the load of their calamities, boldly to rise up, heavy though the load might be. This ground of support was often presented to them; and it is repeated the third time in the concluding verse of the psalm.
Psalm 80:8-13
8. Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt: thou hast expelled the heathen, and planted it. 9. Thou hast cleansed the ground before it: thou hast rooted its roots, and it hath filled the land. 10. The mountains were covered with its shadow, and its branches were like the cedars of God. 870 11. It extended its branches to the sea, and its shoots to the river. 871 12. Why then hast thou broken down its hedges, so that all who pass by the way pluck [or tear] it in pieces? 13. The boar out of the forest 872 hath wasted it; 873 and the wild beast of the field hath eaten it up.
The LXX. read this verse as follows. Εκάλυψενὄρη ἡσκιὰαὐτὢς, καὶαί ἀναδενδράδες αὐτὢς τὰς κέδρους του Θεοῦ"The shadow thereof covered the hills, and the branches thereof [covered] the cedars of God." The LXX. seem to have read,כסה casah, covered, instead of,כסוcossu, were covered With this agree the versions of the
Syriac, Arabic, and Vulgate; and this is the reading adopted by Hare, Houbigant, Lowth, and Horsley. "Is it an extravagant image of a flourishing vine," says Lowth, "to say, that it climbed up even the highest cedars, spread itself along the branches, and covered the very top of them?" "The image," says Merrick, "may, I think, well be allowed in the description of an allegorical vine, which is represented as stretching out her branches unto the sea, and her boughs unto the river; especially when compared with what Kaempfer says of some foreign vines. 'Maximum proventum vites tribuunt, quae nulla jutae cultura palmites per summa spargunt fastigia arborum.' — Amoenitat Exot Fascic 2, Relat 9, Section 2, page 390. The author of the History of the Piratical States of Barbary (published in 1750) informs us that some of the vines near Algiers 'climb to the tops of very lofty trees, and, extending themselves to others, form natural bowers,' page 163. And Beverley, in his History of Virginia, (page 116, ed. 2d,) affirms that he has seen great trees covered with single vines, and those vines almost hidden with grapes. [...] The vine's covering the cedars, in the Psalmist's description, might be intended to suggest an idea not only of its extent, but also of its sovereignty, (agreeably to what Musculus writes on the place: 'Operti fuerunt montes umbra ejus, et ramis ejus cedri Dei: Ponit haec de potentia regni Israelitici,' etc.,) as a Greek poet has, from this very circumstance, represented the vine as the mistress of the trees. (Nonnus, Dionysiac L. 12, 278, 279.")
The sea — the river — i.e., the Mediterranean, which was the Western, and the Euphrates, which was the Eastern boundary of Palestine. The Divine promise respecting the extent of the territory of the chosen people runs in these terms, (Deuteronomy 11:24,) "From the river Euphrates to the uttermost sea shall your coast be." And it was fulfilled in the days of Solomon, (1 Kings 4:21; Psalm 72:8.) In his time there were Hebrew colonies and garrisons near the river Euphrates.
According to the Talmud, the middle letter of the word rendered forest in this verse, is the middle letter of the Hebrew Psalter.