Psalm 23: the impact of verse 5

Maarten De Zeeuw
3 min readAug 15, 2023

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There is no Psalm with so many impact stories as Psalm 23. That concerns especially the verses 1 and 4. The denouement start in verse 5:

“You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.”

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“For the sick, injured prisoners, the Bataan Death March [of American Prisoners of War in 1942] seamed an impossible journey. As they marched, they were not fed or given water to drink. If they fell, tried to escape, or stopped to catch their breath, they were killed instantly on the spot. Randomly selected prisoners were tied to trees and shot.

Larson, when telling his remarkable story, said that he carried a copy of the New Testament and Book of Psalms in his underpants. In the face of death, he recalled his favorite bible verse which helped him remain strong when necessities were scarce.

“My favorite Psalm was, and still is, Psalm 23. When food was scarce, which was all the time, I would think of Psalm 23, ‘You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.’”

[Source: https://18472868.weebly.com/alf-r-larson.html ]

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Hilda Lebedun, Holocaust survivor from Slovakia (1922–2020), about May 1945:

“(…) And there came an order that the Wehrmacht soldiers were marched away under heavy guard with guns pointed at them. I stood there and I was remembering the 23rd Psalm, you know — “Thou hast anointed my head with oil, my cup runneth over and … in front of my enemies” — you know. Every time I say, “The Lord is my shepherd,” and I say it many times a day, I see that scene at the Danish place that they were feeding us and they were not feeding them, and they were under heavy guard. I just wished to see the SS under heavy guard — we were told they were under heavy guard also and that they would have to stand trial for atrocities.”

[Source: https://stlholocaustmuseum.org/oral-history/hilda-lebedun ]

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A female pastor from The Hague:

“On my father’s deathbed, four years ago now, I sat on his bed the night before his death and asked what his favorite psalm was. Psalm 23 he said. Oh, I said, about that rod and staff and that valley of deep darkness. No, was his decisive answer: about that cup that overflows, about that prepared table. (…)”

[Source: www.haagsedominicus.nl/teksten/2012/hd20120819.pdf ]

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The final phrase “My cup runneth over” is highly frequent on American coffee mugs.

What I cannot find, with respect to this high-impact Psalm, is examples of people heavily in the grip of the phrase “You anoint my head with oil”.

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