Psalm 34:1-8 vs. “Psalm 34 (Taste and See)”

Shane & Shane · checked 2026-08-01

What we checked

PassagePsalm 34:1-8 chapter ↗ 1 more proof on Psalm 34 →

Translation shownBSB (Berean Standard Bible)

Presents itself asparaphrase

Categoryadditions / omissions

AlbumPsalms II (released digitally as Psalms, Vol. 2) · 2015

Words addressed tonot addressed to God (sung about Him)

Teaching or experiencescripture set to music

Graded against the standard

Quotation criteria this song presents words as scripture, so these apply

✓Text-faithful

✗Translation named

✓Context kept

Applies to every song the Name held holy · God shown holy · true of God · the standard

✓Reverent treatment

✓ What's good

Follows Psalm 34 in the psalm's own order, verses 4 through 9, rather than lifting one memorable line out of it
Keeps the psalm's direction of travel: the testimony comes first and the invitation to taste and see grows out of it
Stays in the psalm's voice throughout. Nothing is put in God's mouth that the psalm does not put there
The bridge returns to verse 1, so the song ends where the psalm begins, on continual blessing rather than on what the singer gets
The project makes the background easy to find: the same song's devotional on The Worship Initiative tells the story behind the psalm's heading
The publisher lists all three passages the song draws on, so the extra sources are disclosed rather than hidden

⚠ Cautions

Verse 7 says the angel of the LORD; the song says the Son of God. The reading has a long history, and 1 Peter 2:3 does apply this psalm to Christ, but the identification is the song's and not the psalm's
Verse 6 says the poor man was saved from all his troubles. The song narrows that to enemies, which offers less than the psalm does on a bad day that has no enemy in it
Verse 9 promises that those who fear the LORD lack nothing, and verse 10 limits it to no good thing. The song's repeated line promises everything, without the limit
No translation is named on the release, the chart, or the publisher's page, and as a paraphrase the wording matches no translation word for word, so there is no stated text to measure it against
The psalm's heading dates it to David feigning madness before Abimelech. The song carries none of that, which is normal for a worship song and still worth reading first

Verse Proof

Psalm 34:1-8

The text in BSB (Berean Standard Bible)

“I will bless the LORD at all times; His praise will always be on my lips. My soul boasts in the LORD; let the oppressed hear and rejoice. Magnify the LORD with me; let us exalt His name together. I sought the LORD, and He answered me; He delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to Him are radiant with joy; their faces shall never be ashamed. This poor man called out, and the LORD heard him; He saved him from all his troubles. The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear Him, and he delivers them. Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!”

The psalm carries its own occasion in its heading, which credits David and dates the psalm to the time he pretended to be insane before Abimelech, who drove him away. The narrative behind that heading is 1 Samuel 21, where David, running from Saul, is recognised in the Philistine city of Gath and gets out of King Achish's court by feigning madness and letting his saliva run into his beard. So the confident lines about seeking the LORD and being delivered from every fear belong to a man looking back at a humiliating escape and calling it rescue. The first eight verses move in a clear order: a vow of continual praise, a call for others to join it, the testimony that grounds the call, and then the invitation to taste and see.

What the song says, described not quoted

The song works through the psalm in the psalm's own sequence, in reworded English rather than any translation's wording. The first verse follows verses 4 and 5: the singer sought the Lord, was answered, was delivered from fear, and those who look on Him are radiant and will never be ashamed. The second verse follows verses 6 and 7, the poor man who cried out and was heard, and then the protection that surrounds God's people. The chorus is verse 3, the call to magnify and exalt the Lord's name together, widened with a parallel line about glorifying Him. A third verse takes verses 8 and 9, taste and see, and the summons to the saints to fear the Lord. The bridge returns to verse 1, blessing the Lord day and night, and adds an image of rising incense that belongs to Psalm 141 rather than this psalm. Two lines say more than the psalm does. The song names the one who surrounds God's people as the Son of God, where verse 7 says the angel of the LORD. And it says the poor man was saved from his enemies, where verse 6 says he was saved from all his troubles.

Across the first verse, the chorus and the third verse, nothing of substance shifts. The reworking is the ordinary work of making a Hebrew poem singable in English, and what the psalm says survives it. Three things do shift, and each is checkable. First, verse 7 says the angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear Him. The song replaces the angel of the LORD with the Son of God. That identification has a long history in Christian reading, and Shane Barnard has said that working through the Psalms with his co-writer they kept seeing Christ in them. It is still a reading. Psalm 34 does not name him. Second, verse 6 says the poor man was saved from all his troubles, and the song says he was saved from his enemies. Troubles is the wider word, and the psalm chose it. Third, verse 9 says those who fear the LORD lack nothing, and verse 10 states the limit plainly: they lack no good thing. The song's repeated line promises everything, without the qualifier.

~ Faithful & Labeled: The song follows Psalm 34 closely and in the psalm's own order. Two of its lines say more than the text says. Verse 7's angel of the LORD becomes the Son of God. Verse 9's no lack becomes everything.

