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I thought I was reading an overtuned ELI5 machine translation for a minute. This is awful and significantly more difficult to read than even the KJV, which isn't exactly friendly for modern readers.

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It's a tough translation. That section starts "The lord is my shepherd", and continues with a sheep metaphor, with "green pastures" and water, the things sheep need. Sheep draw confidence from the shepherd; they're herd animals and the shepherd is their alpha. Sheep are very herd-bound, far more than cattle or horses; a little bit of guidance and the whole flock follows. They've been bred for docility for millennia; the ones that were easy to herd were kept and bred. The people who wrote that were writing for an audience which knew that; today's audience has probably never seen sheep being herded. Modern versions face the question of how much explanatory material to attach, or whether to try to express that in the main text. Scholars prefer translator footnotes; preachers don't.

Still, if you're not translating between languages, it's probably best to stay with the original. Compare, say, Kipling's "007".[1] This assumes some knowledge of railroading in the steam era. "Modernizing" Kipling would be a terrible mistake. It's probably best to leave anything post-1800 entirely as original. And don't even try to "clean up" Shakespeare. It's been done.[2]

[1] https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/k/kipling/rudyard/days/chapte... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bowdler

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