The Lord Is My Shepherd 1 "The Lord Is ." Psalm 23:1 My father, John I. Morgan, was the owner of Sunset Orchard on the Tennessee and North Carolina border and a high school professor specializing in vocational agriculture, so I grew up around gardens, orchards, and livestock--especially ponies, horses, and burros. But we never raised sheep, so when Katrina and I later purchased our small flock, we hardly knew what we were doing. A helpful friend told us about a classic book on shepherding entitled Raising Sheep the Modern Way. Now published as an updated version under the title Storey''s Guide to Raising Sheep, this book proved a valuable resource not only for raising sheep but also for understanding the Twenty-third Psalm. The authors, Paula Simmons and Carol Ekarius, begin the book saying, "When you decide to get sheep, it helps if you understand their behavior--in other words, what makes them tick. The more you understand about their behavior, the easier it will be for you to spot problems (for example, is that ewe in the corner sick or is she about to lamb?).
Understanding behavior also makes handling animals much easier, on both you and them." The authors describe a healthy flock this way: "Sheep that are behaving normally are content and alert. They have good appetites and bright eyes. They are gregarious animals, which contributes to their flocking nature. Youngsters, like those of other species, love to play and roughhouse. Groups of lambs will run, romp, and climb for hours when they are healthy and happy. Then they''ll fall asleep so deeply that you may think they''re dead."2 King David could have written those words three thousand years ago.
He understood the contrast between healthy sheep and distressed ones, and he knew the difference was often determined by the quality of shepherding and the nature of the shepherd. Sheep, shepherds, lambs, and flocks are mentioned nearly seven hundred times in the Bible (698 times to be exact, in 563 verses in the New King James Version). The sheep is the first animal mentioned by name in the Bible (Genesis 4:2, Amplified Bible). Roy Gustafson, dean of tour guides to Israel who conducted more than 150 trips to Bible lands before his death in 2002, once related a story of a missionary in the mountains of Turkey who gathered a group of shepherds to read the Bible to them. It was a cold night, and as they sat around a fire, the missionary read from the tenth chapter of John about the good shepherd, the thief, the hireling, the sheep, and the door to the sheepfold. "Oh, sir, is that in the Gospel?" asked one of the shepherds in surprise. "Yes," said the missionary, "that is the Gospel of Jesus Christ." "Oh," said the shepherd, the glow of the fire lighting his eyes, "I didn''t know before that the Bible was a sheep book.
"3 Well, it is. The Bible is populated by millions of sheep. On one occasion, the Jews seized 650,000 sheep from the Midianites. The Assyrian king Sennacherib took 800,000 from his enemy''s lands. King Ahab demanded 100,000 rams as tribute from the king of Moab. At the dedication of the Temple in Jerusalem, King Solomon offered 120,000 sheep as sacrifices, and we''re told that 300,000 sacrificial animals were offered annually in Jerusalem.4 Many of the biblical heroes were shepherds, and chief among them was David--musician, herdsman, warrior king, and intrepid giant killer. Some of the most vivid shepherding material comes from his life and writings.
Our mind''s eye can readily see this lad in his youth, clad in weathered leather and armed with his staff. His slingshot and shepherd''s pouch hang on his belt; he has lute and lyre at hand. Looking at him in the distance, we''re impressed with his expressive face, his reddish hair, his muscular yet lithe frame. There he is, leaning against a boulder, keeping a sharp eye on his flocks, calling his sheep by name, composing songs on the fly, and enjoying life to the fullest. He weathers the elements with ruggedness, maintains his flocks with warmhearted discipline, and eliminates predators with coldblooded efficiency. We first meet David in the sixteenth chapter of 1 Samuel, when the prophet Samuel arrived in Bethlehem looking for young men with royal potential. A local farmer named Jesse had a houseful of sons who seemed to fit the bill, and he trotted out his boys for inspection. Samuel was impressed with these young men, but the Lord wasn''t.
