(August 23, 2025) Dr Jim McClure responds to a thoughtful friend…
Dear Dr Jim
I’ve been doing some meditating on Psalm 23 which is very rich in meaning and has been a great comfort in this current season of uncertainly. I love the image of the shepherd and God’s gentle loving care.
Many of the descriptions of God’s leadership are quite gentle— ‘He leads me beside quiet waters’, ‘He guides me in paths of righteousness’, ‘you prepare a table’ and ‘you anoint my head’ and such.
But in verse 2 it reads ‘He makes me lie down.’ It’s almost like a command over which I have no choice. It seems quite harsh in English compared to the other verbs.
This was my reply—
This is the best known of all the Psalms and it has been a source of encouragement and comfort for millions of people for centuries.
Yet it is a psalm that was written in the context of suffering, grief and threat. David, an incredible man, lived most of his life in an environment of challenge and hostility from within his family, friends and fellow citizens and, as king, also carried an enormous weight of responsibility and ongoing threats from surrounding nations. Yet, in the midst of all this pressure David began the psalm with an expression of his sense of security, trust and comfort in his relationship with God: ‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.’
From that confidence flows the rest of the psalm. In verses 2 and 3 he made four strong affirmations concerning God:
- He makes me lie down in green pastures
- He leads me beside quiet waters
- He restores my soul
- He guides me in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.
As you point out, three of those affirmations are comforting and encouraging as the verbs ‘leads’, ‘restores’ and ‘guides’ have a gentle tenor while ‘makes’ appears to have a controlling aspect to it, a command over which we have no choice.
However, the translation ‘He makes me’ does not adequately express the intention of the phrase. The Hebrew verb (rabat), as it is used here, refers to God’s enabling rather than His commanding! The same verb is used in Ezekiel 34:15, ‘I myself will tend my sheep and have them lie down, declares the Sovereign Lord.’
The implication is that God, the Good Shepherd, has provided a place of comfort and security.
I like the Good News Translation of the first three verses: ‘The Lord is my shepherd; I have everything I need. He lets me rest in fields of green grass and leads me to quiet pools of fresh water. He gives me new strength. He guides me in the right paths, as he has promised.’
The four statements regarding God’s active presence in our lives affirm the depth of His love for us. In Jesus we see the measure of that love, ‘I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— just as the Father knows me and I know the Father— and I lay down my life for the sheep’ (John 10:14-15).
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