מִזְמוֹר לְדָוִד. is how Psalm 23 starts, and it’s been difficult to get past this first line as I reflect and wonder. It is usually translated as ‘A song of David’ but the first of these Hebrew words (read right to left, of course) sounds like mizmoor and comes from the verb זמר (zamar), which means ‘to pluck’. When I think of the title as a ‘Plucking of David’ it evokes for me an imaginary picture of David playing his lyre and singing simple songs that as a boy he’d made up in the fields while tending sheep and later sang to comfort King Saul in the palace long before responsibility for the kingdom shifted onto David.
Perhaps there is also something for me in the thought that the words I’m reading have been ‘plucked’ from God to remind us who God is. It also causes me to remember how, in my girlhood decision to make Jesus my LORD I felt ‘plucked’ from simply being alive into the strange experience of feeling ‘chosen’ to become a follower.
Another thing that hinders me today from moving on within the psalm is noting where it sits within the Hymn-book of the ancients: I find it nestling between Psalm 22, which describes the suffering that Jesus identifies with while being crucified, and Psalm 24 which calls the world to open its gates to the King of glory. Psalm 23 addresses neither suffering nor glory, but rather the period of time between the cross and the return of the LORD almighty… the time I so often think of merely as ‘my life’, and take so much for granted.
Lisa Battye blogs 