The Twenty-Third Psalm

AM Psalm 75, 76 • PM Psalm 23, 27
Wisdom 19:1-8,18-22 • Rom. 15:1-13 • Luke 9:1-17

What is there to say about the twenty-third psalm? Along with what we call The Lord’s Prayer, the most familiar passage in the Bible to most Christians is Psalm 23, whose six verses many of us memorized in childhood. If we did, we’re in good company, because Jesus, knowing the Hebrew scriptures well from his own childhood, was referring to that passage when he called himself “the Good Shepherd” in chapter ten of John’s gospel.

The version of Psalm 23 we read in church is not the one most of us grew up with. That was the King James translation (1611), and none of the many translations and paraphrased versions before or through the four hundred years since has matched the beauty, and often the simplicity, of that of the poets, priests, scholars, and translators who gave us the King James version.

Take for example in verse 2, where the Rheims-Douay (1610) has “He hath set me in a place of pasture” and Charles Thomson’s Septuagint Bible of 1808 writes “In a verdant pasture He hath fixed my abode.” Later versions such as The New American Bible’s (1960) “In verdant pastures he gives me repose,” or The Amplified Bible of 1965 that disrupts the flow by offering a bracketed choice: “He makes me lie down in [fresh, tender] green pastures” do nothing to improve on the King James version. What could be more simply comforting than “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures?” (I have to admit that if Moffatt had written “green meadows” rather than “meadows green,” his 1926 version would have run a close second, but he didn’t.)

There’s a tenderness in the King James “thee’s” and “thou’s” missing in Modern English’s “you.” At the time of the writing of the KJV, “thou” was the more intimate, less formal form of address, what you called your child or your parent, just the opposite of the formal sound it has for us today. But the older pronouns were already disappearing from the language for the simpler “you” at the same time the “eth” and “est” endings were going out of style, so when the King James writers chose to keep the older forms, they were stressing the intimacy of the special relationship between God, our loving parent, and us, God’s children.

Today, such words as “leadeth” and “restoreth” slow us down to contemplate and cherish that intimacy. As life speeds up after these past fourteen months, may Psalm 23 remind us that the Good Shepherd is still here to lead us through both the green pastures and the dark valleys, until we meet at God’s table, in this life and hereafter.

Written by Kay DuVal

Kay is grateful for the “overrunning” cup of blessings she has experienced throughout the good and bad days since March 11, 2020.

Psalm 23

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.