The lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. The 23rd Psalm, from the New Revised Standard Version: Connie Kang is a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, a Tribune Publishing newspaper.
DAVID ROPER PSALM 23 FULL
“And the image for me is that God is offering me always a rich and full table… a table of peace and of spiritual plenty.” To Miriyam Glazer, professor of literature at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, one of the most powerful lines of the psalm is the reference to God setting a table “before me” in the presence of “my enemies.” “One morning I woke up and the clouds were gone, and it hasn’t returned,” he said. He memorized the 23rd Psalm in Hebrew - because he said it comes more alive in the original language - and just kept quoting it to himself over and over. “I wasn’t suicidal, but I’d wake up every morning, felt very gloomy, found it very difficult to motivate myself to do anything,” said Roper, who has pastored two nondenominational congregations in California and Idaho during his more than 30 years in ministry. The 23rd Psalm became Roper’s “lifeline” during his two-year bout with depression. “David painted a picture and put us in it.” “Part of the comparison is the portrayal of a shepherd and his sheep the other is David’s experience and ours,” he said. The shepherd is a simple metaphor, but carries complex meanings, said theologian David Roper, author of “Song of a Passionate Heart,” a book on the psalm that also traces his own struggle with depression. “The notion of God being a comforting presence is there in the valley of the shadow of death but also between e-mails.” “One moment with the psalm between e-mails or between phone calls helps to remind me that what I am doing is really trying to bring people and myself to this sense of serenity,” he said. The rabbi, who oversees a congregation of 1,300 families in two locations, also recites it between phone calls and e-mail, which are increasingly taking up more of his time. “When you’re getting on the freeway, facing terrible traffic, it’s very meditative to be able to recite the psalm and focus on something other than the freeway,” he said.
He uses the psalm throughout the day as a source of meditation.
To Rabbi Donald Goor of Temple Judea in Los Angeles, the psalm’s significance is not its history but the fact that it expresses “so beautifully God’s presence in our world.” The 23rd has comforted him during his wife’s lengthy illness. John Goldingay, a professor of the Old Testament at Fuller in Pasadena, Calif., and an expert on the Psalms. “The important thing is content, not authorship,” said the Rev. E-Pilot Evening Edition Home Page Close MenuĬommentators say the psalm’s appeal lies in the personal way in which the psalmist speaks of God, the imagery of God’s gentle guidance and faithfulness and generosity.Īscribed to ancient Israel’s King David - “the man after God’s own heart” - it is Hebrew poetry at its best, some commentators say.īut no one knows whether David actually wrote the 23rd Psalm or other psalms that are attributed to him, scholars say.
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