Jehovah Rohi

Let’s do another “Jehovah”(Yahweh) name today. A very familiar one – “Jehovah-Rohi” – “The Lord is my Shepherd”.

The big thing it is saying is that He always provides “pasture” for His people. But there are lots of others things too. For example – it is beautiful poetry in English that we don’t want to change. But in Hebrew “the valley of the shadow of death” is just “deep darkness” – and that can come to us in many ways (depression, business failure, marriage failure, ill-health etc as well as bereavement)! When we are going through “deep darkness” the English says, “you are with me”. But in Hebrew there is NO verb between the “you and me” – it is literally “YOUME” – He is that close!!!!

You remember in Bible times the shepherd went in front and led the flock. They always had two dogs who brought up the rear, making sure stragglers would keep up with rest of the sheep. One famous Scottish preachers says that there are “two dogs” in the 23rd Psalm – “goodness and mercy” and his translation says “surely goodness and mercy will DOG my footsteps ALL the days of my life.”

And then, of course, in the NT Jesus is “the Good Shepherd”(John 10:11).