Psalm 23 (Criticism)

Criticism

Jhan Hochman

Jhan Hochman is a writer and instructor at Portland Community College in Portland, Oregon. In the following essay, Hochman examines the metaphorical language used in Psalm 23.

The word psalm is derived from a Greek word meaning a twitching, or to twitch or strum, especially the strings of a harp, lyre, or kithara. One of the Greek forms of the word also refers to a song sung to the accompaniment of the lyre, an early form of the guitar. In the context of the Old Testament psalms, of which Psalm 23 is a part, a psalm is not just any song sung to the accompaniment of a stringed instrument. It is a religious song — or better, a hymn. Psalms are most often spoken or chanted because their melodies have been lost to us.

The Old Testament Psalter, that is, the Book of Psalms, is comprised of 150 psalms divided into five parts in imitation of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy). The psalms have been classified into the following kinds: hymns (acts of praise); laments (solicitations by individuals for deliverance from sickness or false accusations, or solicitations by a nation for help in times of crisis); songs of trust (expressions of confidence in God’s readiness to help); thanksgivings (gratitude for deliverance); sacred histories (recountings of God’s dealings with the nation); royal psalms (accompaniments for coronations and royal weddings); wisdom psalms (meditations on life and God); and liturgies (compositions for specific occasions). Psalm 23 is considered a song of trust as are Psalms 11, 16, 27, 62, 131. Psalm 23 is one of the best known of all the psalms, chanted in churches and synagogues throughout America, and even occasionally making an appearance in popular culture. For example, it was prominently featured in Quentin Tarantino’s film Pulp Fiction.

More than half of the psalms were thought to be composed by David, the second King of Israel who reigned from 1010 to his death in 970 B.C. The singer is none other than David, the boy who killed the giant Goliath with a slingshot. Before David became king he was a young shepherd, visited by Samuel and told that he had been chosen by God to be the next king of Israel. The interested student can find out more about David from Samuel 1 (16:1) and Samuel 2.

Psalm 23, composed by David, is meant to soothe the tortured soul and promote trust in God. The setting is peaceful pastureland, an area with which David, as a shepherd, was once familiar. David notices that like himself, God, too, is a “shepherd,” and that David, the shepherd, is himself led by God like a sheep or lamb.

In other psalms, we find a variety of metaphors for God. Psalm 62 is perhaps the most fertile. First, God is a rock — rocks appear to last forever without changing, are often immovable, and have a homogeneous oneness about them that other natural entities lack. It is no surprise then that the next metaphor in Psalm 62 is God, the fortress; as a fortress protects from one’s enemies, so, hopefully, will God. Notice that in Psalm 23, a fortress would have been more comparable to God’s house (the temple) or the shepherd’s pasture than to God Himself. In other words, the metaphorical leap is larger, and arguably more provocative in Psalm 62 than in Psalm 23.

The next metaphor in Psalm 62 is God as a refuge, a place of safety from one’s enemies. In other psalms, God is light (27), a cup (16), and a mother (131). Perhaps it is not difficult then to understand how God is so conducive to a broad panorama of metaphors since a common comment about God — itself a metaphor — is “God is all.”

In another metaphor, God’s “lambs” are people. This is the predominant metaphor of the psalm, or more precisely, of the first two stanzas; people are lambs, God is the shepherd. Because a metaphor is a comparison between unlike things, or a yoking together of what is different, metaphors have both strengths and weaknesses. Psalm 23 is no exception.

Let us begin with the strengths of the metaphor. As a shepherd protects his flock from wolves or other predators, God is said to protect people — some or all depending upon your religious belief — from harm. In terms of sheep, “green pastures” and “still waters” (an alternative translation from the Hebrew is “waters of rest”) are settings of peace and plenty, places where sheep can drink, eat, and lie down without fear, provided the shepherd is there to guard them. And even when the shepherd leads his flocks to or from the pastures through dangerous territories (“the valley of the shadow of death,” alternatively translated as “the valley of deep darkness”), he watches over them, rod ready at hand to scare off or strike at predators.

