A Poem: Psalm 23

This lesson brings the module together. You have four notebook pages from the last four weeks: Lines, Images, Structure and Psalm. Here they are applied, in order, to one poem, so that you can see what a full reading looks like before you do one yourself. Psalm 23 is chosen because nearly every student knows it in English, and so can feel exactly what the Hebrew adds. The Pastoral Care track's lesson Walking With the Dying uses this psalm at the bedside, and it is the place to go for how to use it with the dying. This lesson is about reading it.

The Hebrew quoted is from the Westminster Leningrad Codex (WLC). The heading is two words, מִזְמוֹר לְדָוִד mizmor ledavid, A Psalm of David, and in the Hebrew they are part of verse 1, so for once the Hebrew and English verse numbers agree. Lesson 4 explained the heading words; the Old Testament Survey lesson on the Psalms discusses what ledavid can mean.

The psalm is short: fifty-five Hebrew words after the heading, if you count words joined by a maqqef separately. Gunkel and those who followed him classed it as a psalm of trust or confidence, a small group of psalms in which the speaker neither pleads nor praises in the usual pattern but declares his confidence in God in the face of danger. Psalms 11, 16, 62 and 131 belong to the same group on many lists. Knowing that the psalm is a confession of trust, not a description of a trouble-free life, is the first protection against reading it sentimentally. The danger in it is real: a dark valley, and enemies at the table.

Verse 1. יְהוָה רֹעִי YHWH ro'i, the LORD is my shepherd. Ro'i is a qal participle, masculine singular, of the root רעה (r-'-h), to pasture or tend, with the suffix my: the one who shepherds me. There is no verb is; Hebrew sets subject and description side by side. לֹא אֶחְסָר lo echsar, I shall not lack, a qal imperfect, first person singular, of חסר (ch-s-r), to lack or be in want. The verb has no object. The poem does not say what the speaker will not lack, and the next lines fill in the answer. The KJV and the BSB both say I shall not want, using want in its older sense of lack.

Now hear the first line as an Israelite heard it. Shepherd was a word for a king. When the tribes came to David at Hebron, they reminded him that the LORD had said, 'You will shepherd My people Israel' (2 Samuel 5:2). Jeremiah 23 and Ezekiel 34 condemn the kings and leaders of Israel as shepherds who fed themselves instead of the flock, and Ezekiel 34 ends with God's promise to do the work himself: אֲנִי אֶרְעֶה צֹאנִי וַאֲנִי אַרְבִּיצֵם ani er'eh tsoni va'ani arbitsem, I Myself will shepherd My flock, and I will make them lie down (Ezekiel 34:15). Those are the verbs of Psalm 23:1-2. The psalm is not only a rural picture of care. It is a claim about who rules.

Verse 2. בִּנְאוֹת דֶּשֶׁא יַרְבִּיצֵנִי bin'ot deshe yarbitseni, in pastures of fresh grass He makes me lie down, a hiphil imperfect of רבץ (r-b-ts), to lie down, with the suffix me: the hiphil makes it causative, He causes me to lie down. עַל־מֵי מְנֻחוֹת יְנַהֲלֵנִי al-mei menuchot yenahaleni, beside waters of rest He leads me, a piel imperfect of נהל (n-h-l), a verb used of leading a flock carefully to water. Menuchot is plural, rests or resting places; the BSB's quiet waters gives the sense well.

Verse 3. נַפְשִׁי יְשׁוֹבֵב nafshi yeshovev, my life He brings back, a polel imperfect of the common verb שׁוב (sh-u-v), to turn or return. The polel is a stem used for certain verbs whose middle letter is a vowel, and here it is causative: He makes my nephesh come back. Nephesh is not simply the soul as distinct from the body; it is the life, the self, the breath, and Module 7 of this track gives the word a lesson of its own. Readers differ over whether the line means He revives me, giving back strength, or He brings me back, turning a strayed sheep home, which some hear as repentance. The Hebrew carries both senses, and the BSB's He restores my soul keeps the line open.

