Psalm 23 in the King James Version

This is the whole psalm in the standard King James text that modern Bibles reprint, with the spelling updated from the 1611 printing and the verses numbered as English Bibles number them. English printings set the heading, A Psalm of David, above verse 1. The wording is public domain.

1 The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.

2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

3 He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

4 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.

5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

6 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.

Six verses, and none of them asks God for anything. Hold on to that detail. It decides what kind of psalm this is, and it changes how the familiar lines read.

In Hebrew the heading is two words, mizmor le-David, and they open verse 1 itself, ahead of the line about the shepherd. That is why Psalm 23 carries the same verse numbers in Hebrew and English. Psalm 51 shows the other pattern: its heading fills two Hebrew verses, so its first English verse is Hebrew verse 3. What the prefix le- can mean, by David or for David or from a Davidic collection, is covered on the Psalm 23:4 page on this site.

Readers who accept David as the author still disagree about when he wrote it. Keil and Delitzsch read the psalm against the persecution under Absalom, with enemies chasing the king as he fled. Alexander MacLaren admitted the period is unknown but thought the psalm's quiet confidence sounded like the work of David's later years. The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges reports the suggestion that verse 5 recalls the food Barzillai and others brought to David's hungry people in the wilderness, in 2 Samuel 17:27-29.

The same Cambridge commentary concedes that the phrase house of the LORD in verse 6 seems to point to the temple, which was built after David's death, though it notes the phrase is used of earlier sanctuaries too. Wikipedia's article on the psalm, citing a 1946 study by Julian Morgenstern, reports that some scholars reject David as author and commonly date the psalm after the exile. The text itself names no event. Every date offered for it, including the shepherd boy on a hillside, is a reconstruction.

What the Bible does record is that David kept sheep. In 1 Samuel 17:34 he tells Saul, "Thy servant kept his father's sheep, and there came a lion, and a bear, and took a lamb out of the flock." That is where the shepherd picture of David comes from. The psalm never mentions it.

Hermann Gunkel, who sorted the psalms by literary type in the early twentieth century, set aside a small group as psalms of trust. Tyler F. Williams's summary of Gunkel's scheme lists them as Psalms 4, 11, 16, 23, 27:1-6, 62, and 131. In these poems, Williams writes, the expression of confidence often pushes out the complaint and the plea that a lament would normally contain, and God is often spoken of in the third person.

Psalm 23 fits that description closely. Verses 1 to 3 talk about the LORD as he, and nowhere does the speaker ask to be rescued. Two pieces of a lament are still in the room, though: a dark valley in verse 4 and enemies in verse 5. The psalm admits both and keeps talking about the shepherd.

Knowing the form helps with a misreading of verse 1. A psalm of trust states where the speaker puts his confidence. I shall not want belongs to that confession, spoken in the first person, and the psalm attaches no terms or conditions to it.

Two of the older English commentaries divide the psalm by its two pictures. The Cambridge Bible has the LORD as shepherd who tends and guides in verses 1 to 4, then as a generous host in verses 5 and 6. MacLaren divides it the same way: first God as shepherd with us as the sheep, then God as host with us as the guests at his table and the people living in his house.

Not every reader changes pictures at verse 5. Wikipedia's article on Psalm 23 reports that J. Douglas MacMillan, in his 1988 book The Lord Our Shepherd, kept the shepherd running through the whole psalm. He read the table as the small raised tables once used to feed sheep and the oil as a dressing poured on wounds to keep flies off. The Cambridge reading rests on verse 5's vocabulary, where an overflowing cup belongs more easily to a banquet than to a sheepfold.

Shepherd was also a royal title. In 2 Samuel 5:2 the tribes remind David that the LORD told him, "Thou shalt feed my people Israel," and the verb there is the shepherd's verb. Ezekiel 34 indicts Israel's rulers as shepherds who "feed themselves" while the flock goes hungry. When Psalm 23 says my shepherd, it takes a title used of Israel's kings, and of God as shepherd of the whole nation, and speaks it in the first person.

The Hebrew of verse 1 ends lo echsar, from the verb chaser, to lack or be without. The Cambridge Bible points to Deuteronomy 2:7, which tells Israel that "these forty years the LORD thy God hath been with thee; thou hast lacked nothing." Those forty years were spent in a desert eating manna. Lacking nothing there meant arriving fed.

Verse 2 continues in the same practical register. The American Standard Version of 1901 footnotes still waters with "Hebrew waters of rest." The Cambridge commentary reads the phrase as streams where the flock can find rest and refreshment, and it sets aside the idea of a gently flowing stream. The verb leadeth, it notes, suggests gentle guidance, the word Isaiah 40:11 uses for a shepherd who leads the ewes carrying young.

He restoreth my soul uses a form of the verb shuv, to turn back or return. Keil and Delitzsch explain it as bringing back a soul that has as it were flown away, so that the person comes to himself again. The Cambridge commentary paraphrases the clause as renews and sustains my life.

The paths of righteousness are disputed. Keil and Delitzsch gloss them as straight paths that lead to the right goal. The Cambridge Bible insists that usage is decisive for righteousness and rejects straight paths, because the Hebrew word nowhere keeps its physical sense of straightness. The King James, the American Standard, and the World English all print paths of righteousness.

