57 Hebrew Words
Psalm 23
There’s an old saying, The best things come in small packages. This morning we read the 23rd Psalm, one of the most beautiful and best known passages of the Bible. Written in Hebrew, it contains just fifty seven words, but those fifty seven words have provided truckloads of comfort to generations of Jews and Christians.
The Lord is my shepherd, the psalm begins. I often think of the large portrait of Jesus that graced the Sunday school room at my grandmother’s church. Jesus is dressed in a white, maybe slightly beige robe. The hillside behind him is painted green. There are dark clouds in the sky. He holds a lamb in his arms. A gentle smile plays across his face.
He doesn’t look much like the sheep herders I knew in Montana. Nor does he look like the shepherds that inhabited the countryside of Palestine. Sheep herding is dirty business. The landscape where they roam is dusty and dry. Because sheep are not likely to defend themselves against predators, shepherds stay with a flock, even sleeping out in the open with them. During lambing season sheep herders are likely to stay all night in the barn. When they come in to wash up, their boots are full of mud and waste; their clothing smells; and their fingernails are full of dirt.
The 19th century painters romanticized the image of the shepherd and the 20th century sanitized the image used in both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. We easily forget, if we ever knew, that the image of God as shepherd originally startled and offended. Shepherds were ritually unclean. They didn’t command much respect. They were at the bottom of the social order.
It was no small thing to say, “The Lord is my shepherd.” It was scarcely a comforting thought—until the poet began to rehearse an attentive shepherd’s duties. In an arid land, a good shepherd knew where to find fresh water. In a desert of cactus and sage brush, a good shepherd knew where to find a green pasture. In the empty expanse with few trails, a good shepherd knew the right footpaths.
We often appreciate the intimacy of the 23rd Psalm—“he makes me to lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside still waters, he leads in the right pathways. . .” The psalm emphasizes that God does all this—for each one of us. Not just for all of us in general; not for all of us as a collective flock, but for each of us. God uses God’s intimate knowledge of the landscape of our lives in order to give each of us exactly what we need.
Yes, and as if that were not enough, when life gets really complicated or ambiguous; when we are caught down in a deep crevice and cannot see anything but the clouds directly above us; the shepherd is with us. The word most often translated as “valley” most often refers to a deep, narrow break between the rocks; the kind of place where one can easily fall and break a leg; the kind of place where one can slip and become trapped; the kind of place where you can’t crawl out on your own; you can’t scale the rock walls without help—in such places, the good shepherd walks with us, helping us keep our balance, giving us something to hold on to; rescuing us when we start to slide.
Rabbi Harold Kushner is best known for his book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People. In a subsequent book on the 23rd Psalm, Kushner wrote, “God’s promise was never that life would be fair. God’s promise was, when it’s your turn to confront the unfairness of life, no matter how hard it is, you’ll be able to handle it, because God is on your side. He will give you the strength you need to find your way through it.”
And as if accompanying us were not enough, the good shepherd extends to us extravagant hospitality. He rubs our faces with healing oil—ritually more significant, but not unlike our offering a guest plenty of hand lotion after coming in on a cold day with cracked, wind-dried skin and broken, chapped lips.
The good shepherd fills the wine glass to overflowing and sets the table for us—right out there in the middle of the wilderness. There may be predators lurking in the shadows; there may be enemies at the edge of the field; thunderheads may be building in the sky above us—but the good shepherd spreads the tablecloth, opens the picnic basket, puts out the good china and stemmed glassware, and invites us to dinner.
Surely, surely goodness and mercy will follow us—in the Tanakh, a contemporary Jewish translation of Hebrew scripture, the word is translated “pursue”. Surely goodness and mercy will pursue us—chase us—come after us—all the days of our lives. And we will dwell forever in the house of the Lord.