7.20. Chapter 6 - The Parable of the Vine: The Contrast Between the Past and the Present

Chapter 6 The Parable of the Vine: The Contrast Between the Past and the Present

I COME now to the third and longest section of this comprehensive psalm, in which, as stated in the Introduction, the plea for God’s interposition on Israel’s behalf is based on the ground of His former mercies to them.

First, we have a striking picture of the time when, under the fostering care and protection of Jehovah, Israel spread themselves abroad and flourished:

“Thou broughtest a vine out of Egypt;

Thou didst drive out the nations, and plantedst it.

Thou preparedst room [or “didst clear room,” or “the ground”] before it. And it took deep root, and filled the land. The mountains were covered with the shadow of it, And by its boughs the cedars of God.

She sent out her branches unto the sea, And her shoots unto the river.” The Vine (or Vineyard) as an emblem of Israel is frequently found in the Old Testament, and is adopted also by our Lord in His parables in the New Testament. To the inspired writer of this psalm it has very probably been suggested by Isaiah’s prophetic song on the same theme (Isa_5:1-7), to which there are manifest allusions in this psalm, and perhaps also by Jacob’s blessing on Joseph, who is described as “a fruitful bough by a fountain, whose branches run over the wall” (Gen_49:22).

Looking closely into this parable, we find in these eight graphic lines a summary of God’s mighty acts of power and grace, and also of judgment, which He displayed in bringing Israel out of Egypt and in planting them in the land of promise.

It is in many points a parallel scripture to Psalms 44:1-26, where the psalmist also seeks to encourage himself and the people in their present distress and suffering by a rehearsal of God’s wonderful deeds for them in the past:

“O God, we have heard with our ears [I am translating literally] our fathers have told us, What work [or “how wonderfully”] Thou didst in their days, in the days of old.

It was Thou—with thine own hand, Who didst drive out the nations and plantedst them [i.e., Israel];

Thou didst afflict the peoples and didst spread them [i.e. Israel] abroad.” In both psalms all the glory of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt and of the original conquest of Palestine is ascribed to Jehovah.

1. Found in the uncongenial soil of Egypt, where they had been held, so to say, rooted for centuries, God brought them out; the particular verb which the sacred singer employs being used both of horticulture (Job_19:10) and, like the word “planted” in the next line, of “breaking up and removing a nomadic encampment—the pulling out the tent pins and driving them in.”

It was He Himself “with His own hand” and stretched out arm who did it! for the more we learn of the might of Egypt at the time of the Exodus, and how contrary to all human probabilities it was that Israel could ever have escaped from under the hand of the mighty Pharaohs, the more we understand how it is that in the Old Testament the Exodus, and the wonders which accompanied it, are continually referred to as the most manifest proof of the almighty power of God in exercise on behalf of His people. And it was a display, not only of His power, but of His grace, for all that the sacred historians and prophets tell us of Israel’s moral and spiritual condition in Egypt, and at the time of their deliverance, testifies to the fact that they did not in themselves deserve such a Divine interposition on their behalf. But in the words of another psalm:

“He remembered His holy word [of promise] And Abraham His servant; So he brought out His people with joy, And His chosen ones with singing.” (Psa_105:42-43)

2. And it was He also who did “drive out the nations” in order “to clear the ground” and make room for this vine, which His own right hand was now bringing in to plant. “By their own sword” they never could have conquered Palestine. All the historical and monumental discoveries go to show that the region was at that time inhabited by different nations, some of them very warlike, greater and mightier than they, whom they ever could have dislodged in their own strength. What the human probabilities were in reference to Israel’s gaining possession of the land were stated by the spies in their report: “The people that dwell in the land are strong, and the cities are fenced in and very great: and moreover we saw the children of Anak there”—in short—“We be not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we” (Num_13:28-31). This was all true; their sin and guilt lay only in the fact that they left God and His promises out of account. Caleb and Joshua put the matter in its true light; they did not under-estimate the difficulties; they also saw the great and fenced cities, and the giants, but they said: “If Jehovah delight in us, then He will bring us into the land, and give it unto us.” And that the faith and confidence in God of these two were justified, is attested by history and commemorated in these two psalms and other scriptures:

“They got not the land in possession by their sword, Neither did their own arm save them: But Thy right hand and Thine arm and the light of Thy countenance.

Because Thou hadst a favour unto them.” (Psa_44:3)

3. But in the words “Thou didst drive out the nations” and “afflict the peoples,” we are reminded not only of God’s acts of power and of grace toward Israel, but of His severity and righteous judgment toward the seven nations of Canaan.

Unbelievers sometimes cavil at Scripture because of the record it contains of the destruction of these peoples, and profess themselves even unable to believe in a God who could sanction or permit such things; while modern Christian apologetes think themselves under the necessity to compromise the character and inspiration of the sacred writers by assuring us that God never did command Israel to uproot and destroy those nations. The simple believer, on the other hand, remembering the marvellous longsuffering which God exercised toward these Canaanites, and how for many centuries He had been waiting ad restraining His anger because “the iniquity of the Amorite” was not yet quite full (Gen_15:16), cannot only exclaim:

“Great ad marvellous are Thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are Thy ways, thou King of Nations. Who shall not fear Thee, O Lord, and glorify Thy Name, for Thou only art holy”— but, without holding God responsible for any single deed or particular action on the part of Israel or their leaders and judges in their relation to these doomed nations, can even see His love and concern for humanity as a whole in His acts of judgment on these corrupt peoples.

