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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 23:4 - 23:4
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Rod and staff are here not so much those of the pilgrim, which would be a confusing transition to a different figure, but those of Jahve, the Shepherd (שֵׁבֶט, as in Mic 7:14, and in connection with it, cf. Num 21:18, מִשְׁעֶנֶת as the filling up of the picture), as the means of guidance and defence. The one rod, which the shepherd holds up to guide the flock, and upon which he leans and anxiously watches over the flock, has assumed a double form in the conception of the idea. This rod and staff in the hand of God comfort him, i.e., preserve to him the feeling of security, and therefore a cheerful spirit. Even when he passes through a valley dark and gloomy as the shadow of death, where surprises and calamities of every kind threaten him, he hears no misfortune. The lxx narrows the figure, rendering בגיא according to the Aramaic בְּגֹוא, Dan 3:25, ἐν μέσῳ. The noun צלמות, which occurs in this passage for the first time in the Old Testament literature, is originally not a compound word; but being formed from a verb צלם, Arab. ḏlm (root צל, Arab. ḏl), to overshadow, darken, after the form עַבְדוּת, but pronounced צַלְמָוֶת (cf. חֲצַרְמָוֶת, Hadra-môt = the court of death, בְּצַלְאֵל in-God's-shadow), it signifies the shadow of death as an epithet of the most fearful darkness, as of Hades, Job 10:21., but also of a shaft of a mine, Job 28:3, and more especially of darkness such as makes itself felt in a wild, uninhabited desert, Jer 2:6.
After the figure of the shepherd fades away in Psa 23:4, that of the host appears. His enemies must look quietly on (נֶגֶד as in Psa 31:20), without being able to do anything, and see how Jahve provides bountifully for His guest, anoints him with sweet perfumes as at a joyous and magnificent banquet (Psa 92:11), and fills his cup to excess. What is meant thereby, is not necessarily only blessings of a spiritual kind. The king fleeing before Absolom and forsaken by the mass of his people was, with his army, even outwardly in danger of being destroyed by want; it is, therefore, even an abundance of daily bread streaming in upon them, as in 2Sa 17:27-29, that is meant; but even this, spiritually regarded, as a gift from heaven, and so that the satisfying, refreshing and quickening is only the outside phase of simultaneous inward experiences.
(Note: In the mouth of the New Testament saint, especially on the dies viridium, it is the table of the Lord's supper, as Apollinaris also hints when he applied to it the epithet ῥιγεδανῶν βρίθουσαν, horrendorum onustam.)
The future תַּֽעֲרֹךְ is followed, according to the customary return to the perfect ground-form, by דִּשַּׁנְתָּ, which has, none the less, the signification of a present. And in the closing assertion, כֹּוסִי, my cup, is metonymically equivalent to the contents of my cup. This is רְוָיָה, a fulness satiating even to excess.