A plea for God to turn again with his favor

“Restore us, O LORD God of hosts! Let your face shine, that we may be saved!” Psalm 80:19.

Set at the time of the Assyrian captivity that took off the northern kingdom (according to the LXX), the psalmist appeals to God for a restoration of His covenant people.

Like other psalms, including the previous one, he asks how long God will continue to be angry. He recognizes the love and care that God has invested in His people as they are a vine that He, the Master Gardener, has planted. Therefore, the fault does not lie with God for the vine growing in ways they stubbornly wanted to go. Rather, three times he appeals to God to “restore us.” He pleads for God to “turn again” with His favor with the promise that “then we shall not turn back from you.”

Sinful mankind needs another chance. We need restoration, and God provides it in a way that the psalmist could never envision. Jesus gives all of mankind that second chance at the cross and at the tomb. In John 17, He prays for that restoration just before he willingly and obediently lays down His life to make restoration possible: “I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one.”

He lets His face shines, that we may be saved.