Lyrics
The Lord's my Shepherd, I'll not want;
He makes me down to lie
In pastures green; He leadeth me
The quiet waters by.
My soul He doth restore again,
And me to walk doth make
Within the paths of righteousness,
E'en for His own name's sake.
Yea, though I walk in death's dark vale,
Yet will I fear no ill;
For Thou art with me, and Thy rod
And staff me comfort still.
My table Thou hast furnished
In presence of my foes;
My head Thou dost with oil anoint,
And my cup overflows.
Goodness and mercy all my life
Shall surely follow me;
And in God's house forevermore
My dwelling place shall be.
Public domain hymn text (1650). Scottish Metrical Psalter version of Psalm 23.
The Story Behind the Hymn
'The Lord's My Shepherd, I'll Not Want' comes from the Scottish Metrical Psalter of 1650, a project undertaken by the Church of Scotland to produce singable, rhymed versions of all one hundred fifty psalms for congregational use, replacing several earlier, less polished metrical attempts.
The 1650 Psalter was compiled through years of committee revision, drawing on earlier versions by English and Scottish psalters alike, and was deliberately crafted to stay unusually close to the Hebrew text's actual meaning rather than paraphrasing loosely for the sake of rhyme.
That fidelity to the original has led many hymnologists to call this particular version of Psalm 23 the finest metrical psalm translation in the English language, praised for achieving genuine poetic quality without sacrificing scriptural accuracy.
Unlike hymns written by a single credited author, this text emerged from a collaborative, church-sanctioned process spanning years, reflecting the Reformed Scottish tradition's strong historical preference for singing the Psalms themselves in careful translation rather than singing freely composed hymns.
The psalm's five stanzas trace the whole of Psalm 23 in order, from green pastures and quiet waters through death's dark vale to a table spread in the presence of enemies, closing with the promise that goodness and mercy will follow the singer into God's house forever.
The psalm's central image, God as a shepherd providing rest, food, guidance, and protection even through 'death's dark vale,' has made it one of the most widely recognized texts in the entire Bible, and this metrical setting preserves that imagery in a form built specifically for congregational singing.
It is most commonly sung today to the tune CRIMOND, composed by Jessie Seymour Irvine in 1872, a Scottish minister's daughter whose gentle, memorable melody became so closely associated with this text that the two are rarely separated in modern hymnals.
The psalm's continued use at funerals, weddings, and ordinary worship alike, across an unusually wide range of Christian traditions, reflects both the enduring power of the original Hebrew poem and the unusual care the Scottish Psalter's translators took not to diminish it.
