Psalm 23

Psalms 23:1-2

The Lord is my shepherd: The Hebrew title, which this page's text does not show, reads simply A Psalm of David. The opening line moves the shepherd image from Israel's corporate confession, the Shepherd of Israel enthroned at 80:1 and the people named the sheep of his pasture at 100:3, into one man's own mouth, I shall not want closing the sentence as the settled conclusion rather than a hope. Green pastures and still waters picture a shepherd's daily provision, food and safe water rather than the rushing streams a frightened sheep will not drink from.

Psalms 23:3

Restoreth carries the sense of bringing back a straying or fainting sheep, not only a feeling refreshed but a life turned round and set on the path again. The paths of righteousness are the right paths in the plain sense, ground safe for the flock, and the older writers also hear the moral sense, a life kept upright. For his name's sake grounds the whole guidance in God's own character and reputation rather than in the sheep's merit, the same ground the shepherd will stand on later in the psalm.

Psalms 23:4

the valley of the shadow of death: The Hebrew tsalmaveth is read by some of the bench as a compound, the shadow of death, and by others as an intensive form meaning simply deep darkness or gloom, and both readings are named without a verdict. The verse does not promise the valley is avoided, only that it is walked through with a companion, and I will fear no evil rests on thou art with me rather than on any change in the danger itself. Rod and staff are the shepherd's own tools, the rod to beat off a wild animal and the staff to hook a straying sheep back, and the comfort is a working shepherd's presence, not a sentiment.

Psalms 23:5

The picture changes from shepherd and sheep to host and honored guest without warning, and the commentators note the shift rather than force one image through the whole psalm. In the presence of mine enemies sets the table in plain sight of hostility rather than after it is removed, security granted in the middle of danger and not only once it has passed. Anointing the head with oil and filling the cup to overflowing are a host's marks of welcome and abundance for a guest under his roof.

Psalms 23:6

Surely goodness and mercy: Follow renders a Hebrew verb elsewhere used of pursuit, an enemy chasing down its prey, and the older writers mark the reversal deliberately: it is goodness and mercy that hunt the psalmist down all the days of his life. The house of the Lord for ever closes the psalm where it can be read of worship at the tabernacle across a lifetime, and Spurgeon and Maclaren both carry it further, toward an unending dwelling that outlasts the days just named, a reading they hold rather than the text asserting outright. The shepherd of the opening line becomes, by the last line, a permanent host.