(lyric, of David)

* * *

It is more wish than insight to call the whole of Psalms “great poetry.” I mean no disrespect. For their people and purposes, psalms are after more than power and precision or beauty and delight, more than the cleansing of perception. Reading the psalms may be an aesthetic and epistemological experience, but it is also an ethical act of participation and pragmatics—what one does with what one reads and recites. The Twenty-Third Psalm is all of these. Not just the most widely read and repeated of psalms, it may be the most tightly strung and it is certainly the most resonant. To use R.P. Blackmur’s terms, Psalm 23 is both buoyant and moored. Stretched on its canvas around a single conceit, it paints a kind of pastoral in which what matters is not the hick shepherd’s distance from urbanity, but the sheep’s proximity to both terror and care. There is politics in the country as well.

It’s a love poem between species, a love poem despite the unequal relationship. It begins in a bower, follows a walk, imagines a meal, and all throughout it overflows: “he lays me,” “he refreshes me,” “he revives| guides me” (2-3); “your crook and staff | still me,” “you set me a table” (4-5). Their love differs, the speaker’s from the beloved’s. The shepherd is attendant, all provision, full of “sweetness and care” (6). The sheep is dependent, made less of need than desire, led by the icons of masculinity and power, “your crook and staff.” Together, in the sheep’s imagination, they end by entering the shepherd’s house.

In the center of the psalm, while the sheep stays in the first-person, the Lord moves from “he” to “you.” This shift of person is common in Hebrew poems, and notes increasing intimacy (e.g., “Let him kiss me… for your kisses are sweeter than wine,” Songs 1:1). It’s the very center of this poem, the seventh of thirteen lines: “I fear no ill | when you are with me” (4b). In the original, there is such music and depth. Lo i’ra r`a means “I do not fear bad,” but its last two of four syllables sound like an echo—we are in a valley, after all—even as they actually do echo the syllables that start the psalm: YHWH ro`i, the Lord my shepherd. The word shepherd (ro`eh), the word friend (rei`ah), the word bad (r`a), the word fear (yir’ah), which also means reverence—all play off one another. “When you are with me” is also “for you are with me,” which sounds confident, and “if you are with me,” which registers doubt. Because there’s no copula in Hebrew, the phrase is just ki + ettah + immadi. When/For/If/Oh-how. You. With me.

The psalm’s popularity must have something to do with the simplicity of its claim, its abundant evidence of abundance, and with how lightly it wears its piety. Two of the Bible’s most important theological themes are here in tsedeq and chesed, justice (in the adjective form) and care. They are not hidden, either: “on tracks just right” and “Oh sweetness and care” show up near the culmination of each of the poem’s halves (3b, 6a). Yet both are completely integrated into the psalm’s motion, the sheep walking justly, evenly, in alignment, both caring and cared for, followed by the shepherd, who leads from behind, showing care. It’s how they walk the paths together, stopping together to eat and to drink, that joins justice and care with feeling full.

*

23:1 The Lord my shepherd | I’m not deprived  The line is four words in eight syllables—nine if you substitute “Adonai” for “the Lord.” It’s usually translated as two independent clauses: “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.” So rhythmic and potent, this translation bears the weight of time. But the line can also be parsed as an absolute phrase, noun + participle, followed by an independent clause, or even as direct address. That is, “The Lord being my shepherd, I have no needs.” Or, “Oh, Lord my shepherd, I don’t lack anything.”

23:2 by hushed waters | refreshes me  Very literally, and roughly, “over the waters of stillness he watering-holes me.” The verb does very specific detail work by referring to the herder’s care of guiding to watering places. The adjective, for its part, does double-duty, conveying both quiet contentment and refreshment. Here, a dynamic approach is better than a formal one.

23:3 my throat he restores  Doubtless some air-conditioned readers, expecting “soul,” feel let down by “throat.” Not sure how a soul can be restored without a drink of water. The nefesh is not some separable essence in the book of Psalms.

23:3 on tracks just right | it’s who he is  Possibly the freest translation in this entire book of Psalms. Literally, the second (roughly) half of Psalm 23:3 has “in the encircling tracks of justice on account of his name,” a hideous mouthful. “The paths of righteousness” is relatively literal, but ironically it’s too allegorical. Hebrew idiom puts nouns in a genitive relationship (“in construct”) often to make the second, possessing noun modify the first: “the righteous paths.” “Tracks just right” emphasizes first the literal tracks and then their rightness, as does the original. As for the last two words, lema`an shemo, “for the sake of his name,” they are idiomatic for God’s being true to form, upholding a reputation and identity. “It’s who he is”: an idiom for an idiom.  

23:4 the death-shade vale  The word tsalmavet is also a portmanteau: “shade” plus “death.” It’s so much more taut in Hebrew than the beautiful, too-beautiful “valley of the shadow of death.”

23:6 Oh sweetness and care | chase me  Instead of, say, being stalked by lions. The line is half-declaration, half-hope.