Big Idea: The Lord as David’s shepherd watches over him and, with his gentle agents of goodness and mercy, pursues him into the Lord’s house.

Understanding the Text

Psalm 23 is an individual psalm of trust (see the sidebar “Psalms of Trust” in the unit on Ps. 16).[1] Psalms of trust arise out of some trouble that the psalmist has experienced, although we cannot always determine specifically what it was. Yet through this experience the psalmist has learned to trust in the Lord. Sometimes these psalms include a petition (e.g., 4:1, 6) and a vow to praise God (e.g., 16:7), but Psalm 23 contains neither. As Goldingay says, it is “radically a psalm of trust.”2

While we do not want to contrive canonical associations among the psalms, we do want to recognize, even insist, that the psalmists an…