Making Good Out Of Evil

Psalm 80:1-7

For the choir director: A psalm of Asaph, to be sung to the tune “Lilies of the Covenant.”

1Please listen, O Shepherd of Israel,

you who lead Israel like a flock.

O God, enthroned above the cherubim,

display your radiant glory

2to Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh.

Show us your mighty power.

Come to rescue us!

3Turn us again to yourself, O God.

Make your face shine down upon us.

Only then will we be saved.

4O LORD God Almighty,

how long will you be angry and reject our prayers?

5You have fed us with sorrow

and made us drink tears by the bucketful.

6You have made us the scorn of neighboring nations.

Our enemies treat us as a joke.

7Turn us again to yourself, O God Almighty.

Make your face shine down upon us.

Only then will we be saved.

Ten sons of Jacob were out in the pasture tending sheep when they noticed their younger brother Joseph walking toward them. “Here comes that dreamer!” they said. Joseph was Papa’s favorite son, and he kept having dreams about how he would rule over his family.

So the brothers ambushed Joseph and threw him into a pit. But instead of killing him, they decided to sell him to a passing caravan.

This event sent Joseph on a wild ride of ups and downs. Slavery turned into household management; false accusation and imprisonment turned into prison management; and a bold encounter with the king made him second-in-command. A famine led to a reunion with his brothers and father. Through it all, Joseph maintained his faith that God was shepherding him. “God turned into good what you meant for evil,” he later told his brothers (Genesis 50:20).

Psalm 80 seems to echo the sentiments of Joseph. In fact, in Hebrew, the term used for Israel in verse 1 is the name Joseph. No doubt Joseph prayed this sort of prayer many times in the pit and in prison.

Just as Joseph and the psalmist kept turning to God and trusting him to turn evil into good, so we, too, must keep looking to God in difficult times.

Since all that I meet

Shall work for my good,

The bitter is sweet,

The medicine food;

Though painful at present,

‘Twill cease before long;

And then, O how pleasant

The Conqueror’s song.

JOHN NEWTON

A Word on Words

This psalm seems to have a strong connection to the patriarch Joseph. In the second line of verse 1, “Israel” is literally “Joseph.” In verse 2 it mentions three tribes with strong connections to Joseph. Ephraim and Manasseh were the sons of Joseph, and their tribes became prominent in the northern kingdom of Israel. Benjamin was Joseph’s only full brother, and his tribe joined Judah in the southern kingdom. So the psalmist may be asking God to rescue both the northern and the southern kingdoms in the same way he rescued Joseph.

Notable Quotable

In her poem “The Measure,” Elizabeth Barrett Browning picked up on the imagery of being fed sorrow and tears (verse 5): “Shall we, then, who have issued from the dust, / And there return shall we, who toil for dust, / And wrap our winnings in this dusty life, / Say, No more tears, Lord God! / The measure runneth o’er?”