But it is not only by a process of reasoning that we must identify Psalm 22 as a prophecy of Jesus' death and resurrection. As we study the New Testament, we also find that this is its explicit teaching.

One of the fascinating features of careful Bible study is that we so often come upon statements that are tantalizing but which we cannot fully understand. An example is the well-known statement of Jesus to the Emmaus disciples recorded in Luke 24:27.

This verse is often used to comfort those who are dying, and it is not wrongly used in this way. God is certainly a source of comfort in a person's dying moments. However, this verse primarily speaks of the shepherd's ability to protect his sheep in moments of danger. The picture, as Keller points out, is of the passage from the lowlands, where sheep spend the winter, through the valleys and then to the high pastures where they go in summer. The valleys are places of rich pasture and much water, but they are also places of danger. Wild animals lurk in the broken canyon walls. Sudden storms may sweep along the valley floors. There may be floods. Since the sun does not shine into the valley very well, there really are shadows which at any moment may become shadows of death.

I shall not lack life. This is because "he restores my soul" (v. 3). In Hebrew idiom the words "restores my soul" can mean "brings me to repentance” (or conversion).⁵ But since the word translated "soul" is actually “life,” and since the metaphor here is that of shepherding, the words probably mean "the LORD restores me to physical health" (or salvation). In the book on this psalm which I referred to earlier, Phillip Keller explains this by the situation known to shepherds as a "cast (or cast down) sheep.”

The twenty-third psalm is the most beloved of the 150 psalms in the psalter, and possibly the best loved (and best known) chapter in the entire Bible. The great Baptist preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon called it "the pearl of psalms."¹ J. J. Stewart Perowne, the nineteenth century preacher and commentator, observed that "there is no psalm in which the absence of all doubt, misgiving, fear and anxiety is so remarkable."² Alexander Maclaren said that "the world could spare many a large book better than this sunny little psalm. It has dried many tears and supplied the mold into which many hearts have poured their peaceful faith."³