Psalms

What Psalms is about

Psalms is not a book to be read through like a story; it is a collection to be prayed. One hundred and fifty poems, gathered over roughly a thousand years, covering nearly every condition a human being can be in. About half are attributed to David, the rest to Asaph, the sons of Korah, Solomon, Moses, and writers unnamed.

What surprises most new readers is the range. There is praise — Psalm 103, Psalm 145, the great cascade of hallelujahs at the end. But the single largest category is lament: roughly a third of the Psalms are complaints, and they are not polite. How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? The Bible’s own prayer book is dominated by people telling God that things are not all right, which is itself a kind of permission.

There is also confession (Psalm 51), wisdom (Psalm 1), history retold for a new generation (Psalm 78), pilgrimage songs sung on the road to Jerusalem (120–134), and psalms about the king that reach further than any actual king ever did. Some psalms call down violence on enemies in terms that stop readers cold; the church has generally read these as raw grief handed over to God rather than acted on — the psalmist gives the vengeance to God instead of keeping it.

Where it sits in the story

Psalms is the most quoted Old Testament book in the New. Jesus prays it from the cross. The church has structured its worship around it from the beginning — monastic hours, metrical psalters, and modern songs all draw on the same well. Whatever tradition a Christian belongs to, they have almost certainly been praying these words already.

How to read it

Slowly, and out loud if you can. A psalm a day is a better plan than ten in a sitting. When one does not fit your situation, pray it anyway — you are praying with the whole church, and someone somewhere needs those words today. Psalm 1 tells you what the collection is for; Psalm 150 tells you where it is going.