Re-translating Psalm 23 highlights the song’s ancient poetics about precarity, sickness, and horror, as well as its calls for magical protection. Here I analyze the ancient political idiom of the shepherd.

Psalm 23 in One Possible Translation (other possibilities appear in discussions below)

A Psalm of David.

YHWH is my shepherd (rāʿâ). I will not faint/empty out.

On a beautiful pasture of sprouting grasses, he stretches me out. On resting water, he flows me. He repairs my body’s health.

He governs/leads me in ruts of justice for the sake of his name. Indeed, although I walk in a valley of shadow, I will not fear evil (raʿ), unless you are with me: your “whipping stick” and your elder functionaries abase me/force me to feel contrite.

You mobilize a leather mat in front of my face, drawing out my enemies. You fatten my head with oil; my pouch is saturated.

Nothing but goodness and mercy should pursue me all the days of my life, or else I will tarry in the temple of YHWH for longevity of days.

Forced Poetics of Cultural Idioms in Psalm 23
People in every time and place cultivate shared cultural idioms. These are features of language (symbols, metaphors, rhetoric, and discourses) that are entrenched in various life worlds and are normative in some way. Cultural idioms will inevitably show up in the poetry of specific times/places. Glissant calls this kind of language “forced poetics,” and noticing them is one of the keys to achieving a poetics of Relation.

Long unrecognized in popular readings, Psalm 23 engages forced poetics that belong to political and medical domains of culture and experience. Both domains are introduced in v. 1 by two respective idioms: the (political) shepherd and the (medical) symptom of lack/emptiness. The political idiom of the shepherd introduces a poem with three scenes of political significance. And the medical idiom of the symptom term, “to be faint/empty out” resonates with several semantic echoes and word plays, crafting an illness narrative that is punctuated by several cries — what I am colloquially going to call apotropaic chants.

The standardized custom of poetics has long read Psalm 23 as a poem exclusively about divine comfort, particularly within the conventions of Christian interpretations. But the “comfort” theme in Psalm 23 can be made more specific by attending to the political and medical idioms. Likewise, the horror and precarity of both idioms in Psalm 23 are frequently overlooked, but they are specific to the language of the song. Reading the two idioms will bring the ancient song’s themes of horror, its expressions of precarity, and its modes of survival to light — replacing the King James’ English poetics of universality and generalizability with what Glissant calls a poetics of Relation.

Below, I analyze the political idiom. I will analyze the medical/health idiom in a follow-up brief.

The Political Idiom of a Violent Shepherd in Ancient Hebrew Poetics

Initially, the forced idiom I want to understand in Psalm 23 is the political idiom of the shepherd. The song opens with the image where it is presented as a metaphor for God. Yet “shepherd” was more common as a political idiom for leaders (kings, princes, and tribal leaders) in ancient Hebrew texts. The prophetic text of Ezekiel describes an ideal king as a shepherd (Ezek. 37), and the prophetic text of Isaiah likens Moses to a shepherd guiding ancient Israelites through the sea in the Exodus story (Isa. 63). These two instances of the idiom highlight the care-work of political leaders to ensure food, protection, safe passage, justice, and reparations for a cultivated people — people figured as sheep. But numerous other instances of the idiom highlight the violence and precarity of life under shepherd leaders, where the danger to “sheep” is rarely the wolves or wild beasts that encircle the flock, but comes from the shepherd himself. A shepherd’s neglect, economic interest, or outright aggression are examples of the harms of power that Hebrew texts so frequently identify, characterize, and critique.

A shepherd’s neglect, economic interest, or outright aggression are examples of the harms of power that Hebrew texts so frequently identify, characterize, and critique.

The shepherd metaphor invites renewed consideration of the speaker’s self-understanding as a sheep — what are the implications of a poem in which the speaker identifies as a cultivated animal? Because there is danger in this Psalm. The political idiom generates themes of precarity and horror.

The job of a shepherd along positions the subjectivity of a sheep in unstable relations — Shepherds can protect and nourish, but they can also neglect, harshly discipline, farm, and eat their sheep. Life as a cultivated sheep includes a full spectrum of husbandry experiences — so just as readers have long paid attention to the effects of care-work, we must also attend to the song’s themes of risk, fear, and active harm from the shepherd.

