What does it mean that the Lord is my Shepherd?
Answered from the commentary of Hamilton Smith, Julius A. Von Poseck, Andrew Miller and 11 others
To say "The Lord is my Shepherd" is to say that Jehovah himself takes on the whole care of the one who trusts him, and the Jehovah of the Old Testament is Jesus of the New. He is the Good Shepherd who laid down his life for the sheep (Psalm 22, John 10). He is the Great Shepherd who, risen from the dead, takes charge of the sheep through the wilderness (Psalm 23, Hebrews 13:20). And he is the Chief Shepherd who will reward at his appearing (Psalm 24, 1 Peter 5:4). Anyone can say the Lord is *a* Shepherd, so the whole weight falls on the little word "my". It is the language of faith and the doorway into the psalm. To speak of "the Shepherd" is knowledge, but to say "my Shepherd" is experience: it is the language of one who has proved the Lord in the changing circumstances of his path and gladly submits to his leading. So it means more than accepting him as the Saviour who died for our sins; it means submitting to him as the Shepherd who leads us home through every difficulty. It is deeply personal, so much so that one who cannot say it is not saved. Some learn to say it only after being "pulled to pieces" by experience and brought through the power of evil.
The confidence that follows, "I shall not want," rests on what he is to us, not on what we are to him. Nor does it rest on what he gives: it rests on himself. To doubt "I shall not want" would be to doubt the Shepherd's competence. Since God knows all things and can do all things, his provision cannot leave out anything truly needed. This does not mean the believer never feels need. When Paul was in want, he turned to the Shepherd in confidence and could then say, "I have all things and abound". Sheep left to themselves are needy, foolish, weak and timid, and would starve, wander, faint and scatter. Under the Shepherd, the hungry are led to pasture, the wandering are kept, the weak are carried and the timid are defended. Everything else in the psalm flows from this one statement:
- **Rest and food:** he gives rest and food in green pastures by still waters. - **Restoration:** he alone restores the soul that has strayed. - **Presence:** "Thou art with me" banishes fear in the valley of the shadow of death. - **Provision before enemies:** he spreads a table in the presence of enemies. - **The end of the road:** if he is indeed my Shepherd, he will bring me at last into the glory where he has gone.
Yet the relationship is first his claim on us: the sheep belong to the Shepherd, given to him by the Father and bought by his death. Their safety is therefore his own responsibility and not theirs. Most read the psalm primarily as the experience of the godly remnant of Israel, a type of the higher, spiritual blessings of the Christian. Some also read it as the path of Christ himself, who trusted Jehovah as he walked by faith.
The above is AI generated summary based on the writers below.
What the commentators say
The passages the answer is drawn from, the most direct first, with the words that bear on the question marked.
The passage
46 Psalm 23 is so ordered by the Spirit as to apply to a dying Christ, or a saint who follows His footsteps, or the preserved remnant. It does not consider the sufferings of Christ from God, or from man, nor those of the faithful, save as mere facts and occasions of Jehovah's care. Its subject is "Jehovah is my Shepherd" - the constant unfailing care exercised by Him. It is a life spent under His care and eye, come what will, the experience it affords, and the assurance that Jehovah's love gives to the end and for ever. It is not what He gives which assures the heart, but Himself. "Jehovah is my Shepherd; I shall not want." Power, grace, goodness, interest in the faithful One, all assure; and assure in all circumstances and for ever and always. He has undertaken and has charged Himself with the care of His faithful ones. These cannot want. We have not to think of what may come, or what means may be employed. The Shepherd's care is our assurance. The natural fruit of this care is fresh and green pastures in security the peaceful enjoyment of the sure refreshings of goodness. But in fact man, specially the remnant, and Christ Himself, are in the midst of oppressing sorrow, and death, and in presence of mighty enemies. Is the soul troubled and bowed down? He restores it. Does it go through the valley of the shadow of death? does death cast its dark gloom over the spirit that must go down into its shade? He is there, greater than death, to guide and sustain. Are powerful and relentless enemies there to alarm and threaten? They are powerless before Him. He dresses a table for His beloved, where they sit down in safety, and secure. Divine unction is the seal of power when all is against us. Human weakness, death, and spiritual powers of wickedness, all are only the occasions to shew most evidently that Jehovah, the Shepherd, is the infallible safeguard of His people.
v.ch.23Christ, as Shepherd, the confidence of the godly while passing through this world.
v.ch.23The 22nd psalm presents Christ on the cross meeting the claims of God, and making atonement for His people. Psalm 23 presents Christ meeting the daily needs of His people, and leading them through a wilderness scene. The primary application is to the godly remnant of Israel who will be brought through every trial into millennial blessing in connection with Jehovah's house on earth. The ways of God with Israel, and the blessing into which they are brought, are, however, typical of the higher blessings that belong through grace to the Christian. Hence the psalm is full of instruction and comfort for our days. The great theme of the psalm is the confidence of the godly in Christ, the Shepherd, founded on the experience of what He is in all circumstances.
