The Lord is My Shepherd (Eastman Johnson) The Lord is My Shepherd (Eastman Johnson) The Lord is My Shepherd is an 1863 oil on wood painting by American artist Eastman Johnson. The painting measures 16 5/8 x 13 1/8 in. (42.3 x 33.2 cm.) and is on display at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The title of the painting comes from Psalm 23, which begins with the line: "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want." Johnson painted it just after the Emancipation Proclamation was announced in 1863. Its imagery includes an African-American man reading the first part of a Bible, possibly the Book of Exodus.
Psalm 118 Psalm 118 Psalm 118 is the 118th psalm of the Book of Psalms. Its themes are thanksgiving to God and reliance on God rather than on human strength. This psalm is centered on God, in a movement that expresses gratitude, admiration, joy and praise. In the translation of King James, we read of the Lord in every verse. Its benefits are magnified, the narrator testifies that he benefits from it and exhorts to enter into the same attitude of praise. The Psalm is one of the so-called Egyptian Hallel. These words are parallelled in the Song of Moses () and