Psalm 23, the most beloved of the Psalms, contains a perplexing riddle. What can it possibly mean that God prepares a table in the presence of the psalmist's enemies? Matthew Umbarger proposes that Psalm 23:5 makes the most sense when read according to its cultural context of prebattle covenant banquets. Beginning with ancient Mesopotamian mythology, Umbarger traces a conceptual trajectory of the prebattle banquet motif that reaches its zenith in the apocalyptic banquets of Second Temple Period literature and the eucharistic theology of the early church.