Before turning to Psalm 23 specifically, I will illustrate the point with ancient discourses. Indeed, violent political experiences are articulated in Ezekiel 34, a horror oracle about bad leaders depicted as shepherds who feed themselves instead of feeding the flock, and who ignore the sheep as they become scattered meals for predators. But the scariest imagery focuses on the shepherd himself. A single line of poetry addressed to the cruel shepherds conveys the danger for sheep: “You eat their fat, and you clothe yourself with their wool. You kill them that are fed: but you do not feed the flock” (Ezek. 34:3). This horrific line describes fattening a sheep so the shepherd can kill it and savor its fat, leaving all the other sheep to starve. Zechariah 11:16 provides another example of a shepherd leader who is aggressive towards his sheep. He not only neglects to heal and feed his sheep, but he eats their flesh so violently that he tears their hooves to pieces — a gruesome image likening the business side of a shepherd’s husbandry to the terror of a predator attack.

Psalm 23’s First Scene of Political Horror: The Shepherd’s Care-Work in vv. 1–3a

The forced poetics of the political shepherd idiom in Psalm 23 generate three scenes of political horror in the song (vv. 1–3a; 3b–5a; 5b–6). We are already alerted to the situation of precarity in the first verse. Rather than opening with beautiful language about comfort, nourishment, pleasure, or contentment — the song introduces the sheep/singer with a negated verb (ḥāsēr) for fainting or lacking. The opening line suspends the singer of the song over a condition of syntactical and experiential precarity. A cultivated animal is suspended — can absolutely faint or lack sustenance — depending on the actions of the shepherd. This first scene of horror is already achieved by this hint — which is amplified by the unstable relation between a cultivated animal and its shepherd throughout the song.

To be sure, the shepherd in Psalm 23:2–3a attends to several of his animals’ needs. The theme of comfort can be amplified in translation.

(v. 1) YHWH is my shepherd. I will not faint/empty out.

(v. 2) In a beautiful pasture of sprouting grasses, he lays me. In resting water, he guides me to a watering place.

(v. 3a) He repairs my body’s health.

Verse 2 conveys nourishing imagery that sustains the life of a cultivated sheep. In v. 2a, the shepherd lays the sheep down in a dwelling place, suggesting a pasture or pen that is designed for animal thriving. The fresh shoots of sprouting grasses convey food’s renewed abundance. In v. 2b, the shepherd guides the sheep to a watering place — another image of sustenance and refreshment in light of the dry, hot landscape of a West Asian summer.

In the English of the standardized custom of poetics, the comfort theme spills out of this first scene. In v. 4, the shepherd guides the sheep through a dark valley, a sensory-deprived route marked by low vision and constrained motion. The shepherd’s staff becomes a touch of presence and provides a sense of guidance and group-assembly. The comfort-poetics that can adhere to the political idiom suggest a leader as someone who resources people and marks out paths for communities to move through dangerous and uncertain places. But the comfort theme in this standardized poetics suggests a subject (sheep) who is vulnerable and dis-empowered: at risk of leaking out, hungry and thirsty until placed in a resourced territory, in (perennial?) disrepair, constrained in a tight place with low sensory or muscular capability. Naming these poetic subjectivities of vulnerability amplifies the horror theme — precarity threads through each element of the imagery. Indeed, the horror of being a cultivated animal can begin to cycle out if the frame switches on the shepherd.

A shepherd does all of this same care-work as a prelude to meat-production. We saw this poetics in Ezekiel 34. An actively negligent shepherd harmed his neglected sheep — yes. But he also fattened a few sheep, those sheep meant for slaughter. So a sheep who is well-fed (v. 2a), watered (v. 2b), and even healed (v. 3a) may simply underscore its status as shepherd’s meat.

A sheep who is well-fed (v. 2a), watered (v. 2b), and even healed (v. 3a) may simply underscore its status as shepherd’s meat.

Psalm 23’s Third Scene of Political Horror: Preparation for Animal Slaughter vv. 5b–6

The meat-eating shepherd achieves the greatest horror in the third scene (vv. 5b–6).

(v. 5b) You fatten my head with oil; my pouch is saturated.

(v. 6) Nothing but goodness and mercy should pursue me all the days of my life, or else I will tarry in the temple of YHWH for longevity of days.

One of the ancient institutional domains of meat production is slaughter for temple rituals — where a flock or lamb makes a fitting burnt offering. A brief example among many — in the ideal society presented in Ezekiel 45:15, each person in the kingdom selects “one lamb out of the flood from the fat pastures” for an offering.

