Lost Shepherd: What Believers Once Knew about Psalm 23 That the Modern World Has Forgotten

By Mark Fugitt

You are not the first sheep to follow the Shepherd; and you will not be the last.

For 3,000 years, people of faith have found meaning and comfort in the 23rd Psalm. This widely known song has had an impact across time and culture. But in the twenty-first century, this psalm appears idle. For many, it only serves as a short reading at the end of funerals. How did this happen?

Most books about Psalm 23 focus only on the author's interpretation. Many are wonderful, yet they offer only perspectives of modern Christians. Lost Shepherd seeks to enrich the meaning of a passage many Christians believe is almost “too familiar” to appreciate. This book is the perfect cure to break Psalm 23 out of the category of nostalgia and return it to relevance in our daily lives by looking far into the past.

Lost Shepherd allows you to stand with the sheep who have gone before, revealing a better look into the face of our Shepherd. Each chapter examines a line from the psalm and discusses how it has encouraged devotion over the centuries and continues to feed our souls today. Rediscover lost interpretations and consider how Psalm 23 can form your spirit, serving as a source of wisdom for a new generation of Christians.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Leafwood Publishers
• Release date: Aug 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9781684268818

Book preview

2

The Lord Is My Shepherd

The Lord is my Shepherd. The words are true. They must be true. That is what makes them so powerful. If you deny this beginning, you have nothing but a six-verse poem.

The psalm starts with a decision. It is sometimes uncomfortable to make a decision so early in a journey. But it is what the writer of the text requires: Who is this Shepherd, and do I need to identify with him? Sometimes we forget to make the decision because we’ve read the question so many times before.

There is always a new book I think I want to read. My library is stacked high with them, but somehow the old familiar titles call me back. We all experience this. Sometimes it’s movies. With thousands of titles to choose from, we end up watching that favorite episode we can already quote. Familiar words are closer than friends. They narrate our lives. A familiar opening line has the power to transport us. I still remember some of the first lines from all-time favorite books I’ve read many times. From The Hound of the Baskervilles: Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night, was seated at the breakfast table. Or this from Jurassic Park: The tropical rain fell in drenching sheets, hammering the corrugated roof of the clinic building, roaring down the metal gutters, splashing on the ground in a torrent. Then there is the opening salvo from The Count of Monte Cristo, which invites me to inhale the salt air of Marseilles: On the 24th of February, 1815, the lookout of Notre-Dame de la Garde signaled the three-master, the Pharaon, from Smyrna, Trieste, and Naples.

When I hear those lines, I remember the story, the setting, and where I was over the years as I read them over and over again. Nostalgia is powerful. There is something in all of us that longs for the comfort of the familiar. A small reminder from our past can trigger a flood of mental experiences. Words take us somewhere in our own heads. When we hear once upon a time we are off and running.

The first verse of Psalm 23 is one of those lines—it is so familiar, so ordinary to our ears that we sometimes fail to notice the extraordinary message. As pastor and writer Eugene Peterson once said, Familiarity has its dangers. The sharp edges blur. Familiarity carries with it the danger of becoming cliché.¹

Spiritual cliché can be deadly indeed. It deflates the living word and leaves us with meaningless platitudes. Cliché is the liturgy of cold, dead religion. Even with this warning, we sometimes prefer to stick with what we know.

Shepherd-pastor Phillip Keller identifies another danger in reading a book about a favorite memory: It can disappoint. One disillusions or disenchants the reader by tampering with favorite interpretations and memories. It is the same when a modern writer or screenwriter tests us by retelling a classic favorite. Our time together will almost certainly challenge some of your treasured interpretations. However, you can be stronger in the places that have been tested.

Most readers of this title have a heritage with this text. Especially the first words: The LORD is my shepherd. It is a powerful opening line, but to avoid falling into the trap of familiarity Peterson warned us about, let’s first consider the short title The LORD. After all, the identity of the Shepherd matters greatly. In truth, if the identity of the Shepherd is in doubt, the rest of the psalm is beyond our reach. Ernest Hemingway advised other writers to begin with one true sentence. King David was doing so long before Hemingway.

Shepherd or King?

Every era interprets Scripture in its own unique way, and each has thus gained new insight from the songs of King David. In the years leading up to Christ, this psalm typically reminded God’s people of their ancestors’ wilderness journey told in the book of Exodus. Moses, also a literal shepherd, led the children of Israel through plains and valleys. He led them to places of rest and to the threshold of their enemies. But as David would later realize, there was always a parallel Shepherd at work. It wasn’t the strong arm of Moses that swept aside the waters or sent down the manna.