Then יַנְחֵנִי בְמַעְגְּלֵי־צֶדֶק yancheni vema'gelei-tsedeq, He guides me in tracks of righteousness, a hiphil imperfect of נחה (n-ch-h), to lead or guide. Ma'gal is a track, the rut a cart wheel makes or a well-worn path. Tsedeq is righteousness, rightness. Here too there are two readings with real support. One hears a moral claim: God leads in ways of righteous living. The other hears a shepherd's claim: God leads along the right tracks, the paths that actually go where they should, and in a construct chain like this the second noun can describe the first, as in right paths. Many commentators hold that the line means both, and that for Israel the paths that are right and the paths of righteousness were not two different roads. לְמַעַן שְׁמוֹ lema'an shemo, for the sake of His name: the shepherd's reputation is at stake in where the sheep end up.

The anchor verse, word by word. גַּם כִּי־אֵלֵךְ gam ki-elekh, even when I walk, a qal imperfect, first person singular, of the root הלך (h-l-k). בְּגֵיא צַלְמָוֶת begei tsalmaveth, in a valley of tsalmaveth, with gei in the construct, valley of. לֹא־אִירָא רָע lo-ira ra, I will not fear harm, a qal imperfect of ירא (y-r-'), to fear; ra is evil or harm, both senses. כִּי־אַתָּה עִמָּדִי ki-attah immadi, for You are with me, a clause with no verb, the independent pronoun You and the preposition with, plus me. שִׁבְטְךָ וּמִשְׁעַנְתֶּךָ shivtekha umish'antekha, Your rod and Your staff: the shevet is a club or rod, the same word used for a ruler's sceptre and for a tribe, and the mish'enet is a staff to lean on, from a root meaning to lean. הֵמָּה יְנַחֲמֻנִי hemmah yenachamuni, they, they comfort me, a piel imperfect, third masculine plural, of נחם (n-ch-m), with the pronoun hemmah placed first for weight.

Watch the person change. In verses 2 and 3 the speaker talks about God: He makes me lie down, He leads me, He guides me. In verse 4, at the darkest point of the poem, he stops talking about God and starts talking to him: You are with me, Your rod and Your staff. The change holds through verse 5 and the poem returns to the third person only with the name of the LORD in its last line. Notice where the turn happens: not in the green pastures, but in the valley. If you counted the words in the inquiry, you also found that on one way of counting, every word separately and leaving the heading out, ki attah immadi stands exactly at the centre of the poem, with twenty-six words before and twenty-six after. Present that with care. It is true on that count and not on another, and lesson 3 has warned you about centres. But the change of person does not depend on any count, and it is in every translation.

Now the word that has divided readers for more than a century, צַלְמָוֶת tsalmaveth (H6757). It occurs eighteen times in the Hebrew Bible: ten in Job, four in the Psalms, and once each in Isaiah and Amos and twice in Jeremiah. Two answers are given to what it means, and both deserve to be heard as their defenders give them.

The first answer is shadow of death. The Masoretes pointed the word as a compound of צֵל tsel, shadow, and מָוֶת mavet, death, and this was not their invention: the Septuagint, translated centuries before them, already renders it shadow of death in this verse and generally elsewhere. The New Testament reads Isaiah 9:2 the same way: Matthew 4:16 speaks of 'the land of the shadow of death', and Zechariah's song in Luke 1:79 of those who live 'in darkness and in the shadow of death.' The contexts support it in key places. Job 38:17 sets it in parallel with death itself: 'Have the gates of death been revealed to you? Have you seen the gates of the shadow of death?' And Job 10:21-22 uses it of the land of no return. Defenders add that the Masoretic pointing preserves a reading tradition far older than the manuscripts, and that a reading so ancient and so widely attested should not be set aside on the strength of a reconstructed etymology. A form of this view was argued by D. Winton Thomas in a 1962 article in the Journal of Semitic Studies, which held that the compound is real but that death in it works as a superlative, as when Hebrew uses a divine name to mean very great: a shadow of death is the deepest shadow there is.

