Acting upon this conviction Watts boldly departed from the ideal of most of those who have paraphrased the Psalter.
In all places I have kept my grand design in view, and that is, to teach my author to speak like a Christian.... I have chosen rather to imitate than translate, and thus to compose a psalm-book for Christians, after the manner of the Jewish Psalter.... I have not been so curious and exact in striving everywhere to express the ancient sense and meaning of David, but have rather expressed myself as I may suppose David would have done, had he lived in the days of Christianity.[98]
Not only does common sense confirm Watts’s general principle; his own success, partial though it was, justified the new departure, and from his day to ours the most useful and the most poetic versions of Psalms are those which ‘teach the author to speak like a Christian.’ Yet, if a psalm could be dealt with from the Old Testament standpoint without inappropriateness to Christian worship, Watts preferred to retain the original idea. Thus in all his versions of the 23rd Psalm he makes no reference to the Good Shepherd of the New Testament. His best version—and it is very good—is as suitable for the synagogue as the meeting-house.
My Shepherd will supply my need;
Jehovah is His Name;
In pastures fresh He makes me feed,
Beside the living stream.
The Methodist Hymn-book omits the last verse, which is given in most other collections—
There would I find a settled rest,
While others go and come;