Footnotes

1. thy rod and thy staff. Herdsmen of the ancient near East carried both a rod and a staff. The staff (mashenah) was a long stick with a crook, used for corralling sheep and for walking. Hence in 2 Samuel 22:19, for instance, “They came upon me in the day of my calamity, and Yahweh was my staff”—i.e., “my support.” By contrast, the rod (shevet) was essentially a “Steve Harrington bat:” a two-foot club studded with nails at one end, used for defending the flock against predators. This is why in Psalm 2, we see the “rod” of iron being used to smash the nations, the enemies of God. The image here in Psalm 23 is of God’s staff comforting David by guiding and supporting him; while God’s rod comforts him by protecting him and smiting his enemies. See Floyd E. Hamilton’s discussion in The Basis of Millennial Faith, pp. 84–90, cited in Loraine Boettner, The Millennium, Revised Edition (Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1984) pp. 293–296. ↩