What Does Psalm 80:15 Mean?
And the stock your right hand plants, and the son you make strong for yourself.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And the vineyard which thy right hand hath planted, and the branch that thou madest strong for thyself.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.
“plants” in this verse is nāṭəʿāh. 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.
“make 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 set Adam, whom he had shaped.For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah the planting of his delight. He waited for judgment, but behold, spilled blood. He waited for alignment, but behold, a cry.I am the vine, and you are the branches. The one who remains in me, and I in him, this one bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.THE THREAD
You carry a vine out of Egypt; you drive out the nations and plant 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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