Yea, Though I Walk Through the Valley, Psalm 23:4 Wall Art

Down into the valley

We stand behind the travelers. The shepherd, in a cream robe with a blue wrap and a long rust mantle, walks away from us down a narrow stony track, his tall crook in his right hand. Two woolly sheep keep close behind him, heads down, following rather than being driven. Tan boulders and olive-green scrub crowd both sides of the path, and a gnarled tree leans out from the rocks on the left.

Ahead, the ground drops into a deep valley where a pale river winds between ridges of blue and violet, dotted with dark cypresses. The sun is low and small over the far hills, the sky washed in peach. Above the scene, in three lines of brown lettering: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil”, then Psalm 23:4.

What does “the valley of the shadow of death” mean?

In the King James Version the verse goes on: “for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” The Hebrew phrase translated “shadow of death” can also be read as “deepest darkness”, and several modern Bibles render it “the darkest valley”. Either way, the picture is concrete: in the Judean hills, shepherds moving between pastures had to take their flocks down steep, narrow ravines where the light disappears early and danger can hide behind any rock.

Notice what changes in the grammar. Until this line, David speaks about the shepherd: he makes me lie down, he leads me. Here, in the dark, he stops describing God and starts speaking to him: “thou art with me”. The worst moment of the psalm is also its closest.

The rod and the staff are two different tools. The rod was a short club for driving off wild animals; the staff was the long crook used to guide, lean on and pull a sheep back from a ledge. One protects, the other steers, and David says both bring comfort.

Sending it in sympathy

Psalm 23 is read at more funerals than almost any other passage, and verse 4 is the line people hold on to. As a memorial gift, this print says what a card often cannot: that the person grieving is not walking alone. It also helps those facing a hard diagnosis, a deployment or a long night in a hospital, and can hang quietly in a bedroom or hallway where it will be seen each day.