But among these analogies, David — or far more likely, the translator — moves beyond the metaphor by personifying sheep instead of “sheepifying” people. For instance, it is said that God will restore the soul. Sheep seldom are thought to have souls. The Hebrew word, however, could have more accurately been translated as “lives” which would have still maintained the analogy in David’s metaphor. In a second example, there are the “paths of righteousness.” Sheep are seldom thought to be concerned about issues of morality, religious right and wrong. Again, however, the Hebrew is more accurately translated as “right paths,” which is in keeping with David’s noticing that both sheep and people walk on paths through pastures, valleys, or forests.

The psalm’s central weakness, more attributable to David than the translator, is that the psalm can be read in a different way. Shepherds guard sheep only from other predators. When the sheep have been readied or the shepherd is ready, sheep are shorn for their wool and later killed for food. In this way shepherds are more like prison guards in charge of a prisoner readied for execution. The guards look out for the prisoner; they feed him, talk to him, make sure he does not get killed by other prisoners. If the metaphor is read in this way, a way David surely did not mean, the psalm turns sinister and contradictory.

The metaphor of the lamb as a victim of the Shepherd (God) is pertinent when Christ is called the “Lamb of God”; according to God’s plan, he is slaughtered like a scapegoat for the sake of all people. And as lambs are eaten by people, so is Christ also “eaten” in Mass as the host, or wafer, for the purpose of sustaining those who partake.

David as a killer of lambs becomes a more feasible perception when we learn from Samuel 1 that David left his sheep shortly before killing Goliath, telling King Saul that he was able to fight the far more experienced and larger warrior because he previously killed lions and bears who had threatened his sheep. Not only did David fell Goliath with a stone, but David stabbed him with a sword and then cut his head off. Later, he killed 200 Philistines and, in a rather curious method of scalping, brought home the Philistinian foreskins to King Saul, which enabled David to marry King Saul’s daughter. Perhaps in this light, the role of the shepherd as killer of sheep and their predators is not, after all, so distant from that of the warrior, especially since the shepherd often castrates his sheep like David mutilated the genitals of his slain foes.

In the third stanza of Psalm 23, the metaphor of sheep and shepherd is abandoned. David now imagines himself a “kind of guest in “the house of the Lord” — that is, the Jewish synagogue or temple, sitting at a table with God as the generous host. God consecrates, or makes sacred, his follower with a cleansing oil and fills David’s cup until it overflows, the overflowing cup as a symbol of life’s bounties. As long as people worship in the temple, David seems to say, they will have good lives.

The third stanza’s central metaphor, temple as pasture, implies that for David the “house of the Lord” is protected and bountiful due to God’s generous hospitality, much like pastures are protected and bountiful for sheep because of shepherds. Here, we might notice that as pasturing sheep are threatened by “evil” in “the valley of the shadow of death,” the worshipper in the synagogue is threatened by “enemies” ready to slander or assault the righteous dining “in the house of the Lord.” Some readers have confused the “house of the Lord” with heaven, primarily because of the last words in the line “I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.” But the translation, “for ever” can be replaced by the alternative, “as long as I live.” Such a translation lends clarity to the locale of the temple. The temple protects the person who worships there and follows the path created by God.

In summary, then, David’s metaphorical language expresses these concepts: pasture as temple of Israel, sheep are like worshippers, shepherd equals God. Only by trusting in the Lord within the temple, David implies, are worshippers able to escape one’s enemies.

Source: Jhan Hochman, in an essay for Poetry for Students, Gale, 1998.

What Do I Read Next?

• The Book of Genesis in the King James Bible is one of the most celebrated renditions of the story of creation.
• William Tynsdale was the first great English Bible translator and much of his work found its way into the King James Version. David Danielle’s William Tyndale: A Biography relates the story of Tyndale’s work and his eventual martyrdom.
• The poet John Donne was alive at the time the King James Bible was published. Later in his life Donne gave up poetry and turned to religion. His Sermons combine beautiful language and deep religious insight.
• John Bunyan’s allegory, The Pilgrim’s Progress, was written nearly seventy years after the King James Bible. A best-seller in its day, it describes the Puritan’s view of a Christian’s pilgrimage toward salvation.
• The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton is a famous early work of human psychology published in 1621.
• In contrast to the Bible, John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) attempts to explain human knowledge from a strict empiricist or scientific point of view.