Tool Beta
Is It Actually in the Bible?
Phrases people quote as Scripture. The real verse, or the honest answer that there is not one.
"I shall not want" in Psalm 23 means "I will not desire anything"
"Want" in 1611 meant "lack," a statement about provision, not about desire.
Psalm 23:1, in every translation this tool compares.
"The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want" (Psalm 23:1, KJV). Modern "want" primarily means to desire something; the older, still-surviving sense (as in "a house wanting repair," or "for want of a nail") is "to lack" or "to be without." The Hebrew verb behind it, chaser, means exactly that: to lack, to be in need.
Read with the modern sense, the verse can sound like a claim that a shepherded life produces no desires at all, which isn't the point being made. Read correctly, it's a claim about provision: with the Lord as shepherd, nothing genuinely needed will be missing, which is why modern translations often render it simply "I lack nothing."
