Shall Not Want

In the hill country of Judah a shepherd was usually a younger son or a hired man, and the job was not pastoral in the way we use that word. It was a job with a weapon in it. Wolves, jackals, the occasional lion, thieves, and a flock too stupid to run in the right direction.

Hold that picture and let it run the whole way through, because the psalm does. Verse 1 makes the claim: the LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. Then every line after it is a shepherd's actual task list. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, which is grazing management. He leadeth me beside the still waters, because sheep will not drink from fast water. He restoreth my soul, which is what you do with an animal that has wandered off and gone weak. The next clause has him leading along right tracks, the ones that actually go somewhere. Thy rod and thy staff, one to fight with and one to hook a sheep back from an edge.

Notice what the sheep never does in that list. It does not select the field. It does not locate the water. It does not choose the route or negotiate about the rod. Shall not want does not mean it gets everything it can imagine; it means the animal is never short of what the shepherd knows it needs, and the shepherd is the one who knows.

Here is the truth in it, and it cuts both ways. Being kept by a competent shepherd is not the same as being consulted, and a sheep that insisted on choosing its own pasture would not be freer. It would be thinner.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 46 is A Hearing Heart (1 Kings 3:9).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna