Well I must say I prefer the older version of this psalm. I believe it really should read the valley of death not “dark valley”.
Why is this posted? Are you looking for comments on the 23rd Psalm?
I can tell you a story about a friend of mine who had a life changing turn of heart at one point in her life when she gave up drinking. She said before, when she was a drinker, this psalm made her disgusted with the idea of religion and God because she perceived the language (which used to read “thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me”) as being a painful punishment was supposed to be desireable and, of course, unacceptable position on God because to her it talked about God’s meanness and punishment with a rod. (She didn’t know the story of Moses’ staff helping the Israelites apparently, nor the reference to shepherding. Later when one day she went to AA thinking if she didn’t stop drinking, she’d die of her disease, the first thing she heard at the meeting was this psalm, read at a moment when her heart was open-- and for the first time she realized it was about the unbelievable comfort and love of protection of God David was speaking about.
All these verses are found meaningful when the Spirit of God is present. When the Spirit is far from a person, no amount of discussion would make sense of the lessons, nor would the beauty of of the verses be evident. And all kinds of misreadings can take place without the Spirit teaching us.
