Psalm 23 Commentary

We could perhaps call Psalm 23 a kind of utility player among the songs in the Hebrew Psalter.  Here we are on the fourth Sunday of Lent in the Year A Lectionary but by the time we get to late April in 2026 and hit the Fourth Sunday of Easter, Psalm 23 will put in yet another Lectionary appearance.  Indeed, it is the psalm appointed for the Fourth Sunday in Easter in all three of the Lectionary years.  So apparently for this year, Psalm 23 can be used both as a Lenten reflection and as an Easter reflection.

We can see why and how it can fit both a penitential season of preparation to see Christ on the cross and a jubilant season of Easter victory on the other side of that cross.  In the span of its relatively short six verses, we cover a lot of ground.  The psalm opens and closes with lyric sentiments about being tended by a good shepherd who brings us to sparkling waters and lush green meadows.  Then in the end we get the happy proclamation that goodness and mercy will follow us all the days of our lives even as we are promised to dwell in the house of our Lord forever.  All of that will fit Eastertide well in six weeks.

Sandwiched in between that sunny opening and closing, however, are some darker notes.  First the scenery shifts from the blue waters of a lovely pond nestled in a green grass meadow to a dark and shadowy valley.  If the sunny opening imagery filled us with warmth, this valley gives off a definite spiritual chill.  Some more recent translations translate verse 4 as the psalmist passing through the “darkest valley” but most of us remember the translation as “the valley of the shadow of death.”  In Hebrew this is just a single word: tsalmavet.  This word crops up 18 times in the Old Testament with just over half occurring in the Book of Job.  It is more often rendered as “darkness, deep darkness, gloom” than “shadow of death” as many translations have had it.

The idea that this deep and gloomy darkness is associated with death may arise from how it gets used in especially Job as at times it looks like this gloomy darkness of which Job often speaks is what we enter on the other side of the grave.  In any event, such darkness is the opposite of living in the light of life or in the presence of God.  Such darkness is to be dreaded, feared.  Again, this paints a picture that is the polar opposite of the first couple of verses.

Then the imagery shifts yet again.  Now we are at a lavish banquet table and if that part does not seem particularly dark, the fact that this needs to get set in the presence of one’s enemies does introduce another troubling element to Psalm 23.  As I have noted in past sermon commentaries on this famous psalm, when my Kindergarten classmates and I memorized this at Seymour Christian School under the tutelage of Mrs. Luyk long about 1970 or so, I likely did not know what an enemy was and I was surely not conscious of having any enemies myself.  Of course, as one grows up, that perspective changes.  We all know people who don’t like us, who would not mind if something unfortunate happened to us.  Or we know there are people in this world who regard the entire nation of which we are a part as enemies and once in a while such people commit acts of terror to kill people like us.

In any event, a pleasant topic this is not.  But Psalm 23 promises us that God prepares a banquet in our honor within sight of such enemies.  The sense here seems to be that this is a vindication for us and a tacit rebuke for them.  Our loving God who was depicted as a shepherd throughout most of this song will have the last word on our lives as the Host at some grand and lavish feast and celebration.  God has the last word and not our enemies.

Perhaps this is the one constant in Psalm 23 despite a good three changes of imagery and scenery: the presence of our loving God.  God is the shepherd who brings us to pretty and life-giving places.  God remains the shepherd whose rod and staff prod us even when it’s difficult to see in the dark and gloomy valleys of life but this reminds us we are not alone: God still quite literally has our backs.  God is the one who sets up that feast in our honor in the presence of those who wish us harm.  And in the end if goodness and mercy surely follow us, we know that this is God’s goodness and God’s mercy as yet another reminder that God stays with us throughout all our days and no matter what season or what location we happen to find ourselves in at any given moment.

Our Lenten journey these weeks definitely takes us into those dark and gloomy shadows of the suffering and death awaiting Jesus.  Starting on Ash Wednesday we reflect on our own mortality and thus our need for someone to find a way to bring us life everlasting.  In penitence we reflect on and confess the sin that brought death into this world and how Jesus suffered and died to bring us forgiveness as well as everlasting life.  So for this Fourth Sunday in Lent, we let Psalm 23 guide us along this difficult and dark path all the while knowing that those brighter parts of this psalm will come back to us in Eastertide as a celebration of all that the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus brought to us.

[Note: For the Year A Season of Lent and leading up to Easter, CEP has, in addition to these weekly sermon commentaries, a special Lent and Easter Resource Page with links to whole sermons, commentary on Lenten texts, and more.]

Illustration Idea

If you have a shepherd, it means you need a shepherd.  And if you need a shepherd, it is because you cannot make it on your own.  Like real sheep, our need for a shepherd is because we tend to get lost when left to our own devices.  Sheep have been known to nibble themselves lost—they become so focused on the grass in front of them that they just keep walking along and eating until suddenly they look up and don’t know where they are.  Somebody needs to keep an eye on us, rein us in a bit, re-direct us when we’re wandering off the path.  “All we like sheep have gone astray.”

Probably this is why not a few people in this world would just as soon not have a shepherd in their lives thank you very much.  We too much prize individual achievement, pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps.  In some parts of the church world we hear much about a kind of muscular Christianity.  Men in particular want to take their virulent masculinity and use it as a way to exert control and swagger in even their spiritual lives and within their church communities and families.  It goes without saying that for any who fall under the sway of this kind of thinking, being told you need a shepherd because you’re basically a sheep prone to getting lost does not go over real big.  Humility, sacrifice, service are getting eclipsed by power and bravado.

But in such an environment Psalm 23—and our Savior who identified himself as our Good Shepherd—calls us back to the truth of who we are and what we need spiritually from our Lord and our God.