IN EXTREMIS

Verse Fourth,

"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil 5 for Thou art with me:

Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me."

There is some difficulty about the correct translation of this verse. In ancient Hebrew manuscripts there were no vowels; only the consonants are written, the vowels ' having to be supplied by the reader. This sometimes introduces considerable uncertainty. And in the present case it depends on the vowel or vowels supplied by the reader whether the rendering shall be "the valley of shadows" or "the valley of the shadow of death." The latter phrase, even if it be incorrect, is in some respects an extremely happy one, and it has obtained so strong a hold in everyday speech that it is neither likely nor desirable that it should be displaced. Yet I am inclined to think that "the valley of shadows" is what the writer intended to say.

It reminds us of a phrase in another famous Psalm, "the valley of Baca," which probably means "Weeping." So the Revised Version renders it:

Passing through the Valley of Weeping, they make it a place of springs;

Yea, the early rain covereth it with blessings.

"The valley of shadows" and "the valley of weeping" must have the same meaning. They are expressions for a particularly trying portion of that ideal journey which all must travel between the cradle and the grave.

It is more than possible, however, that there may have been some actual place bearing the name of the Valley of Shadows in the scenery from which the imagery of this Psalm is borrowed. Somewhere in the hills of Judah, where David kept his flocks, there was a glen through which, at nightfall, the shepherd boy used to lead home his sheep. They called it the Valley of Shadows or the Valley of the Shadow of Death; because there the darkness fell earlier than elsewhere, and the gloom of night was deeper. Its ravines were haunted by wild beasts; and, as the darkness came on, the distant howl of wolf or hyaena could be heard. David could remember how, at such moments, his sheep huddled closely about his heels, and he prepared to do battle, if necessary, for their lives. Since then he had learned that the life of man has also such passages; but, as the sheep crept under his protection, so he had learned where to place his trust: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for Thou art with me: Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me."

1. The Dark Valley,

The chief objection to the translation, "the valley of the shadow of death," is that it tends to make us think too exclusively of death as the portion of experience here intended. The dark valley may, however, occur at other stages of the journey of life.

It will be remembered where, in the Pilgrim's Progress, the Valley of the Shadow of Death comes in. It is not at the end, but in the first half of the pilgrim’s journey. In thus locating it Bunyan was taking a justifiable liberty, guided by his personal experience; and never has the scene itself been more graphically described. You remember that perilous path, with a ditch on one side and a quagmire on the other, so that, "when the pilgrim sought to shun the ditch on the one hand, he was ready to tip over into the mire on the other; also, when he sought to escape the mire, without great carefulness he would be ready to fall into the ditch." The Valley was dark as pitch, and full of hobgoblins, satyrs and dragons of the pit; "also he heard doleful voices and rushings to and fro"; and the path was beset with snares and nets, holes and pitfalls. Under this imagery Bunyan bodies forth the spiritual conflicts and terrors, amounting almost to melancholy madness, with which the earlier stages of his own Christian course were beset, and of which such graphic and moving descriptions are found in his autobiography, Grace Abounding. These terrible sufferings were, in large measure, due to a nervous temperament. The elements of his nature were dangerously poised; as was the case in a still more extreme degree with another great Englishman of Christian genius — the poet Cowper. But there are many who, if asked to say what to them had been the valley of the shadow of death, would at once think of the period when they were passing through the conviction of sin, so keen was the pain and so deadly the despair which they then endured.

In the case of others, whose temperament is not so highly strung, the causes are more realistic. While there are some lives which move on equably from beginning to end with the smoothness of a boat on a canal, in most there is considerable vicissitude of joy and sorrow, as in the course of a ship which sails the high seas and has to encounter all kinds of weather; and in most also there occur, at least once or twice, crises and catastrophes, when feeling is put on the utmost strain, and the vital forces seem on the point of being crushed out by overwhelming pressure from without or within. We speak of experiences which can turn a person’s hair grey, or out of which people emerge as if they had risen from their graves. It is to such extraordinary crises that the description of the text applies.

They may be due to a thousand different causes. Some of these may be public. A great war, for example, may put an enormous strain on the feelings of the inhabitants of a country: when, for weeks and months, tens of thousands of hearts are on the rack for the news of victory or defeat, and every list of killed and wounded that appears is scanned in feverish terror of seeing the name of husband, son or brother. The passage of a devastating epidemic through a city may have a similar effect: when at every turn in the streets the passing hearse is met, and for months the wings of death seem to be flapping about every house. Sometimes a commercial panic works in the same way: when a great bank shuts its door, whereupon failure follows failure, the gentlewoman and the widow are reduced from affluence to beggary, and no man knows but the next letter he opens may inform him that the blow has fallen on his own home.

