Summary: Bible - Book of Psalms

The GIST

Psalms, a book of the Bible, is the songbook of ancient Israel: an anthology of Hebrew hymns, prayers and laments that Jews and Christians still sing and recite as their own prayers. Its Hebrew name, Tehillim, means "praises". Its English name comes from a Greek word for instrumental music and, by extension, the words that go with it. It opens the third section of the Hebrew Bible, the Writings, and stands in the Christian Old Testament. Jewish and Western Christian tradition count 150 psalms, and the Eastern churches have a few more.

Seventy-three psalms carry the name of King David in their headings, and others name Asaph, the sons of Korah, Solomon, Moses, Ethan and Heman. Modern scholars do not treat David's authorship as historical fact; they see the headings as a way of tying the poems to famous figures, and they call the dating of the psalms notoriously hard. What nobody disputes is the range of the book. Every mood a person can bring before God is here, from wild joy to the bottom of the pit, in poetry spare enough to be learned by heart.

What It Says

The psalms tell no single story. They are separate poems, built on parallelism: a line is answered by a second that repeats it, sharpens it or turns it over. "The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?" is followed at once by its echo, "the LORD is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?" The collection is arranged in five books, each closing with a doxology, a short burst of blessing. The editors probably meant the five to mirror the five books of the Torah.

Book 1 (Psalms 1 to 41). Two psalms stand at the gate. The first is a picture of two ways of living. The person who delights in God's law "shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water", while the ungodly "are like the chaff which the wind driveth away". The second lifts the view from one life to the nations: "Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?" God laughs from heaven at kings who plot against him and declares, "Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion."

Most of this book carries David's name, and one scholar characterizes it as the book of opposition and of trust. Its poems move between distress and confidence. "How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? for ever?" asks Psalm 13. Psalm 8 looks up at the moon and the stars and wonders, "What is man, that thou art mindful of him?", then answers that God has made him "a little lower than the angels". Psalm 19 hears the sky itself preaching: "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork." Psalm 22 opens with the starkest cry in the book: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Right beside it stands the best loved of all: "The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want." Its speaker lies down in green pastures, walks beside still waters and can say, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me". Psalm 30 gives the pattern of the whole book in a single line: "weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning."

Book 2 (Psalms 42 to 72). The second book begins with thirst: "As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God." The speaker argues with his own sadness, "Why art thou cast down, O my soul?", and the same refrain returns in the next psalm, which is why Psalms 42 and 43 are thought to be parts of one poem. Psalm 46 is the great song of security: "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble." Psalm 51 is the great song of repentance, a plea with nothing held back: "Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness", and then, "Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me."

Book 3 (Psalms 73 to 89). The mood darkens. Psalm 73 starts with the creed, "Truly God is good to Israel", and immediately admits how near the speaker came to losing it: "But as for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had well nigh slipped." What shook him was the sight of wicked people doing well: "They are not in trouble as other men". Psalm 88 is a prayer from someone who feels already buried: "Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps." Psalm 89 begins by singing of God's sworn promise, "I have made a covenant with my chosen, I have sworn unto David my servant", and one influential reading of the Psalter finds its turning point here, in the apparent failure of that covenant.

Book 4 (Psalms 90 to 106). The answer to that crisis is to look further back and higher up. "Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations", Psalm 90 begins, setting human life, which is like grass that flourishes in the morning and is cut down by evening, against a God for whom "a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past". Psalm 91 promises shelter to the one who "dwelleth in the secret place of the most High". A run of psalms in this book, especially 93 to 99, celebrates God as king, and the invitation goes out to everyone: "Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all ye lands." Psalm 103 turns praise inward, "Bless the LORD, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name", and Psalm 104 turns it outward to creation, to a God "Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment" and who "walketh upon the wings of the wind".

Book 5 (Psalms 107 to 150). The last book is the longest and the most varied. It opens with thanksgiving, "O give thanks unto the LORD, for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever", a line that becomes the refrain of Psalm 136, repeated verse after verse. Psalm 110 is a royal oracle: "The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool." Psalm 119 is a meditation on the law: "Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the LORD."

Then come the fifteen Songs of Ascents, Psalms 120 to 134, a group set apart by a shared heading. They include some of the most quoted lines in the Bible: "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help"; "Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it"; "Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O LORD"; and "Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!" Psalm 137 remembers exile: "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion." The captives hang up their harps and ask, "How shall we sing the LORD's song in a strange land?" Psalm 139 is the most intimate of all: "O LORD, thou hast searched me, and known me."

The book ends in pure praise. The final psalm calls for trumpet, harp, timbrel, dance, strings and cymbals, and its last verse opens the choir to all creation: "Let every thing that hath breath praise the LORD."

The kinds of psalm. The scholar Hermann Gunkel sorted the psalms by type instead of by position, and his categories are still used. Hymns praise God for creation or for his acts in history. Laments, of a community or of one person, are the most common kind; they address God, describe the suffering, plead for help and often end in confidence. Royal psalms concern the king's coronation, marriage and battles, though none names a king. Thanksgiving psalms look back on a rescue. There are also wisdom psalms, pilgrimage psalms and liturgies. Running through them all is a shared assumption that God hears. When God "hides his face", the psalmists say so, and keep praying.

Why It Matters

The psalms were written to be sung. Scholars think most came from the southern kingdom of Judah and were tied to the Temple in Jerusalem, and the headings preserve musical directions, the names of instruments and what seem to be the names of tunes. Their composition is said to span at least five centuries. The collection itself took time to settle: the large Psalms scroll among the Dead Sea Scrolls shows that the order and contents of Psalms 90 to 150 were still fluid in the first century CE, and the existence of a Psalm 151 and other extra psalms suggests the 150 were chosen from a wider body.

Why the psalms stand in the order they do is debated. One view reads the finished book as a look back on the failed Davidic covenant that calls Israel to trust God alone. Another sees it as instruction in the life of faith, moving from the obedience of Psalm 1 through the doubt of Psalm 73 to the unqualified praise of Psalm 150. A third finds in it a programme pointing to a future king. Each has its supporters.

In Jewish practice the psalms run through daily prayer. Psalm 145 is said three times a day, a set psalm belongs to each day of the week, psalms are recited beside the dead until burial, and many Jews read through the whole book every week or month. Christians have used them in worship from the beginning. Orthodox, Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed and Anglican churches all recite them in regular cycles; Psalm 23 is widely chosen for funerals, Psalm 51 for repentance, and Psalm 22 for Lent. After the Reformation many were recast as rhyming hymns, and a book of psalm settings, the Bay Psalm Book of 1640, was the first book printed in North America. In Islam the psalms are the Zabur, the scripture believed to have been given to David.

Who Should Read It

Anyone who wants words for prayer, grief, gratitude or awe, and anyone who loves poetry. The psalms ask for no background and no particular mood; there is one for the best day of a life and one for the worst. Lovers of music and of the English language will find here the source of phrases they already know.