Turning back to Psalm 23 with the frame of temple slaughter, verse 5 intensifies the horror-theme: “You make my head fat (dāšein) with oil, my pouch is well-filled.” The word commonly translated “anoint” is not the most common religious term (māšaḥ). “Make fat” is a better translation of dāšein. Derived forms of this word include nouns for, on the one hand, sumptuous food, and on the other, the fatty ash of victims burned on the altar (cf. Jer. 31:40) or corpses burned on a funeral pyre (Num. 4:13).

Hebrew customs of meat sacrifice make distinctions between body parts of animals and treat them each separately for preparation and consumption. There are animal body parts for manipulation on the altar, for the priests, for God, and for people. In the Priestly text of Leviticus where some of these customs were inscribed, God consumes the portion of an animal that converts to smoke — the sweet-smelling suet (fat). The priests place the fat portion on the altar along with the head of the animal (e.g., Lev. 1:8, 12; 8:20). Fat and the head of a sacrificial animal are the very body parts mentioned in v. 5a “you make my head fat with oil” — a terrifying evocation of the poetics of ritual slaughter. Such is the danger of cultivated life under a pious shepherd.

The ending of the song takes us into the scene of meat-slaughter to which the horror themes have been pointing: the temple (v. 6 ). Pious shepherds cultivate sheep for ritual meat slaughter in the temple.

Psalm 23’s Second Scene of Political Horror: Dangerous Trenches in Verses 3b–4

I saved the second scene of horror for last because these lines of poetry (vv. 3b–4) will require more philological attention — indeed, the phrases from King James are so famous: “paths of righteousness,” “valley of the shadow", “rod and staff comfort me,” and “thou preparest a table before me.” And yet, each phrase conveys political experience — we will have to work a bit harder to translate and understand these poetics before synthesizing them into the argument of this essay.

(v. 3b) He leads me in ruts of justice for the sake of his name.

(v. 4a) Indeed, though I walk in a valley of deep shadow, I will not fear evil (raʿ).

(v. 4b) But you are with me.

(v. 4c) Your “whipping stick” and your elder functionaries abase me/force me to feel contrite.

(v. 5a) You mobilize a leather mat in front of my face, drawing out my enemies.

In v. 3b, the King James translates: “He leadeth (nāḥâ) me in paths of righteousness” which I translate, “he governs me in the ruts of justice.” This verb for “leadeth” (nāḥâ) is certainly not the most common for guiding a person (that would be the causative of yālaḵ). The famous 19th century lexicographer, Wilhelm Gesenius defined nāḥâ, “to lead…often used of God governing men,” so governs makes a nice translation in the poetic context. The word I translated as “ruts” (maʿgāl) is a noun formed from a root meaning round or revolving, and it carries the sense of entrenchment — like the worn depressions from a wagon track or the built ramparts for moving armies. Another Psalm associates the word maʿgāl with the snares laid by enemies (Ps. 140:6). On its own, “ruts” of justice could be good (well worn paths that facilitate desireable goals) or they could be bad (trenches dug to trap travelers). The moral feeling of this word is only achieved in the cooperative or antagonistic relational dynamics that develop in social worlds. Whatever the moral feeling of this terminology — the poetics evoke political and economic life more than the English of the King James Version suggests. If we are to make anything here about the comfort vs. the horror theme — I would highlight the poetic play with horror that develops as the ruts evoke the deeper, scarier “valley” of the next verse — where horror is evoked more strongly.

Aggression and violence come crashing into the poem in the valley of shadow (v. 4b), where fear, evil, and a “whipping stick” (šēḇeṭ) lie waiting. There has never been a question among translators about the harrowing tones of this verse. But few readings center the precarity of the poetic scene. The word for shadow (ṣalmāvet) combines two words: shadow (ṣēl) and death (māvet). Hebrew philologists do not all agree about the linguistic development of the word, but no one can deny that the poetic echoes of both words are present in ṣalmāvet, and can conjure a valley of deep darkness, a scene of death’s shadow. This is a landscape of precarious travel and death imagery associated with malevolent spirits in West Asia. So it makes abundant sense that the singer brings up “fear” and “evil.” The words carry the timbre of death across the poetic line like an ominous drumbeat. The singer expresses, “I will not fear evil.” Within the theme of horror, this becomes a bold assertion, a statement of courage, mouthed determination, survival words. I have come to call such lines “apotropaic chants.” Whatever it might be, it is no description of comfort achieved.

