Scottish Psalter, 1650

The text known as “The Lord's My Shepherd” is not the work of one securely identifiable hymn writer. It is the metrical form of Psalm 23 printed in “The Psalms of David in Meeter,” authorized by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and published in Edinburgh in 1650. Its history reaches back through earlier English and Scottish psalters and through the work of Francis Rous, whose metrical psalter was examined and extensively revised by the Westminster Assembly before undergoing further revision in Scotland.

Detailed comparison of Psalm 23 shows that the final 1650 form drew language from several earlier sources, including William Whittingham, Thomas Norton, Francis Rous, Zachary Boyd, Sir William Mure of Rowallan, the Westminster revisers, and the Church of Scotland's own committees. Boyd's 1648 version supplied the now-familiar opening, while other lines came from older psalm traditions or were reshaped during successive revisions.

For that reason, attribution to the Scottish Psalter is historically safer than assigning the whole text to Rous alone. The final version represents collaborative Reformed psalmody: Scripture was rendered into common meter so that congregations and families could sing the Psalms together.