Seeing the eldest, Eliab, Samuel thought to himself, "Surely the Lord''s anointed is before Him." But the Lord said to Samuel, "Do not look at his appearance or at his physical stature . for the Lord does not see as a man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart." That''s sage advice for us in today''s age of glitz and glamour, where people have become "brands" and celebrities are made to appear as though they have as much depth as rain on a sidewalk. After the remainder of Jesse''s sons had passed before Samuel and been rejected, the aged prophet asked, "Are all the young men here?" "There remains yet the youngest," Jesse said, "and there he is, keeping the sheep." The boy was summoned. He was "ruddy, with bright eyes, and good looking." But there was a depth to him, acquired amid the rocky fields of Judea from the solitude of shepherding.
He had a good and God-fearing heart. Samuel''s wrinkled hand reached for his flask of oil. Motioning for the boy to kneel, the old prophet anointed the young shepherd to be the future king of Israel, and the Spirit of the Lord came on David from that day (1 Samuel 16:1-13). This was the boy who wrote Psalm 23. This was the man after God''s own heart. The profession of shepherding became a classroom for the crown. It was God''s apprenticeship for kingship. In loving his sheep, David learned to care for his people.
While protecting his flock, David was preparing to guard his nation. As he led his animals from pasture to pasture, he acquired the skills of leading men and guiding armies. No experiences were lost, as the fields of Bethlehem became a laboratory for leadership. The same, of course, is true for us. Wherever we are today and whatever we''re doing, it''s simply preparation for future service. No experiences should be wasted, and a day is never lost if a lesson is learned. We all have goals and aspirations, but our primary job isn''t to envision great things in the future but to tackle today''s work with enthusiasm. This is true whatever our age.
Our best days are always ahead of us, and our present experiences are preparing us for greater work in the future, whether on earth or in heaven. David cared for his flocks as if there were no tomorrow. In the process, God was preparing him for tomorrow''s greatness. Nor did David ever forget the spiritual lessons he learned during his solitary epochs in those distant pastures and lonely hillsides. In being a shepherd, he learned to think of himself as a sheep, trusting the Lord to do for him what he was doing for his flocks. He pondered the parallel long and hard, and he later summed it all up in the most reassuring words ever written: "The Lord Is my Shepherd." The Lord . The actual word David used in Psalm 23:1 is Yahweh, the proper and the personal name of God as He made Himself known to the people of Israel.
As far as we can determine, it comes from the Hebrew word meaning "to be" or "I am." The Bible''s primary text on this subject is Exodus 3, when God had earlier appeared to another shepherd--Moses--in the burning bush. When Moses asked God for His name, the answer came back: "I AM WHO I AM." The Hebrew consonants for "I AM" serve as the basis for the name Yahweh. To the Hebrews, this name was too sacred to speak, so they substituted the term Adonai, which means "The Lord." Most English translations have followed suit by printing the word LORD in small caps. As German theologians of an earlier century tried to sort out the vowels and consonants, they translated the Hebrew word as Jehovah. Many of the older books on Psalm 23 use the term Jehovah-Roi, which means "The Lord--my Shepherd!" More recently, scholars have suggested the pronunciation Yahweh (YAH-way) is closer to the original.
5 But whether you say Lord, Jehovah, Adonai, or Yahweh, the meaning seems to touch on this idea: "I Am Who I Am--God almighty, unchanging and unchangeable. I Am self-sustaining, self-existent--the Creator, not the created. I Was, and I Am, and I Will Be--from everlasting to everlasting, First and Last, Beginning and End, Alpha and Omega." This is tremendous to think about, for what often is missing from our lives is the contemplation of God. We spend hours contemplating finances or projects or problems or family matters. We obsess over many stressful things, and then, to forget about them, we pursue an array of diversions unmatched in history. Many of us have become afraid of a quiet mind. Yet when we learn to practice consciously the presence of God, meditating on His Word and contemplating His attributes, it has a remarkable effect on our brains and thereby on our personalities.
When we look up into a cloudy sky, as David often did from his hilltop perch, seeing bare tree limbs gnarled against a gray