Psalms
תְּהִלִּים (Tehillim)
First book of the Writings in one ordering; nineteenth of the Christian Old Testament
Composition Period
Poems ranging from the pre-monarchic period (Psalm 90, attributed to Moses) through the post-exilic era. Arranged as five books, mirroring the Torah.
Language
Hebrew (poetic; Psalm 119 is an acrostic on the Hebrew alphabet)
Authorship
Traditional View
The Talmud attributes the Psalter to David, who gathered compositions by ten earlier poets including Adam, Moses, Heman, Asaph, and the three sons of Korah. 73 psalms bear Davidic superscriptions. The New Testament quotes the Psalms more than any other Old Testament book and frequently attributes specific psalms to David.
Historical-Critical View
Critical scholarship sees the Psalter as an anthology accumulated over centuries, with its final arrangement in the Second Temple period. The superscriptions are understood as later liturgical and interpretive additions, not necessarily historical attributions. Form-critical analysis (Gunkel, Mowinckel) classified psalms by genre: hymns, laments, thanksgivings, royal psalms, wisdom psalms, and liturgies.
Overview
The Psalter — 150 poems arranged across five books — is Israel's prayer book, hymnbook, and meditation manual. It has shaped Jewish and Christian liturgy more than any other biblical text, and contains within it the full range of human emotion before God: praise, lament, anger, despair, gratitude, trust, and longing.
The psalms of lament (the largest genre) give voice to experiences often thought inappropriate in religious contexts: 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' (Psalm 22:1); 'How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?' (Psalm 13:1). Lament is not the absence of faith; it is faith speaking to God with full honesty.
The psalms of praise move in the opposite direction: 'Praise the LORD! Praise God in his sanctuary... Let everything that has breath praise the LORD!' (Psalm 150). The Psalter ends with five consecutive Hallel psalms, as if the trajectory of the whole collection is from suffering to praise, from lament to doxology.
Psalm 23 is the best-known text in the Hebrew Bible outside of Genesis 1. Its image of the divine shepherd — leading through dark valleys, setting a table in enemy territory, anointing with oil — has accompanied more humans through illness, grief, and dying than perhaps any other text in history.
The royal psalms (2, 45, 72, 89, 110) celebrate the Davidic king and make promises that transcended any historical monarch. The New Testament reads these psalms Christologically, with Psalm 110 cited more frequently than any other Old Testament text.
Key Themes
- Prayer in every key: praise, lament, anger, trust
- The divine shepherd and king
- Torah as delight and life
- The afflicted righteous and their vindication
- Messianic expectation in the royal psalms