The good leaders of God’s people came to realize that they were always under the care of someone greater. Psalm 23 is thus not a surprise. David’s selection of this theme was a sampling from earlier riffs in the song of God. Much later, the Son of David would do the same.

When Jesus identified himself as the Good Shepherd (John 10:11), the early Christians didn’t take long to add a new layer of meaning to the allegory of Psalm 23. The Shepherd-King of the Old Testament now led his new covenant people in a more individual and subtle way. He wasn’t the political leader of a physical empire, but he could still lead them to a new, now-and-not-yet promised land.

The early Christian philosopher, Justin Martyr, saw Christ foretold in the words of Psalm 23. He made it clear that the Shepherd is no weakling. In one of his works, he talks about the strength of God before talking about how this strong Shepherd cares for his sheep. The philosopher is having a conversation, trying to explain to his reader how his views on philosophy and God intersect. He writes: Behold, the Lord comes with strength, and [His] arm comes with authority. Behold, His reward is with Him, and His work before Him. As a shepherd He will tend His flock, and will gather the lambs with [His] arm, and cheer on her that is with young.²

It was important for Justin, who lived from AD 100 to 165, never to separate the strength of God from his job as shepherd of his now scattered people. The people needed a protector who could tend a flock that was beaten, persecuted, and yes, as Justin’s later title reveals, martyred.

This early church image of the Shepherd deals with the reality of suffering and scattering. Logically, the Good Shepherd has to spend most of his time chasing down the dispersed sheep and caring for those that are hurt. For Christians in this context, the opening line then became a comfort. It refocused their minds on the resilience of God’s faithfulness. It was less about leading the flock and more about rounding up the herd.

By AD 500, the church had begun to change. The role of Bible scholar and interpreter in the Western world was now dominated by professionals: monks, priests, and other churchmen. Christians also found themselves in the majority, and in charge in Europe. This power changed the way of reading the Bible from times when Christians had been oppressed, poor, and living under the threat of martyrdom.

Many medieval Christians began to identify layers of meaning in the Bible, rather than conducting what the later Reformers would call a plain reading of the text. For the medieval Christian, every verse was a Narnian wardrobe into a world of allegory. Psalm 23, the familiar shepherd’s song, was the perfect place to look for deeper meaning.

However, Christians were also spread out like never before. As the church diversified, so too did interpretations of the Psalms. Part of this was due to local cultural differences. Believers retained bits and pieces of local traditions and rituals. But it also varied due to isolation.

In one example, the early Irish church shows us how isolated Christians started to view the book of Psalms in their own way. Far from the church’s headquarters in Rome and the academic theologians on the continent, Irish Christians tended to interpret the psalms more literally.³ They often chose to keep them rooted in their original historical context and ignored the growing medieval practice of finding Jesus in every stanza.

Psalm 23 resonated with the wild green hills of Ireland. When some medieval teachers started to imagine that none of Psalm 23 actually meant anything about animal husbandry, Irish Christians disagreed. The Shepherd became a shepherd once again, still symbolic but less abstract. God was again looking like a wandering preacher on a distant and dusty road coming to check on a rural parishioner. The Irish church rediscovered this throwback to how the early church saw the passage through their own experience and context. A millennium later, we are still using our own contexts and the isolation of our denominations and geography to develop our own proprietary interpretations.

By the turn of the first millennium, those who studied Scripture the most were scholars who could read not only the biblical texts but the writings of Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle. These individuals began to wonder about the role of reason in understanding the Bible they thought they already knew.

This new focus led many to conceptualize God as an organizer, the supreme keeper of order. God was the one in complete, sovereign control. However, because guiding sheep can sometimes be a little like herding cats, it wasn’t long before a new vision of Psalm 23 emerged. This was one that would fit the new cultural mindset of a God in absolute and perfect governance.

These medieval Christians read the Latin words "Dominus regit me as the opening to Psalm 23:1. Translated as the Lord rules me, the clear implication was the need for submission to the Shepherd’s leadership. Medieval monk and theologian Thomas Aquinas (1225–74) notes that this opening phrase reminds us of divine providence."⁴ He points to the contrast with David’s other psalms, which focus on his hardships. He writes: Previously, the Psalmist spoke in the person of Christ concerning his many tribulations. Here, he speaks of the assistance by which he is preserved in these [tribulations]. Perhaps this is why Psalm 23 has almost universal appeal still today. While we all struggle differently, we all share the same resurrected solution. Still, the Shepherd’s leadership is not