Guide
What is a Psalm?
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The Psalms are a collection of 150 poems, most of them written to be sung. They were composed over a long period, by a number of people, and gathered into five books within the collection.
The main kinds
Scholars group the Psalms in slightly different ways, but a few broad kinds are widely recognised.
- Lament — A complaint, often direct and sometimes angry. Roughly a third of the collection. Psalm 13 opens by asking “how long” four times.
- Thanksgiving — Gratitude for a specific rescue, harvest or recovery, usually naming what happened.
- Praise — Celebration without a particular occasion. Psalm 150 is the clearest example.
- Wisdom — Reflection on how to live, closer in tone to Proverbs. Psalm 1 is the collection's own introduction in this mode.
- Royal and liturgical — Written for national or ceremonial occasions rather than private reading.
Why the complaints matter
It is striking that a collection assembled for public worship contains so much protest, and that the protests were kept rather than tidied up. Several psalms end without resolution.
For anyone using the Bible during a hard time, this is probably the most useful thing to know about the Psalms. They do not require you to have arrived anywhere in particular before you start reading.
Superscriptions
Many psalms begin with a line such as “A Psalm by David” or “For the Chief Musician; set to Muth Labben”. These are called superscriptions.
In some translations, including the one this site uses, the superscription is part of verse 1. That is why a quotation of Psalm 23:1 here begins “A Psalm by David.” before the familiar words. It has not been added; it is in the verse.
How to read one
Read the whole psalm rather than a line from it. Most are short, and their structure usually matters — a lament that turns towards trust reads quite differently from its opening lines alone.
Reading aloud helps more than it does with prose. These are poems that were sung, and the repetition and parallel lines are easier to hear than to see.