The Psalm is closely connected with the preceding Psalm, as well as the one that follows. All three Psalms are of outstanding beauty and value, seeing that in each one Christ is the great theme. Psalm 22 presents the Lord Jesus as the Holy Victim offering Himself without spot to God, on the cross, in order to meet the holiness of God and secure His sheep. Psalm 23 presents the Lord Jesus as the Shepherd leading His sheep through a wilderness world. Psalm 24 presents the Lord Jesus as the King — the LORD of hosts — bringing His people into the kingdom glory.
v.ch.23This sweet and very lovely strain presents a perfect expression of the confidence and rejoicing which belong abidingly to the family of faith. We may view it in two ways. First, as it relates to Jesus, whose secret experiences of joy and refreshment, in the days of His weary pilgrimage for our sakes, were tasted by Him in communion with the Father, who upheld and cheered Him as the beloved servant of His choice (Isa. 13:1). Jesus knew the Father as the absolute guide and disposer of His way. When declaring Himself to be the good shepherd, whose faithfulness was presently to be witnessed by His dying for the sheep, the blessed Lord appears to make immediate allusion to this Psalm in its relation to Himself. "I am the good shepherd; and I know my sheep and am known of mine, even as the Father knows me and I know the Father." When earthly refuge failed Him, and no man cared for His soul, He found a shepherd in Jehovah; rejoicing in spirit amid the most heart-sickening evidences of the apparent futility of all that He had wrought (Isa. 49:4; Matt. 11:25), and finding meat and drink where only weariness and exhaustion seemed to be His portion (John 4). Regarded thus, the Psalm presents abundant matter for the Christian's happy meditation on the grace of Him whose self-chosen poverty was for our sakes. But, secondly, and more practically, it is the blessedness of the believer as a sheep of Christ that forms the rich and fruitful subject of this invaluable Psalm. Looked at in this latter sense it stands in an obvious relation to the one immediately preceding, the meek of the earth already tasting, through the revealing power of the Comforter, the satisfying portion of "the bread of God."
v.ch.23The springs of the spiritual man are in God. But the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ is the unstopping of those springs for their perennial flow of blessing to the thirsting spirit. The strength of the believer, while fulfilling here below his pilgrim days, is the knowledge of Jesus, the shepherd and bishop of his soul. He knows Him thus according to the full glory of His person now justified divinely in the Spirit; brought from the dead through the blood of the everlasting covenant, and crowned with honour and dominion in the heavenly places. Jesus alive from the dead is the effectual minister of the peace of God. He is Himself our peace. In Him the God of peace is known, who preaches peace by Jesus Christ when speaking by His Son from heaven in the gospel of His grace (Acts 10:36; Heb. 1:2). To be able to say by faith, "The Lord is my shepherd," is to be assured of everlasting immunity from spiritual want. The path of light and safety is made plain and even through the wilderness of life to the poor and feeble saint, who, needing all the grace and power of Divine sufficiency for his guidance and comfort here below, finds God's full treasures opened in all their richness, and ministered with ever ready application to his own peculiar need by the sympathizing tenderness of a Saviour who claims the friendship of the saved. Jesus loves His own, and serves them in His love; governing and leading them meanwhile as their Master and their Lord — the ruler of his own house — the keeper of His purchased flock.
v.ch.23The soul turns instinctively to Jesus as its rest when once His love is known. Confidence, deep seated in the heart whose secret grief has been disclosed to Him who gives rest to the weary, in the revelation of His finished work of grace, is the sentiment with which the believer as a sheep of Christ regards Him as the Shepherd. "I know my sheep, and am known of mine." He is known in this gracious character — known therefore to be trusted and relied upon. All the blessedness which finds such bold expression in this Psalm belongs by God's free gift to every saint; for they are the experimental development to faith of what Christ personally is, and He is the Shepherd of the sheep — of all the flock. But a just appreciation of the blessings to which believers have this common title must be the effect of vigilant obedience to His voice who goes before His sheep, to lead them and to keep them in the way of peace. We have then in the present Psalm the rich utterance of a faith matured in all true godly experience, while learning through faith and patience the deep and divinely taught knowledge of the grace of God. The words are David's; but as the Spirit of the Lord spake by him, his experimental utterances have a meaning in them far beyond the limits of his personal communion. It is for those in whom Christ dwells by the spirit of adoption to enjoy to the full the language of this Psalm. Let us briefly analyze its general contents as they show themselves in the full light of gospel truth.