The second answer is deep darkness. On this view the word was originally a single noun, tsalmut, darkness, from a root צלם (ts-l-m), to be dark, which has relatives in Akkadian and Arabic, with the same abstract ending -ut found in words such as malkhut, kingdom. The vowels that make it look like shadow plus death would then reflect an early interpretation of the word, a kind of folk etymology, rather than its origin. Defenders point to the occurrences that have nothing to do with death: God turns tsalmaveth into morning in Amos 5:8; miners search for ore in it in Job 28:3; Job curses the day of his birth with it in Job 3:5; prisoners sit in it in Psalm 107:10. They add that true compound nouns are almost unknown in Hebrew outside personal names. Many modern English translations follow this view and render the phrase in Psalm 23:4 with a superlative of darkness, keeping shadow of death in a footnote.

What is settled is more than the debate suggests. On either reading, the valley is the darkest place a person can walk, and death is either named or never far away. On either reading the speaker walks through it, he does not stay there, and what answers his fear is not light but presence: You are with me. And the BSB, which keeps the familiar shadow of death here, renders the same word as darkness, deep shadow or deepest darkness in other verses, so its own translators judged that the word's force varies with context. You can preach Psalm 23:4 at a funeral or in a season of depression honestly on either reading, and you should be ready to tell someone who asks why their Bible and their neighbour's Bible differ.

Verse 5. תַּעֲרֹךְ לְפָנַי שֻׁלְחָן ta'arokh lefanai shulchan, You set out before me a table, a qal imperfect, second masculine singular, of ערך ('-r-k), to set in order or arrange. נֶגֶד צֹרְרָי neged tsorerai, in front of my adversaries, with tsorerai a qal participle of a root meaning to show hostility, with the suffix my. דִּשַּׁנְתָּ בַשֶּׁמֶן רֹאשִׁי dishanta vashemen roshi, You have anointed my head with oil, a piel perfect, second masculine singular, of דשן (d-sh-n), whose basic sense is to be fat; the piel means to make fat or rich, and here to anoint. It is not mashach, the verb used for anointing a king or priest, from which messiah comes. כּוֹסִי רְוָיָה kosi revayah, my cup is saturation, a noun meaning fullness to the point of overflowing. The BSB's my cup overflows is exact in sense.

Here readers divide over the picture, and both readings are held by careful interpreters. One reading holds that the image changes at verse 5 from shepherd to host. A table, oil for a guest's head and a full cup belong to a banquet, not a pasture, and in the ancient world a host who received a guest at his table undertook to protect him, even from pursuers. On this reading the enemies watching the meal cannot touch the guest, because he is under the host's protection. Psalm 78:19 lends support: the grumbling Israelites ask whether God can 'really prepare a table in the wilderness', and the Hebrew uses the same verb and noun, לַעֲרֹךְ שֻׁלְחָן la'arokh shulchan, as Psalm 23:5.

The other reading holds that the shepherd picture runs through the whole poem. Its defenders argue that the poem's unity is better served by one image than by two, that table can be a figure for provision in open country, which is exactly what Psalm 78:19 is about, and that shepherds did treat the heads of their sheep with oil. Some who hold this view take the enemies as the predators of the pasture. The reading has real weight, though its claims about shepherd practice depend on later observations of herding, and the poem's first audience may have heard both pictures at once. You do not have to choose to preach the verse. You do have to avoid presenting either as the only possible reading.

Verse 6. אַךְ טוֹב וָחֶסֶד יִרְדְּפוּנִי akh tov vachesed yirdefuni, surely goodness and loving devotion will pursue me. Yirdefuni is an imperfect, third masculine plural, of רדף (r-d-f), to pursue, with the suffix me; its vowels are those of the qal, though at least one free morphological database tags this form as a piel, which makes it a good place to practise checking one tool against another. Radaf is the verb for chasing an enemy. It is what Saul did to David at the rock in 1 Samuel 23:25, and what the psalmist fears his enemy will do in Psalm 7:5. In Psalm 23 the enemies are at the table, watching; what is chasing the speaker down is goodness and hesed. The BSB's follow is a fair rendering. Pursue is closer.

