The Book of Psalms Explained: Five Books, Seven Kinds, and How to Read Them

Five books, not one

Open Psalms in almost any Bible and you will find headings — "Book I," "Book II" — that are older than the chapter numbers by more than a thousand years. The 150 psalms were gathered in five collections, and each one ends with a short doxology that has nothing to do with the psalm it is attached to: "Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. Amen and Amen" closes Book I at the end of Psalm 41, and similar lines close Books II, III and IV. Book V ends with Psalm 150, which is one long doxology.

The five-part shape is deliberate. Jewish tradition read it as a mirror of the five books of Moses — Torah as God's word to Israel, Psalms as Israel's word back. Whether or not that was the editors' intent, the division is real and it helps: Book I is heavily David and heavily lament; Book V is heavily praise. The collection as a whole travels from complaint toward hallelujah, and a reader who knows that can feel the direction of travel.

The kinds of psalm

Scholars sort the psalms by type, and the categories are worth learning because they tell you what a psalm is trying to do — which is the main thing a first-time reader lacks. The boundaries blur, and some psalms shift type halfway through, but seven kinds cover nearly everything:

Why lament matters

The single most useful fact about the Psalms is that more of them complain than celebrate. Roughly a third are laments — psalms that tell God something is wrong, sometimes bluntly ("How long, LORD? Will you forget me forever?" — Psalm 13:1). Most follow a pattern: an address to God, the complaint, a request, a reason God should act, and, usually near the end, a turn toward trust. Psalm 88 is the famous exception; it ends in the dark.

This is what makes the book usable in an ordinary week. The Psalms are not a collection of cheerful sentiments; they are the prayer book of people who were afraid, ill, betrayed, guilty and exhausted, and who said so. If you have only ever read Psalm 23, you have read a trust psalm; the laments are where most of the book — and most readers — live.

The superscriptions and the strange words

Many psalms carry a heading — "A Psalm of David, when he fled from Absalom his son" — that names an author, a tune, an instrument or an occasion. These headings are ancient; they were already in the text when it was translated into Greek in the third century BC. They are not always reliable as history, but they are the earliest interpretation we have and worth reading.

"Selah" appears 71 times and nobody is sure what it means — most likely a musical or liturgical instruction, a pause or a lift. "To the choirmaster," "according to Lilies," "a Maskil" and similar phrases are performance notes for music that is lost. Read past them; they are stage directions, not verses.

Attributions: David and the others

Seventy-three psalms are attributed to David in the Hebrew headings, which is why the whole book is loosely called "the Psalms of David." But the collection names other writers: Asaph (12 psalms, mostly Book III), the sons of Korah (11), Solomon (2), Moses (1 — Psalm 90, probably the oldest), Heman and Ethan (one each). About fifty psalms are anonymous, including most of Book V.

The Hebrew preposition translated "of David" can also mean "for" or "in the manner of," so the attributions are less precise than they look in English. What they reliably tell you is that the Psalms are a collection spanning several centuries and many voices, gathered and ordered long after most were written.

The famous ones, and what they are

If you want a way in, these are the psalms most often quoted, with their kind — because knowing the kind is most of knowing how to read them:

• Psalm 1 — wisdom. The gateway: two ways, a tree by water. Placed first on purpose.
• Psalm 22 — lament. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" — quoted by Jesus on the cross; turns to praise at verse 22.
• Psalm 23 — trust. The shepherd psalm; six verses, no crisis named.
• Psalm 51 — lament (penitential). David after Bathsheba; the confession psalm.
• Psalm 90 — wisdom/lament. Attributed to Moses; "teach us to number our days."
• Psalm 103 — praise. "Bless the LORD, O my soul"; the most complete hymn of God's character.
• Psalm 119 — Torah. 176 verses, an acrostic on the Hebrew alphabet, every stanza about God's word.
• Psalm 121 — trust (Song of Ascents). "I lift up my eyes to the hills"; a traveller's psalm.
• Psalm 139 — trust/wisdom. God's knowledge and presence; ends with a hard request.
• Psalm 150 — praise. The last word: every instrument, everything that breathes.

How to read Psalms as a book

Three ways work. One psalm a day, in order, takes five months and lets you feel the five-book movement from lament to praise. Five a day — the traditional monthly cycle (Psalm 1, 31, 61, 91, 121 on the 1st, and so on) — covers the book every month and is what many people mean by "praying the Psalms." Or read by kind: a week of laments when the week is hard, the Songs of Ascents on a journey, the Hallel (113-118) at Easter or Passover, as the Gospels record Jesus doing.

Whichever you choose, read psalms aloud when you can. They were written to be sung, they are built on parallelism — saying a thing twice in different words — and the rhythm is easier to hear than to see.