Psalm 23’s Second Scene of Political Horror: “Rod and the Staff” of Verse 4b

In the harrowing setting of a valley of death, the voice of the song describes a “rod and staff.” Both terms are semantically polyvocal, but reading with the political idiom vibrates their horror. The Brown, Driver, Brigg’s Hebrew lexicon calls šēḇeṭ a “staff for smiting,” and provides numerous examples of violent uses of the term: “for beating,” “figurative for (divine) chastisement,” “(inferior) weapon,” “a mark of authority,” and “a symbol of conquest.” The shepherd metaphor infuses rod with clashing moods and poetic instability. Poetic readers of the comfort theme imagine the šēḇeṭ is a care-taking tool of loving guidance, but the inflection of the noun spills toward a more harrowing scene, one of discipline that would painfully force a sheep into line. The shepherd as a political idiom intensifies the semantic horror. A šēḇeṭ, already a symbol of political authority, is associated with violent conquest, a crass weapon that delivers enough of a blow to kill.

Is the valley of death’s shadow going to be the scene of the sheep’s slaughter?

The second term, staff (mašʿēnâ) is unquestionably associated with support, but there is little reason to project the modern metaphor of emotional or physical support. The staff is a simple walking stick held by the shepherd — indicating someone who needs to lean on a staff, not someone who necessarily delivers support to others. Reading with the political idiom, a staff may call to mind the authority of elders. Elders were socio-political groups, and they could be for or against you. At minimum, they are a conceptually paired form of authority to the violent leadership of one who wields a “whipping stick” (šēḇeṭ). I translated mašʿēnâ as “elder functionaries,” inspired by its use in Isa. 3:1-3 where it is a category term inclusive of numerous political roles in society (mighty man, warrior, judge, prophet, diviner, elder, chief, a cheerful advisor, a strategic advisor, the sage, the incantation physician, and the prudent whisperer of magic).

The most difficult word in the line is what the King James Version translates as “comfort.” Indeed, many of the Hebrew lexicons offer this as a primary meaning, especially in late biblical Hebrew. But frankly, I do not trust the cultural assumptions of our inherited lexicons. And Hebrew lexicology is a very active area of philological scholarship right now. To put it bluntly, the definitions of ancient words, like the poetics of Relation itself, is never closed and complete. So, we’re going to do some philology here — because the word “comfort” is what I am problematizing in this whole essay.

The King James translates the verb (nāḥam) as comfort: “they rod and thy staff, they comfort me.” Nāḥam is tricky; it predominantly occurs in an intensive active or a passive form, and never as a simple active verb, indicating that the relational context significantly impacts the meaning. Further, since the earliest scribes did not mark vowels (niqqud), the consonants inscribed on a scroll would allow for both verbal forms (intensive and passive). In English, we would say there are vast differences between comforting someone, pitying someone, grieving with someone, feeling sorry in oneself, inducing someone else to feel sorry, and experiencing relief after taking vengeance on someone. All of these are fair game in Psalm 23. Add to these options the suggestion offered by Wilhelm Gesenius that the consonants (nḥm) are onomatopoetic for “to draw the breath forcibly, to pant or groan” (akin to the Arabic cognate). So we could read the phrase in v. 4b:

Your “whipping stick” and your elder functionaries …

• pity me

• console me

• grieve with me

• induce me to feel sorry

• relieve their vengeance on me

• cause me to sigh/groan (perhaps from whacking the singer)

The translation options I have just laid out are not just modern attempts to get a word right. They approximate some of the open poetics that would echo in ancient Hebrew poetics.

I would like to supply a hypothetical frame that will bring home what these poetics can evoke — I suggest that both the violent and the elderly authorities in the singer’s society relieve their vengeance on the singer, or at least attempt to induce the singer’s contrition, demand their abasement, or thrill at their expression of pain.

[draft below — still editing]

Psalm 23’s Second Scene of Political Horror: Drawing Out My Enemies (v. 5a)

Let me summarize the political scene: XXX.

All of this comes to a head in v. 5a: “you arrange a leather mat before my face and draw out my enemies.” The semantics of “arrange” (XXX) are at home in contexts of warfare; one arranges troops for battle. The arrangement of the leather mat showcases the use of animal hide as a commodity. And “draw out” (neged-XXX) can mean to lure, draw out, or drag out — meaning the enemies may not be passive voyeurs but active invitees to the scene. In the King James Version, this is a benevolent meal arranged on a table — but in these Hebrew poetic echoes, the scene is laden with dangers and the horror of attack.

Unless otherwise noted, citations of Glissant are from his Poetics of Relation. Trans. Betsy Wing. University of Michigan Press, 1997b. (Originally published as Glissant, Édouard: Poétique de la relation: Poétique III. Gallimard, 1990.)