What Does Psalm 80:15 Mean in the King James?
And the vineyard which thy right hand hath planted, and the branch that thou madest strong for thyself.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The Hebrew calls the “branch” a son: the vine’s planting grows into living offspring that God strengthens for his purpose.
THE MEANING
You are pictured as a planting whose beginning lies in God’s hand, with its branch called a son and strengthened for God’s purpose. The verse holds belonging and dependence together: life grows from what God plants and is sustained by strength God supplies.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that your life must originate and sustain itself: the image begins with God’s planting and continues through God’s strengthening.
THE ROOT
נָטְעָה
nāṭəʿāh
GROWS FROM
נטע
Plant; set in the soil.
This is more than a label for a people: they are living growth set into the earth by another’s hand. The “branch” belongs to that planted life, joining its beginning to its growth.
ALSO GROWS
nāṭaʿ: To place a living growth in the ground.
נָטַע
The base verb presents the vineyard as something deliberately established.
maṭṭāʿ: A planted growth or plantation.
מַטָּע
This noun keeps the image rooted in an act of planting, not merely in a place where growth happens.
בֵּן
bēn
GROWS FROM
בנה
Build; form a household or continuing line.
The KJV’s “branch” is literally בֵּן (bēn, “son”). The vine’s growth is pictured as offspring, carrying forward the life of what was planted.
ALSO GROWS
bēn: A son or descendant who continues a family line.
בֵּן
The Hebrew makes the vine’s growth feel like living offspring, not only plant anatomy.
bānāh: To build, including the image of building up a household.
בָּנָה
The son carries forward the line that is being built from the planted life.
אִמַּצְתָּה
ʾimmaṣtāh
GROWS FROM
אמץ
Be firm or strong; strengthen.
“made strong” in this verse is ʾimmaṣtāh. This root can describe becoming strong and the act of making something strong. Here, the planted life is not only given a place; it is actively reinforced for the planter’s purpose.
ALSO GROWS
ʾāmaṣ: To become firm or courageous.
אָמַץ
It shows strength as a quality that can take hold within the one who is planted.
ʾimmēṣ: To give strength or make firm.
אִמֵּץ
This is the active sense in the verse: the planter supplies strength to the growth.
THE PATTERN
What God plants remains dependent on God for fruitfulness, and its fruit reveals the nature of that planting.
And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.For the vineyard of the LORD 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.I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.THE THREAD
Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt: thou hast cast out the heathen, and planted it.The same Hebrew root נטע (nāṭaʿ, “plant”) first names the vine’s planting here. Verse 15 returns to that image, calling its growth a “son” and naming the planter as the one who makes it strong.
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