▸ Official upload. Now listen with the proof in mind.

Psalm 34 leaves the protector unnamed. The song names him, and the singer never has to ask.

Why it matters

Psalm 34:7 leaves someone unnamed. It says the angel of the LORD and stops, and the psalm never tells you who that is. Christians have read that figure as the pre-incarnate Son for centuries, and the New Testament does hand this psalm to Christ: 1 Peter 2:3 picks up verse 8's tasting that the Lord is good and says it of Jesus. The song is not inventing a link out of nothing.

What it does is settle the question inside the singing. A reader of Psalm 34 meets a protector the text declines to identify and has to go and work out who he is. A singer of this song is handed the answer in the same breath as the verse, at the same volume, to the same tune, and will likely never notice that a decision was made. That is worth seeing, and it is not a fault peculiar to this song. Every paraphrase makes decisions. This one is unusually easy to point at.

Is it safe to dwell on?

Sung on repeat, this song fixes your attention on God.

What repetition plants here is mostly the psalm, which is the best outcome a setting can have. Count who the lines are about and nearly all of them are about the Lord: He answered, He delivered, He heard, He saved, He is good. The singer is present as the person it happened to, not as the subject. That is why the dwelling tag is God rather than mixed, and it is why a song like this is a good thing to have running in your head for a week.

Two lines will be planted along with the psalm, because they are the ones built to repeat. One tells you who it is that surrounds you, and it tells you more than verse 7 does. The other tells you what you will be given, and it leaves off verse 10's one-word limit. Neither is a reason to stop singing. Both are a reason to read Psalm 34 through once, so that what settles in you is the psalm's promise with its own edges still on it, rather than a slightly larger promise nobody made.

Helpful comparison

The publisher's own song page lists three scripture references behind this song, not one: Psalm 34, Matthew 6:31-33, and Lamentations 3:22-23. That is an honest signal, and it is available before anyone sings a note. It also lines up with what the words do. The line about being given everything sits closer to Matthew 6:33 than to Psalm 34:9, and the bridge's day-and-night praise has more of Lamentations 3 in it than the psalm's single verse about blessing the LORD at all times. A song titled after one chapter is drawing on three, and the people who published it said so.

The occasion is the other thing worth holding next to the song. Psalm 34 is dated by its own heading to the worst improvisation of David's life. The song carries none of that, which is normal, because superscriptions almost never survive into worship music. It changes what the words cost, though. Sung cold, the psalm's opening testimony is serene. Read with its heading, it is a man calling a humiliating morning in a foreign court his deliverance. The Worship Initiative's own devotional for this song does tell that story, which counts in the project's favour. The framing is one click from the song for anyone who goes looking.

No translation is named anywhere on the release or the publisher's page, which is why the translation criterion fails even though the paraphrase tracks the psalm.

Sources

Shane & Shane — Psalm 34 (Taste and See), official album audio · (the recording checked for this proof; the label-delivered upload, "Provided to YouTube by Catapult Reservatory, LLC", ℗ 2015 The Worship Initiative, album "Psalms, Vol. 2", released 2015-10-23, writers Shane Barnard and Joseph Rigney)
Wikipedia — Psalms II (album) · (Shane & Shane's tenth studio album, released 23 October 2015 on WellHouse Records; "Psalm 34 (Taste and See)" is track 3, credited to Barnard and Rigney; twelve songs each based on a different psalm)
Apple Music — Psalms, Vol. 2 · (the album's streaming title and 23 October 2015 release date, WellHouse Records)
Worship Together — Psalm 34 (Taste and See) · (writers Shane Barnard and Joseph James Rigney, CCLI 7054932, and the three scripture references the publisher lists: Psalm 34; Matthew 6:31-33; Lamentations 3:22-23; no translation named)
PraiseCharts — Psalm 34 (Taste and See) · (billed as Shane & Shane / The Worship Initiative, album "Psalms 2", authors Joe Rigney and Shane Barnard, CCLI 7054932, no translation named)
Logos — Shane & Shane on Studying & Singing the Psalms · (Shane Barnard's own account: "I rarely start a song without a trigger from the Scriptures", and that working through the Psalms with his co-writer they "kept seeing Christ there")
The Worship Initiative — Psalm 34 (Taste and See) devotional · (the project's own devotional for this song tells the story behind the psalm's heading, David escaping King Achish of Gath by pretending to be insane)
Shane & Shane — Learn the Songs · (The Worship Initiative described as their "worship training ground", existing to "train, resource, and equip the Church to sing God's praise")
BibleRef — Psalm 34:1 · (the superscription, "when he pretended to be insane before Abimelech, who drove him away", and the 1 Samuel 21 setting at Gath)
BibleRef — Psalm 34:7 · ("The Angel of the Lord in Old Testament times was the preincarnate Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity". This is the reading the song's line follows, offered by the commentary as an interpretation of a figure the verse itself does not name)
BibleRef — 1 Peter 2:3 · (1 Peter 2:3 as "referencing Psalm 34:8")

Corrections

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