Visible Goodness
Day 304 – 31 October
Followed Home by Goodness
“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.” (Psalm 23:6, KJV)
Two Grandsons at an Old Man’s Side
Word reached Joseph in Egypt that his father was ill (Genesis 48:1), and he went to Jacob’s bedside with his two sons. By then “the eyes of Israel were dim for age, so that he could not see,” so the old man drew his grandsons in close, “and he kissed them, and embraced them” (Genesis 48:10). With Ephraim and Manasseh beside him, he blessed Joseph and spoke of “the God which fed me all my life long unto this day” (Genesis 48:15).
Behind the word “fed” stands ra’ah (to tend a flock, to shepherd), and Brown, Driver and Briggs render the line “God, who shepherded me”. Coming from Jacob, of all people, it was a remarkable confession, because so much of his life had felt like a chase. He had fled from his brother’s anger as a young man (Genesis 27:41–43), and twenty years later, when he slipped away from his father-in-law, Laban “pursued after him seven days’ journey; and they overtook him in the mount Gilead” (Genesis 31:23). Yet with his sight failing and his strength nearly spent, the man who had spent so many years fearing what came behind him named a Shepherd who had walked every mile of it with him.
The Hunter’s Verb
David sang of that same Shepherd, and in the last line of his psalm he reached for a word that Jacob’s story knows well. Behind “shall follow me” stands yirdefuni (they shall pursue me), a form of radaf (to pursue, to chase), the very verb used of Laban on the road to Gilead and of Pharaoh’s chariots at the sea: “But the Egyptians pursued after them” (Exodus 14:9). Strong’s describes it as running after someone “usually with hostile intent”, and the King James translators most often rendered it “pursue” or “persecute”. Some translators prefer a gentler “accompany” in this psalm, and Brown, Driver and Briggs list the verse under the friendly sense “attend closely upon”, yet the word keeps its hunter’s ring all the same.
That makes David’s line all the more startling. In this psalm the enemies are reduced to onlookers while a table is spread before David (Psalm 23:5), and the verb of the chase is handed to tov (goodness) and chesed (steadfast love, loyal kindness). The translators of the NET Bible observe that nowhere else in the Old Testament does either word stand as the subject of this verb, so the only pursuers at David’s back are goodness and kindness, and they keep after him “all the days of my life”, every one of them.
A small word at the front of the verse makes the claim sure. It is ak (surely, only), which can carry the force of “nothing but”: nothing but goodness and kindness at his back.
Goodness With No Ground to Make Up
A hunter’s verb for goodness is, of course, a figure of speech, the kind by which Scripture gives a quality feet so that ordinary readers can feel what it means. God Himself travels nowhere, since He already fills every place, as David asked elsewhere, “Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?” (Psalm 139:7). So the pursuit has nothing to do with goodness hurrying to close a gap or arriving late after a delay. It describes constancy as the walker experiences it: however far a person wanders, and whichever way they run, the goodness of God is already there at their heels.
That same constancy explains why the shadowed valley earlier in the psalm holds no terror for its singer, “for thou art with me” (Psalm 23:4). It also explains why the comfort belongs to every reader alike, whoever and wherever they are, since “The LORD is good to all” (Psalm 145:9). No one in this flock walks with an empty road behind them.
Turning Round at Last
The road behind the walker leads into a surprise of its own in the second half of the verse. The Hebrew vowels printed in the Masoretic text read veshavti (and I shall return), from shuv (to turn back, to return), while the ancient Greek translators (“my dwelling”) and most English versions (“I will dwell”) take the same letters from yashav (to sit, to dwell). Scholars weigh both readings, and the King James follows the second. Either way the line ends at home, and the first reading lets the psalm close on an echo, because the root shuv (to turn back) has already sounded in its third verse, “He restoreth my soul” (Psalm 23:3), where yeshovev (he brings back) speaks of the soul restored.
As far as the Shepherd is concerned, that restoring is whole and the way home stands open; what grows is the walker’s experience of it. On that reading, the psalm ends with a man who finally turns round. All his life goodness and kindness were close behind him, and now he faces them, sees them for what they always were, and walks home in their company. “The house of the LORD” here names a life lived in His presence, since no building could ever contain the One who fills heaven and earth, and the Hebrew le’orekh yamim (for length of days) stretches that homecoming across the whole of life, beginning in the very days David was still living.
From One Taste to All the Days
A whole life of days makes a fitting end to a month that began with one small mouthful. October opened with an invitation in another psalm, “O taste and see that the LORD is good” (Psalm 34:8), where ta’am (to taste) asked readers to experience goodness for themselves, and it closes with goodness spread across every day of a life. In between, the weeks followed that goodness from its Source into ordinary lives that go about doing good, into conduct that makes the gospel lovely to the eye, into answers given gently when someone asks why, and at last into the years themselves. Even the “paths of righteousness” in Psalm 23:3, ma’gelei-tsedeq (tracks of righteousness), belong to the same story, because ma’gal (a wagon track) is the word that, in Psalm 65:11, carried the image of a laden cart spilling plenty in its ruts, and the tracks along which the Shepherd leads are the very tracks along which goodness follows.
On this last Saturday of October, walk back over the month in your mind or in your diary and look behind you. Name the places where goodness and kindness kept close behind you: a meal that arrived on a tired evening, a word that came at exactly the right moment, a door that opened when you expected it to stay shut. Give thanks to the One whose goodness it was. Then become part of someone else’s pursuit, so that a neighbour, a colleague or a lonely friend finds kindness coming after them this week because you were near.
Declaration
Something good has been on my trail for as long as I can remember. When I glance over my shoulder this morning, the kindness is still there, one step behind me. The seasons that felt like a chase were never walked alone. I head home alongside what has followed me, and I lend my hands to the goodness that is following others. Wherever this road bends next, it bends towards home.
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