Then וְשַׁבְתִּי בְּבֵית־יְהוָה veshavti beveit-YHWH, and I will dwell, or return, in the house of the LORD. As the Masoretes pointed it, shavti looks like a form of shuv, to return, and some readers render the line I shall return to the house of the LORD. The Septuagint translates it to dwell, as if from yashav, to sit or dwell, and most translations, including the BSB, follow that sense. The case for dwell is strong. Psalm 27:4 asks שִׁבְתִּי בְּבֵית־יְהוָה כָּל־יְמֵי חַיַּי shivti beveit-YHWH kol-yemei chayyai, to dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, almost the same words as Psalm 23:6, and there the form is plainly from yashav. Many explain the form in 23:6 as a shortened spelling of that verb. Others hold that return is the better reading of the text as it stands. Both are honest readings of a form that is genuinely unusual.

The last words, לְאֹרֶךְ יָמִים le'orekh yamim, are literally for length of days, which the BSB renders forever. Elsewhere the phrase usually means a long life: Psalm 91:16 begins אֹרֶךְ יָמִים orekh yamim, 'With long life I will satisfy him.' So the Hebrew most naturally says for as long as I live, which matches all the days of my life in the line before. Christian readers have long heard eternal life in it, in the light of the New Testament's teaching that the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep (John 10:11) and gives them life without end. Both readings belong in an honest sermon: what the line said to its first singers, and what the church has heard in it since. Do not let the second hide the first.

Now put the four pages together. Lines: Psalm 23 is built mostly of short clauses, often one verb and one image each, and its parallelism is looser than Psalm 19:1: verse 2 pairs pastures with waters and lie down with lead, while verse 4 runs on through the valley to the comfort. Images: shepherd, pasture, water, path, valley, rod, staff, then table, oil, cup and house, with the possible change of picture at verse 5. Structure: the name YHWH stands at the start and the end, an inclusio of the kind lesson 3 taught, and the poem turns from He to You at verse 4. Psalm: a psalm of trust, with a heading of two words, no selah and no ki clause of praise, but two uses of ki in verse 4: gam ki-elekh, even when I walk, and ki-attah, for You are with me, which gives the reason the speaker does not fear.

Then the words that carry the weight. The poem moves from what the speaker lacks to what pursues him, from lo echsar to yirdefuni. It names God by his covenant name, places the speaker in his flock and then at his table, and never once asks for anything. Its one fear is answered by one clause without a verb, ki attah immadi. Its one hard word, tsalmaveth, is the darkest place the language could name. And its last line is about where he will be, in the house of the LORD, for as long as there are days.

Each feature you have found can be shown to a congregation in a sentence, and none of them requires the congregation to know Hebrew. That is the aim of this whole track. You are not bringing the Hebrew into the pulpit to impress anyone. You are bringing back from the study what the English could not carry: that shepherd was a word for a king, that the speaker turns to God in the valley and not in the pasture, that what follows him is a pursuer, and that the oldest question about the darkest word in the psalm has two honest answers and one shared conclusion.

Take your practice poem, or your capstone passage if it is a poem. You have four pages on it already: Lines, Images, Structure and Psalm. This week, make one more page headed Poem, and write a one-page study of the whole, using the order of this lesson.

First, write out the poem in lines in English, with the Hebrew of one key line underneath in your best letters, its transliteration and a word-for-word gloss. Second, go verse by verse and write, for each verse, one sentence on the most important thing the Hebrew shows that the English hides: a word pair, a change of person, a stem, a word that has two senses, or a word that the English renders the same as another. Use the interlinear and the parsing codes, and where two tools disagree, write down both.

Third, write down every disputed question you met, as this lesson did with tsalmaveth, shavti and le'orekh yamim. For each one, write the two readings in a sentence each, as their own defenders would put them, and then a sentence on what is settled whichever reading is right. Do not write which one you prefer until you have done that.

Last, write a three-line outline for a sermon or Bible study on your poem: one main point and two supports, each tied to a verse and to one thing you found in the Hebrew. Keep all five pages together. They are the poetry section of the passage study you will complete in the last lesson of this track, and the method on them will serve you for every psalm you preach.