Catholic Sensibility

On Psalm 23, from Neil

Neil Dhingra continues his Lenten series on the Sunday Psalms.

Psalm 95 reminded us that the presence of God is consoling - “cry out to the rock of our salvation.” But God’s presence is also challenging – “Do not harden your hearts as at Meribah” - and his love forces us to confront our sklericardia, our own hearts of stone that prevent us from hearing his voice. The same can be said about Psalm 23.

The Sulpician exegetes Michael Barre and John Kselman point out that the psalmist’s moving claim that the divine presence is with him “through a dark valley,” so that “there is nothing I lack” (23:1), is reminiscent of the Exodus. After all, Deuteronomy reads at one point, “It is now forty years that God has been with you, and you have never been in want” (2:7). And the psalmist’s claim that “You set a table before me” (23:5) is an allusion to Psalm 78’s own reference to the Exodus, “They spoke against God, and said, ‘Can God spread a table in the desert?’” (78.19). But Psalm 23 is not merely evocative of Israel’s past – it also daringly speaks of Israel’s future. To more fully understand the psalm, we will have to look at some darker passages that may appear at first to contradict it.

The final claim of Psalm 23 – “Only goodness and love will pursue me all the days of my life” (23:6) - is seemingly turned upside down in Psalm 143 and Psalm 7, where we instead read, “The enemy has pursued me; they have crushed my life to the ground” (143:3). And in Lamentations, we encounter a frightening inversion of the entire psalm, beginning with the declaration, “I am a man who knows affliction from the rod of his anger, One whom he has led and forced to walk in darkness, not in the light” (3:1-2), and ending with the request that God “pursue [my foes] in wrath” (3:66). What is going on here?

Frs Barre and Kselman write about Psalm 23, “In v.6 the psalmist uses ‘pursue’, a verb that has close associations with the language of treaty and covenant, particularly the language of curse for covenant violation. In a daring reversal, he prays that it not be the covenant curses, but only ‘goodness and love’ that ‘pursue him’ (so to speak) throughout his life; here ‘goodness and love’ is a surrogate for the covenant and includes the blessings attendant upon obedience to the covenant stipulations.”

The psalmist’s “daring reversal” of the language of curse had previously imagined God setting “a table before him” - a reference to Psalm 78, but also to a royal banquet in which the overlord (Yahweh) would nourish his vassal (the king). We can imagine the banquet of Wisdom – “She has dressed her meat, mixed her wine, yes, she has spread her table” (Prov 9:2), or, most resonant of all, the new Exodus and restoration described so vividly in Isaiah. “Come, without paying and without cost, drink wine and milk!” (Is 55:1). Through this imagery of a royal banquet, Psalm 23 refers more broadly to a “new provisioning,” a reversal of the “hunger and thirst, in nakedness and utter poverty” that are so synonymous with exile (Dt 28:48). As our exegetes write about the psalmist’s evident “democratization” of the royal banquet idea, “Yahweh’s covenant blessings ‘pursue’ him and allow him permanent residence in the Promised Land; here he speaks in the name of the exilic community.”

And, indeed, the psalmist’s statement, “I will dwell in the house of the Lord for years to come” (23:6) links being present in Yahweh’s temple to the blessings of the covenant; Psalm 61 also sees the king’s “dwelling in [God’s] tent” as synonymous with God’s covenantal “love and fidelity” (61:5,8). After all, certain kings had been afflicted with disease and were not permitted to enter the temple (e.g., 2 Chr 26:16-20). Frs Barre and Kselman once more, “As the king prays in Ps 23:6 that he never be excluded from Yahweh’s house, so the psalmist prays in the name of the exiles that they never again be excluded from the Promised Land. This prayer is no expression of pious sentimentality but is uttered in light of the traumatic experience of exile and deportation.”

The desire in Psalm 23 for a “new exodus, new march through the wilderness, new covenant, and new settlement in the Promised Land” reminds us of Jeremiah’s vision that the Lord “will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah” (Jer 31:34). And what is this new covenant? We might look at one of the uses of Psalm 23 in the Book of Common Prayer:

After the Baptism, a candle (which may be lifted from the Paschal

Candle) may be given to each of the newly baptized or to a godparent.

It may be found desirable to return to the front of the church for the

prayer, "Heavenly Father, we thank you that by water and the Holy

Spirit," and the ceremonies that follow it. A suitable psalm, such as

Psalm 23, or a hymn or anthem, may be sung during the procession.

The oblations of bread and wine at the baptismal Eucharist may be

presented by the newly baptized or their godparents.

What better place for Psalm 23 is there than between the baptismal font that incorporates us into the “new covenant” and the table of the Eucharist that God sets before us as a foretaste of the heaven where we will indeed dwell with him “for years to come” (23:6)? But we should need to come through the “traumatic experience” of our own exiles and deportations with hope, not with the “hardness of heart” that would leave Psalm 23’s “daring reversal” simply impossible to comprehend.