Part 4 | Study on Psalm 23:3

"He Restores My Soul; He Guides Me In The Paths Of Righteousness;
For His Name’s Sake." Psalm 23:3

The master of this beautiful poem moves further into the shepherding imagery. They have taken us from green pastures and idyllic waters, to now these “paths of righteousness.” But why does the ESV (the Bible translation provided in this overview) call the paths righteous? Here we enter the challenging and exciting world of translating ancient texts into our modern English. Behind that word righteousness is the Hebrew word “tseh’-dek.” And a direct translation of that word is indeed righteousness, but a Hebrew speaker could also use “tseh’-dek” to refer to the straightness of something. So the NIV and NLT has translated this as, “He guides me along the right paths,” and to be clear, none of these translations are wrong, but the idea of the shepherd taking the sheep along a straight path does add to the overall image and story to the poem. Jerusalem and the surrounding area is populated by steep hills and deep valleys. Most of these hills are hard to walk on because they are steep and rocky. Walking on them can be very treacherous. But years of shepherding has produced paths that traverse the sides of these hills, and shepherds will guide their sheep along these “right paths.” This could be the image that the author of this poem was using in this context. He’s saying that the Lord as their shepherd is guiding them along these good paths.

Remember how the Psalms are a really ancient text? This whole namesake concept is almost completely lost in our modern context, but most of the world was and still does operate within an honor-shame culture. (There can be an argument made that the social media revolution is a move back into a honor-shame setting). For an honor-shame society, name is everything. A name carries with it reputation and character. Those with a bad name aren’t trusted, or have lost the respect of the society. But those with a good name find themselves in places of honor and are trusted. It was integral in those cultures to protect your name, and members living within that model of a society will go to great lengths to bolster their name.

Here we have the eternal-creator God acting and guiding his sheep for the sake of his reputation, and don’t think that his reputation is empty. He has a very impressive resume; His name has a lot to back up. Anything that he determines to accomplish he can and will. He will uphold the sake of his name, and as such the surety that the speaker will be cared for and will be guided along the right
path is absolute.

There is nothing that has the power to stand up to the name of God. He will keep any promise that he makes, and not even the darkest valley will be able to overcome his power.