v.ch.23It has been well observed that Psalm 22 presents Christ as "the good Shepherd" giving His life for the sheep (in. 10:11), while Psalm 23 shows Him as "the great Shepherd of the sheep" brought up from the dead by "the God of peace" (Heb. 13:20). As we see Him raised and now seated at the right hand of God, this gives marvelous confidence to speak decidedly and firmly these words of precious assurance. Actually, the psalm is written from Israel's viewpoint, describing the blessing of the godly remnant of that nation when they at last realize that Christ is indeed their Messiah. No doubt the psalm was a great comfort to Jewish believers even during Old Testament times, though they could not understand its full import; and it is also a comfort to all believers today, for they can see in it a picture of even higher blessing than is seen on the surface; for the Church is blessed "with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ" (Eph. 1:3). The literal blessings given to Israel therefore become the picture of spiritual blessings given to the believer today. We may thus receive fully as much joy from the psalm as Israel can.
v.1
(A Psalm of David.) Jehovah is my shepherd; I shall not want.
The Lord (Jehovah) is my Shepherd. Everything depends upon the relationship, whether we can truly adopt this language. Every one can say the Lord is a Shepherd; and hence all the significance of this statement is connected with the little word "my." To say "my" Shepherd is the language of faith: the word "my" is, therefore, the doorway into the psalm. How blessed if we can, then, adopt these words as our own, and say He is our Shepherd. And what follows? "I shall not want." We shall not want, not because we are sheep, but because He is our Shepherd. This conclusion flows, not from what we are to Him, but from what He is to us. It is very strengthening to the soul to see this clearly, for many of us are apt to begin with ourselves; and consequently, as we discover what poor, feeble, wayward creatures we are, we fall into doubts and anxieties. But when we begin with the Lord, consider what He is — what He is in Himself, as well as what He is in relationship to us, we obtain the well-grounded assurance that we "shall not want." For surely it belongs to the Shepherd to provide for the sheep. How foolish it were even in children to question their parents as to how their wants were to be met on the morrow! Much more foolish would it be on our parts — when we have such a Shepherd. Enough for our hearts surely to know that He is ours, and in that sweet confidence we can leave everything in His hands, "who shall feed (tend) His flock like a Shepherd" (Isa. 40:11). He is ours, and we have everything in Him; and hence the heart can rest in perfect peace — in the full assurance of His unfailing love, omnipotent power, and unwearied care.
v.1This is precious faith! Mark it well, O my soul, and patiently meditate thereon. It is most practical; "The Lord is my shepherd." It rises, observe, above what He gives, what He does, what He promises, blessed as these are, and calmly rests on what He is Himself. As the eye of Abraham rested not on the promises, when he put forth his hand to slay his son, but on Him from whom the promises came, so here, the eye of the pilgrim resting on the Lord, he can say, "I shall not want." When such confidence fills the heart, peace, evenness and quietness will characterise the life.
But knowest thou, my soul, the secret spring of such a blessed state? How is it that so few rise to this measure? Hast thou? Hast thou this rejoicing and confidence in the Lord, in the midst of wilderness circumstances? "The Lord is my shepherd" sounds like the voice of one rejoicing. "I shall not want," like that of quiet confidence.
It is one thing to say "The Lord is the Shepherd," and quite another to say "The Lord is my Shepherd." The first is a matter of knowledge; the last is a question of experience. "The Lord is my Shepherd" is the language of one who has proved the Lord in the varied circumstances of his pathway, and gladly submits to His leading.
This is only what we might expect. If God undertakes to provide for any one, or for any people, the provision, must of necessity, be perfect. It is wholly impossible that God could omit any one thing needful. He knows all things, and can do all things. Nothing can escape His vigilant eye; nothing is beyond His omnipotent hand. Hence, therefore, all those who can truly say, "The Lord is my Shepherd," may add, without hesitancy or reserve, "I shall not want." The soul that is, in truth and reality, leaning on the arm of the living God can never — shall never — want any good thing. The poor foolish heart may imagine a thousand wants; but God knows what we really want, and He will provide for ALL.
v.1(v. 1) The psalm opens with the assurance of the godly that the Lord is his Shepherd. All that follows in the psalm flows from this assurance. The One who died for the believer is known as the One who lives, and cares for the believer. In this confidence the wilderness journey is faced and the varied needs are met.
First, there are “wants” connected with this scene, but, confiding in the Lord, the believer says, “I shall not want.”