The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters.
He restores my soul.
He leads me in paths of righteousness
for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.Psalm 23
Surely this is the most famous lyric poem in the world. Even though we may not normally think of it as a thanksgiving poem, we experience it as such. Before we consider why, we need to look closely at the poem itself.
Psalm 23 belongs to the genre known as pastoral literature. This means that the psalm’s frame of reference is the shepherd’s life. Following the widespread literary archetype known as the green world, a pastoral poem evokes the rural landscape of sheep, pastures, and water. The activities portrayed in a pastoral poem are those that a shepherd performs during the course of a typical day. Psalm 23 further belongs to a specific pastoral category known as the ideal day. Such a poem traces a shepherd’s daily routine as he cares for his sheep, and it recreates the events of the day in loving detail.
Of course Psalm 23 is not primarily about shepherds and sheep. It uses them as metaphors for the human condition. We need to be clear about how metaphor works—starting with the fact that the term itself is based on the Greek word that means “to carry over.” Metaphor secures its effect by comparing one thing (level A) to something else (level B). But its full meaning emerges only if we experience level A at the fullest possible extent before we carry over its meaning to another level. This means that we need to enter completely into the green world of Psalm 23 and its depiction of a good shepherd caring for his sheep. Overall, the actions it describes trace a daily journey from a sheepfold, over treacherous terrain to a place of grazing and drinking, and then to a midday rest in a peaceful oasis, before returning at the end of the day to the sheepfold.
What a shepherd does for his sheep, God also does for his people. We absorb that meaning as we carry over the references regarding sheep to a human level. For every detail about shepherding in the poem, we should ask and answer the question, What is something God does for us that corresponds to this detail about the life of a shepherd and his sheep? The controlling theme of the poem is providence, and it emphasizes the sufficiency of God’s provision. By the time we come to the end of the psalm, we have covered all of life—both physical and spiritual.
But how is this a thanksgiving poem? As we contemplate the ways it shows us the shepherd providing for his sheep, and the corresponding ways in which God provides for us, feelings of gratitude automatically well up within us. And as they do, we can scarcely avoid turning this gratitude into an expression of thanksgiving to God.
The takeaway this psalm offers us is that we can revel in the world’s greatest poem, contemplate the sufficiency of God’s provision for us, and turn in thanksgiving to the Good Shepherd of our lives.

The shepherd in Psalm 23 is a good shepherd. Jesus’ Good Shepherd discourse takes the psalm’s theme to a still higher level:
I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep.
John 10:14–15
—Leland Ryken, author, A Treasury of Thanksgiving
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