Psalm 23 explained

Psalm 23 speaks about the LORD until the valley, then speaks to him: "for you are with me" (23:4). Its "still waters" are, in Hebrew, waters of rest. And the goodness and loving kindness that "follow" the psalmist (23:6) pursue him, with the verb other psalms use for enemies.

Psalm 23 is titled "A Psalm by David" (23:1). Its first three verses speak about the LORD: "The LORD is my shepherd; I shall lack nothing" (23:1) (tap shepherd), "He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters" (23:2), "He restores my soul. He guides me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake" (23:3). Here is what almost everyone misses: in the valley the psalm stops speaking about the LORD and starts speaking to him. "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me" (23:4). From there it is you: "You prepare a table before me … You anoint my head with oil" (23:5). The first you of the psalm comes in the valley. The last verse names him again: "the LORD’s house" (23:6).

The psalm speaks about the LORD in 23:1-3: "He makes me lie down" (23:2), "He restores my soul" (23:3). Its first you is in the valley: "I will fear no evil, for you are with me" (23:4).

Psalm 23:1-4

Psalms 23:1→leads toJohn 10:14

Speaking of "the shepherd of the sheep" (John 10:2), Jesus said, "I am the good shepherd. I know my own, and I’m known by my own" (John 10:14). The psalm says, "The LORD is my shepherd; I shall lack nothing" (Psalm 23:1), and in the valley, "for you are with me" (Psalm 23:4). John doesn't name Psalm 23, so setting the two together is a reading. It rests on a shared subject, a shepherd and the ones who are his ("my shepherd", Psalm 23:1; "my own", John 10:14), not on the English word shepherd alone. One reading hears Jesus taking for himself what the psalm says of the LORD, and sets beside it the Lord GOD's words in Ezekiel, "I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep" (Ezekiel 34:15). Another keeps each to its own setting: the psalm speaks of the LORD as the psalmist's shepherd (Psalm 23:1), and Jesus speaks of himself and his own sheep (John 10:14) without naming this psalm. These notes don't choose between them, and this line doesn't make the psalmist Jesus.

רָעָהra'ahsay ra-AH

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "pasture, tend, graze". Strong's: "to tend a flock; i.e. pasture it". "The LORD is my shepherd" (23:1). In Hebrew my shepherd is one word, ro'i: a form of this verb, the one who tends, with my joined to it. Other psalms call the LORD shepherd with it: "Be their shepherd also, and bear them up forever" (Psalm 28:9), and "Hear us, Shepherd of Israel" (Psalm 80:1). It is the verb of David's calling: God "brought him to be the shepherd of Jacob, his people" (Psalm 78:71). And Psalm 49 has it of "those who are foolish" (Psalm 49:13): "Death shall be their shepherd" (Psalm 49:14).

"The LORD is my shepherd; I shall lack nothing" (23:1). When you read that line, what do you feel you lack right now? How does the line sit with you?