The private causes of such sufferings are too numerous to be even hinted at. Who can estimate what a wife suffers when she first perceives that her husband is becoming a victim of drink? An honest man, with a beloved wife and a young family depending on him, who is suddenly deprived of work and sees no prospect of being able to keep the wolf from the door, must sometimes in a, few weeks pass through the bitterness of death. When a heart that has trusted another and given its whole happiness into its keeping discovers at the critical moment that it has been deceived, it must appear as if the whole universe were falling and as if mankind were nothing but a lie.

But, whether the sacred poet intended it or not, it is not without significance that this experience has been called the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Death is for mankind the great Valley of Shadows. Tens of thousands would say that their bereavements had robbed them of the sap and buoyancy of life and made them old — when the mother sat by the bedside and saw the life ebbing away from the son who was the apple of her eye; when the husband laid in the grave the half of his life; when the friend lost the friend whose praise was the chief incentive to high endeavour. Death to many is an event the very thought of which simply stupefies. The stoppage of work, the interruption of plans, the forced renunciation of pleasures, the separation from the near and dear which it implies, are bewildering and horrifying; and still worse is the voyage out into the unknown, with the new experiences which may have to be encountered there. Of all enemies Death is not only the last but the worst. It was one who knew human nature well that said:

The weariest and most loathed worldly life

Which age, want, penury and imprisonment

Can lay on nature is a Paradise

To what we fear of death.

2. The Presence of God.

Again the poet is back among the experiences of his early days. As the sheep entered the Valley of the Shadows, fear huddled them close round the shepherd; but through contact with his body they became fearless; his well-known voice soothed them; even the touch of his crook, laid on them to keep them together, filled them with confidence.

It has often been asked what is the difference between the rod and the staff, but no very satisfactory answer has, as far as I am aware, been given. Some have regarded the words as two names for the same thing: but this is unlikely, as it would be a manifest tautology. Although it cannot be proved from the modern customs of the East, it is most probable that the ancient shepherd carried with him two instruments of his trade — one rod of lighter make, to be used in dealing with the sheep, and another of heavier weight and shod with iron, for the purpose of dealing with the enemies of the sheep, striking at the lion or the bear which might attack them. At all events, in God there are resources corresponding to both: He has all that is required for both the guidance and the protection of His own.

The peace and contentment of the sheep are not, however, due to the rod and staff, but to the bearer of them. And the secret of the heart’s peace is God Himself — "I will fear no evil; for Thou art with me." It is a universal experience that fear departs when the appropriate person is near on whose love, strength or wisdom we can rely. A child dreads to be alone in an empty house; but to be there along with its mother makes fear impossible. A boy lost in the crowd cries as if his heart would break; but, carried through the crowd on his father’s shoulder, he is as happy as a king. As the train rushes through the night at the rate of fifty miles an hour, what a panic it would cause if the passengers should learn that no one was on the engine; but, when they have reason to believe that the engineer is with them, they fear no evil. The prisoner placed at the bar charged with a crime of which he knows himself to be innocent would be lost if left to himself to unwind the rope which the sophistical skill of the prosecutor is twisting round his neck; but, when he looks at the advocate who is with him, armed with complete knowledge of the facts and with brilliant powers of argument, he is not afraid.

There can be no circumstances in which God is not with His own. It has been pointed out that the four verses about the Good Shepherd in the Twenty-third Psalm correspond in a remarkable way with four names of God — verse i, "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want," with Jehovah-jireh, the Lord will provide; verse 2, "He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me beside the still waters," with Jehovah- shalom, the Lord is our peace; verse 3, "He restoreth my soul: He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake," with Jehovah-tsidkenu, the Lord our righteousness; and verse 4, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me," with Jehovah-shammah, the Lord is there.

Jehovah-shammah is one of the watchwords of the spiritual life. Ascend I into heaven. He is there; descend I into hell, He is there. Be my lot in sunshine or in darkness, in health or in sickness, He is there. When I am on a bed of weakness, when I am drawing my latest breath, and when I stand before the great white throne, still Jehovah-shammah, the Lord will be there; and I will fear no evil.

This is a secret which thousands of times has transmuted the bed of death from a place of fear and mortal defeat into a scene of victory and transfiguration. This is the secret: "Lo, I am with you alway even to the end of the world. Amen."