Psalm 23
1 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside still waters;
3 he restores my soul.
He leads me in right paths
for his name’s sake.4 Even though I walk through the darkest valley,
I fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.5 You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
my whole life
My Church is in the middle of a short series on Psalm 23. More specifically, we are narrowing in on that troubled space between the first and second stanzas. A space that sees a sudden, seemingly unexpected shift in its tone and its focus, this difficult movement from the positive outlook of verses 1-3 to the sudden intrusion (or invasion) of this picture of the valley.
There were a couple of thoughts that stood out for me from this morning. First, I suddenly found myself very aware of the shift in language from “He” to “You.” Second, given the presence of that shift in pronouns, verse 5 suddenly took on a whole new sense of meaning.
There’s no shortage of thoughts available online about this shift in language. The most common interpretation stays with the tendency to read this poem primarily as an internal struggle, typically one assigned to the voice of David. It reflects this movement from the more propositional yet somewhat more distanced nature of the claims in verses 1-3, to the more intimate nature of verse 4 “as” one who now find themselves in the valley.
There is likely some truth in this take. This certainly feels true to the human experience. When things are going good, its easy to cite theological truisms about the goodness of God and blessings of this life and this world. When we find ourselves in the valley it becomes much more difficult. This is where it moves from the propositional claims to the weathered statement of someone not only seeking the truth of such statements, but seeking them in the face of a reality that seems to challenge their trustworthiness and truthfulness. If we take the Psalm as a whole, you can see this intentional drawing out of a journey, one that begins with the confessions, sets those teachings within the fires of circumstnace, and ultimatley formulates a fresh persepctive on the same confessions- Surely, the Psalmist says, goodness and mercy shall follow me. Surely I shall dwell in the house of the Lord. This is what emerges from the valley with the Psalmist. In a powerful point of awareness regarding how this must work, the Psalmists emphasizes this now wheathered, formed and tested confession as “the whole” of ones life. Such knowledge can only come from the journey itself.
But I also couldn’t help but think there is yet another layer to this shift that was worth exploring.
As per the Bible Project in an article titled What Does Psalm 23 Mean: How a Famous Psalm Can Say God is the Shepherd- King of the Exodus Without Mentioning the Exodus, it writes,
“In the ancient world, kings were often portrayed as shepherds.”
Why does this matter. It matters to understanding the backdrop for the Psalm itself. The article goes on to cite Old Testament scholar Timothy Laniak in outlining how, for the ancients, the shepherd language was used specifically to denote the characteristics of a just ruler, something that the text intentionally contrasts using hyperlinked language with the primary narrative of the Psalm’s audience: the Exodus, where we find the story of the enslaving Powers and God’s liberation.
In an especailly intriguing note, it cites an early interpretive translation of 23:3 in the Hebrew;
“It is the LORD who fed his people in the desert; they lacked nothing… He restores my soul with manna.”
Again, why does this matter to our reading of the Psalm? For me, it satisfied this lingering sense that this Psalm was speaking to something much broader than just an individual’s journey, something that I think gets missed in our typical interpretations of this Psalm as a purely internal journey. Here the Psalmist is not citing a life, the Psalm is in fact telling the story of a people, of Israel itself. One is even able to imagine an audience for the words, inviting them in to a familiar liturgy of rememberance of that story’s pivotal event.
What happens when this larger story is teased to the surface is we are able to see the patterns that these scriptures are seeking to evoke. A pattern that begins with enslavement, moves through liberation, thus entering into the wilderness on the way to the new creation reality. The Bible Project article makes the point that for the ancients steeped in the lanaguage of the Torah, this pattern is established in the first five books (the Pentateuch) and then becomes the framework for the rest of the scriptures, including the telling of the Gospel story. From this angle, the particular nature of this story takes on a cosmic interest, casting itself out into the expectation for the whole of creation. In finally arriving at the fresh conviction, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me (and) dwell in the house of the LORD,” becomes a conviction rooted in the hope of the new creation, the liberation and renewal of the whole of the cosmos. These two things cannot be torn apart. This also helps to reframe the shift in language to this common practice of a figure taking on the image of Israel, something that becomes integral to understanding the story of Jesus as well. This reaches all the way back ot Moses as a representative figure.
I mentioned how, for me, this also gives verse 5 a whole new meaning as well.
“You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head iwth oil; my cup overlow
This table now becomes an image not simply for the restoration of Israel from exile, but for the restoration of the whole of creaiton. In the chaos and the darkness we find Gods presence making itself known to the enslaved, but one aspect of this expectation that is baked into the story of Israel that gets forgotten is the cosmic renewal. This table is an invitation, but it is an invitation placed between the Powers and the oppressed. A table set to feed the desolate and the hungry, but also to tell a better story. A story that echos with the opening words of Psalm 24, declaring that “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it; for he has founded it on the seas, and established it on the rivers.” Here, in the midst of the choas waters, set in the darkest valley, in the hardened wildnerness of circumstance and struggle, that the initial confession of 23:1-3 finds its true embodiment.
The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want… even as I walk through the valley and wait for the promised renewal. Behold, a table has been set along the way, inviting the weary and the opppressed and bearing witness to the Powers to the simple truth that “God is with us.” God has taken residence among us. God is present, making, leading, restoring.
The Stories of my Life 