Verse 4 is the line most people can recite, and it has its own page on this site. The Psalm 23:4 page covers the disputed Hebrew behind shadow of death, the rod and the staff, and why the psalm switches from he to thou at that point. The rest of this section stays with verse 5, the second most quoted part of the psalm.

"Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies." The enemies watch. They are neither removed nor punished in the verse. The Cambridge commentary reads the meal as a public mark of favour, given where adversaries can see it.

"Thou anointest my head with oil." The verb is dashen, whose root meaning is to be fat, and by extension to anoint or to satisfy. The Cambridge Bible notes that this is the oil and perfume of a banquet, offered to a guest. Royal anointing uses a different verb entirely. Read as hospitality, the line describes a host who treats the speaker as an honoured guest.

"My cup runneth over" finishes the picture of a host who keeps pouring. Cyril of Jerusalem, teaching the newly baptized in the fourth century, read the table as the Eucharist and the oil as the anointing on the forehead that followed baptism. That is a later Christian reading laid over a Hebrew poem about a meal.

The King James says goodness and mercy shall follow me. The Hebrew verb is radaph, which means to pursue or chase, and is usually used of an enemy. The Cambridge commentary sets the verse beside Psalm 35:6, where the same verb asks the angel of the LORD to pursue the wicked. The King James renders it persecute there. Keil and Delitzsch draw the picture out: enemies have been pursuing the speaker, and now goodness and love will pursue him instead.

The first word of the verse is also open. The 1901 American Standard footnotes Surely with "Or, Only." On that reading the line says that nothing but goodness and mercy will be on the speaker's heels. Keil and Delitzsch take the word that way too.

Then the final verb. As the Hebrew is pointed, ve-shavti, Ellicott's Commentary says the text must be translated I will return, and abide, in the house of the LORD. Keil and Delitzsch agree that the form comes from return and argue the sense is to come back and stay. The Cambridge Bible compares Psalm 27:4, "that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life," and concludes the word should be read as dwell. The King James, the American Standard, and the World English all print dwell.

The American Standard also footnotes for ever in this verse as "Hebrew for length of days," and the Cambridge Bible gives the same literal sense. Put those pieces together and the closing line is less settled than the familiar English suggests. The direction is clear, toward God's house and staying there. The precise verb is argued.

Verse 1. The King James has "I shall not want." The World English Bible has "I shall lack nothing." In 1611 want meant to lack, the sense it inherited from Middle English and Old Norse. To a modern ear want sounds like desire, and the line can be misheard as a promise that wishes will stop or be granted. The World English wording is closer to the Hebrew for a reader today.

Verse 5. The King James has "thou anointest my head with oil," in the present tense. The American Standard has "Thou hast anointed my head with oil," and the Cambridge commentary gives the same past tense from the 1885 Revised Version. The Hebrew verb is perfect in form. The difference is small, but it moves the anointing from something happening during the meal to something already done when the guest sits down.

Verse 6. The King James has "goodness and mercy." The World English has "goodness and loving kindness," and the American Standard has "lovingkindness." The Hebrew word is chesed. Strong's lists lovingkindness and mercy among its King James renderings, and the Bible Hub lexicon entry describes it as combining steadfast loyalty, mercy, kindness, and faithfulness. Mercy in modern English often means sparing someone punishment. Chesed is wider, the loyalty of someone bound to you by covenant.

For modern translations, read them at the source. Bible Gateway lets you set several versions side by side with their footnotes. This page quotes only the public domain King James, American Standard, and World English Bibles.

Verse 5 sets the table while the enemies are still present, and verse 4 gives the valley no length. Wealth is absent from the psalm too. Lacking nothing, in Deuteronomy's sense, meant getting through the desert fed.

The speaker is one person. The Cambridge commentary notes that the Aramaic Targum read the psalm as God's care for the nation of Israel, and calls that a fair secondary use while holding that the tone is strongly personal. Every pronoun for the speaker in the psalm is singular.

And the psalm's shepherd does not die. Christians read Psalm 23 alongside John 10:11, where Jesus says "I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep." That line adds something Psalm 23 does not contain. Hebrews 13:20 calls Jesus "that great shepherd of the sheep," and 1 Peter 2:25 speaks of readers who "are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls." These New Testament passages build on the shepherd image, and each is best read in its own context.

In practice people reach for Psalm 23 at a few predictable moments. A child memorizes it as a first long passage of scripture. A family asks for something to be read at a hospital bed and nobody can think of anything else. A pastor or a funeral director reads it at a graveside. Someone wakes at four in the morning and says the first verse over and over because it is the only one they can hold.

In English-speaking churches the funeral association is younger than it looks. Wikipedia's article on the psalm notes that the Book of Common Prayer burial service uses only Psalms 39 and 90, and that the Episcopal Church in the United States did not use Psalm 23 at funerals until its 1928 prayer book.

If you use it, read all six verses before lifting one out. The shepherd lines make more sense next to the table, and the comfort of verse 4 reads differently when verse 5 still has enemies in it.

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