We do not regard the skilful surgeon (to use a very imperfect illustration) as a cruel man, but rather as a benefactor, when to save the man he has to cut deep and sharp in order to remove a diseased or decaying physical member; so either is God unjust or unkind when nations or individuals who have become wholly and hopelessly, both morally and physically corrupt, are given over by Him to utter destruction in order to prevent the festering mass from becoming a source of moral contagion and death all around.

“Behold, therefore,” my reader, in these lines of the psalm, “the goodness and the severity of God”¹; toward these nations whom He “drove out” and “afflicted” severity, but toward Israel goodness, so long as Israel continued in His goodness; but when Israel in their turn began to manifest signs of moral and spiritual corruption, He spared not even His own chosen people—“the dearly beloved of His soul”—but gave over generations of them to judgment, and the whole nation to long-continued suffering, though His purpose in reference to their future still abides.

4. But to return more directly to our psalm, which goes on to dilate on the wonderful way in which this slip of a “vine,” which the great Husbandman transplanted from Egypt, grew and flourished upon His fostering care:

“It took deep root and filled the land, The mountains were covered with the shadow of it, And by its boughs the cedars of God.¹ She sent out her branches unto the sea, And her shoots unto the river.”

¹ I prefer this rendering to that given in the Authorized and Revised Versions, and it brings out the parallelism more clearly. In these lines we have a poetic or allegorical reference to the boundaries of the promised land and particularly to the limits of its possession reached in the glorious days of the Solomonic empire (1Ki_4:24). For the “mountains” refer to the hill country of Judea in the South, “particularly the southernmost part of the same, which at the commencement of Israel’s country met the traveller like a wall”¹ and the “cedars” unto which the boughs of the vine reached out stand for Lebanon in the North—the expression “of God” (translated in the Authorised Version “goodly”), used also in Psa_36:6 of the mountains of Palestine, being intended to impress us with their loftiness and majesty, and perhaps also with the fact of God’s delight in them as an outstanding feature of Immanuel’s land, and as showing forth the glory of the Creator. The (Mediterranean) “sea” always stands for the western boundary of Palestine, and the “river,” which is the Euphrates, for the eastern boundary. thus, in measure at any rate, especially during Solomon’s reign, and as a foreshadowing of the time when restored and converted Israel shall enter into the full possession of the whole promised land, has God’s promise to them through Moses been fulfilled: “Every place whereon the sole of your foot shall tread shall be yours, from the wilderness, and Lebanon, for the river, the river Euphrates, even unto the hinder [or western] sea shall be your border” (Deu_11:24).

¹ Hengstenberg

5. Compared with the beautiful past, when Israel dwelt under the protection ad favour of God, the preset appears all the more gloomy. “Why,” the psalmist mournfully proceeds—

“Why hast Thou broken down her fenced, So that all they which pass by the way do pluck her? The boar out of the wood doth ravage it, And the wild beast of the field doth devour it.”

Here again the sacred writer attributes Israel’s misfortunes as being due in the first instance to the withdrawal of God from their midst. So long as He was among them, “the Almighty was their defence,” and His salvation was much more to them than “walls and bulwarks” (Isa_26:1). Not all the nations combined, nor all the forces of the universe, could prevail against them as long as Jehovah Himself was the Captain of their salvation, and strove with them that strove against them. But when He hid His face and withdrew from them, then their “defences were broken down,” and all that passes by began to “pluck” at them. The “boar” and the “wild beast,” which latter word is found in the original elsewhere only in Psa_50:11, are emblematic of Gentile world-power¹—of those nations namely who in turn tread down Jerusalem and oppress Israel—the last named, which is formed from a verb which means to “move to and fro” in restless activity, pointing probably to the last of the four “great beasts” in Daniel’s vision, whose united course make up “the time of the Gentiles”—the one “diverse from all the beasts which went before it”—the great Roman power, which is still dragging on, and is yet to be manifested in its final development under Antichrist, and which in a special manner has “devoured and brake in pieces and stamped the residue with his feet.”²

¹ There are many other scriptures where Gentile powers are symbolised by wild beasts and birds of prey. Cf. Psalms 68:30; Ezekiel 29:3; Ezekiel 17:1-24; Daniel 7:1-28, &c.

² So the Talmud understood it. And that which the psalmist here describes as actually taking place is exactly what the great Husbandman threatened to do in the pathetic and beautiful song about the vineyard uttered by Isaiah, where we also find the answer to the question expressed in the “why” in the twelfth verse. It was because after having done all that He possibly could for this vineyard He found that it brought forth only wild grapes, that He finally says: “Go to, I will tell you what I will do to My vineyard: I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up, and I will break down the fence thereof, and it shall not be pruned or hoed, but there shall come up briars and thorns; I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. For the vineyard of Jehovah of Hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah His pleasant plant; and He looked for judgment, but behold oppression; for righteousness, but behold a cry” (Isa_5:1-7).