Yahweh is my shepherd: I shall lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters.
⛓ Read Psalm 23 forward — the whole chapter and its afterlife →Where this passage surfaces again, sorted by the strength of the link. Each kind of reuse — formal quotation, deliberate allusion, faint echo, figural pattern — carries its own mark. Follow any reference to read it in place.
Allusion3
A deliberate verbal borrowing without a citation formula.
"The LORD is my shepherd... he leads me beside still waters" (LXX Ps 22:1-2, hodegesen me epi hydatos anapauseos) — the shepherd-leads-to-water image directly behind "shepherds them, and leads (hodegesei) them to springs of life-giving waters." John's hodegeo echoes the psalm's verb. High volume and coherence with the Isa 49 / Ezek 34 shepherd cluster.
High confidenceThe shepherd LORD makes his flock 'lie down in green pastures.' Mark's striking detail that the people sit on the 'green grass' immediately after the shepherdless-sheep statement links the feeding to the shepherd-feeds-his-flock psalm. The unusual 'green' notation strengthens the allusion.
Medium confidenceThe shepherd who makes his flock lie down in green grass and spreads a table sounds through the detail that Jesus has the crowd 'sit down on the grass' and feeds them to the full. Matthew omits Mark's explicit 'sheep without a shepherd' yet retains the green-grass/feeding tableau of the LORD as shepherd.
Medium confidence◇ Figural1
A typological pattern re-read in a later text — no verbal quotation, high figural coherence.
The LORD as shepherd who feeds and leads the flock supplies the foundational pastoral imagery taken up in the commission to feed and tend sheep. Coherent and available, though general; the verbal link is thematic (shepherd/feed) rather than a citation.
Medium confidence