Psalms 80:14–16

In these three verses, the psalmist intensifies his cry for divine restoration, returning to the urgent refrain "Turn again" as he surveys the devastation of the vine — Israel — that God's own right hand once planted. The image of burning and ruin makes the petition visceral and desperate. Together, verses 14–16 form the emotional and theological heart of Psalm 80's lament: the people who were lovingly cultivated by God now lie in ash, and only God's renewed gaze can save them.

Verse 14 — "Turn again, we beg you, God of Armies"

The Hebrew shûb ("turn again" or "return") carries enormous weight in biblical theology. It is the same verb used for human repentance (teshuvah), and its application here to God is startlingly bold: the psalmist dares to ask the Almighty to perform a kind of divine turning — not because God has sinned, but because His face of favor has been withdrawn. The title Elohim Sabaoth ("God of Armies" or "God of Hosts") is deliberate. This is the Sovereign Commander of all heavenly and earthly powers — yet the psalmist approaches Him not with royal distance but with the intimate urgency of beg (na, a Hebrew particle of earnest supplication). The repetition of this refrain (cf. vv. 3, 7) creates a liturgical drumbeat, reinforcing that Israel's only hope lies not in its own strength but in a divine reversal of fortune.

Verse 15 — "The stock which your right hand planted"

The word translated "stock" (Hebrew kannah, sometimes rendered "shoot" or "branch") refers back to the extended vine metaphor of vv. 8–13, where God brought the vine of Israel out of Egypt and transplanted it into Canaan. Here the focus narrows: the psalmist is not speaking of the whole vine but of a specific stock — the central root-stalk or the foundational planting that gives the vine its identity. The phrase "your right hand planted" is loaded with covenantal significance. The right hand of God throughout the Psalter (cf. Ps 44:3; 118:15–16) denotes His active, saving power — the same hand that parted the Red Sea and drove out the nations before Israel. To call Israel "the stock which your right hand planted" is to remind God, as it were, of His own investment in His people. This is a prayer that appeals to divine faithfulness (hesed) and to the logic of God's own prior commitment.

Verse 16 — "It is burned with fire"

The terse, brutal declaration shatters the more elaborate imagery of the preceding verses. There is no ornate metaphor here — just a statement of raw devastation. The vine is not merely untended or withered; it is burned. Fire in the ancient world was the ultimate weapon of conquest — armies burned vineyards to deny sustenance to a defeated people and to signify total subjugation (cf. the Assyrian and later Babylonian campaigns). The brevity of the line in the Hebrew is itself expressive: it mirrors the speechlessness of grief. Typologically, this burning anticipates the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC — and also invites the reader to see every moment of apparent divine abandonment as a call to renewed petition rather than despair. The burned vine is not yet a dead vine; the psalmist is still praying, still interceding, which itself is a sign of faith's persistence in the ruins.

Catholic tradition reads Psalm 80 — and these verses in particular — through a richly layered typological lens. The vine planted by God's right hand becomes, in the New Testament, an unmistakable figure of Christ Himself and of the Church. Jesus declares explicitly in John 15:1, "I am the true vine," appropriating this very Psalter imagery and transforming it: where Israel the vine failed and was burned, Christ the true Vine endures and bears eternal fruit.

St. Augustine, in his Enarrationes in Psalmos, reads the "stock planted by the right hand" as a direct figure of the Incarnate Word — the Son who is eternally at the Father's right hand (cf. Ps 110:1), and who, in His humanity, is "planted" into the soil of human history. The burning of the vine, for Augustine, prefigures the Passion: Christ, the true Stock, is given over to fire and destruction, yet precisely through that destruction brings forth new life.

St. Thomas Aquinas (Commentary on the Psalms) emphasizes that the petition "Turn again" reflects the Church's constant posture of oratio — the Church cannot generate its own restoration; it can only ask. This aligns with the Catechism's teaching that "prayer is the life of the new heart" (CCC 2697) and that Christian prayer is fundamentally a response to God's prior initiative, even when it takes the form of urgent petition amid suffering.

The image of the burning vine also resonates with the Church's teaching on suffering and purification. The Catechism (CCC 1031; cf. CCC 1472) speaks of purifying fire; the Fathers read the burned vine not only as judgment but as the precondition of renewal — a felix culpa pattern embedded in Israel's story and fulfilled in Christ's death and resurrection. Pope Benedict XVI, in Verbum Domini (§30), affirmed that the Psalms of lament are not expressions of despair but of "a faith that wrestles with God," and that the Church legitimately prays these cries through Christ, who made every human lament His own from the Cross.

Contemporary Catholics face moments — personal, ecclesial, cultural — when the "vine" they have tended seems burned beyond recovery: a faith community in decline, a personal spiritual desolation, a culture that appears to have severed itself from Christian roots. These three verses offer a concrete prayer posture for such moments. First, do not stop petitioning: the psalmist returns to the refrain a third time, modeling perseverance. Second, ground your appeal in God's prior action — remind yourself and God of what He has already done in your life, your family's history, your parish. Third, sit briefly with the starkness of verse 16. Do not rush past "It is burned with fire." Catholic spirituality — especially in the Ignatian and Carmelite traditions — insists that honest acknowledgment of desolation is not lack of faith but the beginning of authentic prayer. The burned vine is brought to God precisely as it is. Finally, note that the psalmist calls on the "God of Armies": no situation is beyond the reach of the One who commands all powers. Bring the ruins to the Commander.