Books of the Bible

The Book of Psalms

Old Testament · Wisdom and Poetry · Genre: Poetry and prayer · Author: Many authors, including David, Asaph, the sons of Korah, Solomon, Moses, and others · Chapters: 150

The Psalms are the Bible's own prayer book and songbook, one hundred and fifty poems that carry the full range of the human heart before God: praise and lament, trust and terror, repentance and rejoicing. Here Scripture gives us words for every season of the soul and teaches us how to pray.

Start reading: Psalms chapter 1

A key verse

The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.Psalm 23:1 (KJV)

The setting and background of Psalms

The Psalms are the great songbook and prayer book of the Bible, a collection of one hundred and fifty poems gathered over many centuries and shaped into five books. They come from many hands, with David the most prominent, but also Asaph, the sons of Korah, Solomon, Moses, and others, some named and some anonymous. Together they served as the hymnbook of Israel's temple worship and the prayer book of God's people at home.

The collection holds many kinds of psalms, including hymns of praise, thanksgivings, songs of trust, wisdom psalms, royal psalms, and, most numerous of all, laments. It is arranged as a journey, opening with the two ways of the righteous and the wicked and building through every kind of prayer to an unbroken crescendo of praise in its final psalms. Its poetry works through parallelism, imagery, and honest emotion rather than rhyme.

The Psalms were written to give the people of God words for prayer and praise in every season of the soul, and they remain the church's school of prayer to this day. They are quoted in the New Testament more than any other book. In the sweep of Scripture, many psalms speak beyond their first singers to the Messiah, and Jesus prayed them, fulfilled them, and applied the suffering and the royal psalms to himself.

The story and structure of Psalms

The Psalms were gathered over many centuries and from many hands, from Moses to David to the temple singers after the exile, and shaped into a single collection arranged in five books. They served as the hymnbook and prayer book of Israel, sung in the temple and treasured in the home, and they remain the church's school of prayer to this day.

The collection holds many kinds of psalms. There are hymns of pure praise, thanksgivings for deliverance, songs of trust, psalms of wisdom that meditate on God's law, royal psalms about the king, and, most numerous of all, laments, the honest cries of those in trouble. Together they map the whole terrain of life lived before God.

What sets the Psalms apart is their raw honesty. They do not tidy up the heart before bringing it to God but pour out fear, anger, grief, and doubt as freely as joy and wonder. There are psalms that sit in unrelieved darkness and psalms that soar in unclouded praise, and this honesty teaches that God welcomes us exactly as we are.

Yet the laments almost always turn. Beginning in complaint, they move, sooner or later, toward trust, remembering who God is and what he has done, so that even the darkest psalm leans at last toward hope. The Psalms teach the heart not to deny its pain but to carry it, in prayer, all the way to God.

The whole collection is shaped as a journey, opening with the two ways of the righteous and the wicked and building, through every kind of prayer, to an unbroken crescendo of praise in its final psalms, where everything that has breath is called to praise the Lord. The book that begins with a single meditating soul ends with the whole creation in worship.

The great themes of Psalms

Key passages in Psalms

Psalms in the sweep of Scripture

The Psalms are quoted more often in the New Testament than any other Old Testament book, and they shaped the prayers and worship of Jesus and the early church. They gather up the whole life of faith and give it voice, so that believers in every age have prayed them as their own. As both the response of God's people to his word and, in a mysterious way, God's word to us, the Psalms stand at the very heart of the Bible, a bridge between the worshiper and the God who is worshiped.

Where Christ is in Psalms

Many psalms speak beyond their first singers to the Messiah, and Jesus prayed them, fulfilled them, and applied them to himself. He is the true King of the royal psalms, the good shepherd of Psalm 23, and the suffering righteous one of Psalm 22, whose opening words he spoke from the cross. The praises the Psalms lift find their fullest object in him, and through him the church prays them still.

How to read Psalms well

Pray the Psalms, do not only read them, letting them give you words when your own fail and teaching your heart to bring everything to God. When you rejoice, join the hymns of praise; when you grieve, let the laments carry your sorrow toward trust; when you have sinned, pray the psalms of confession. Return often to the ones that meet you where you are, and let the whole collection train you, over a lifetime, to end where it ends, in unclouded praise.

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