Historical Background of the Psalms

In the Hebrew Bible, the Tanakh (תנ״ך), the Book of Psalms is the first book of the Writings section. The other two books in this section are Proverbs and Job. Psalms collects 150 prayers, many of which are works by King David. These prayers include heartfelt cries of sorrow and joy, as well as songs and praises to God.

The Book of Psalms was likely compiled by temple musicians around the 3rd to 4th centuries BC for use in the Temple and local synagogues. The Hebrew name for Psalms is “Tehillim” (תהלים), meaning “Praises.” The Greek Septuagint calls it Psalmoi, meaning “songs accompanied by stringed instruments,” a name adopted by English translations as “Psalms.”

The Book of Psalms is the devotional and prayer life of God’s people in the Old Testament era, representing their response to God’s revelation, guidance, and discipline. The 150 psalms span a millennium, from Moses to the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, acting like a mirror that reflects the feelings towards God of people in any era or circumstance.

The Book of Psalms leads us into God’s Most Holy Place, where we can commune with God through pouring out our hearts, meditating, resting, and praising. Psalms is likely the most widely read book in the Bible. Of the more than two hundred direct quotes from the Old Testament in the New Testament, over one hundred are directly from Psalms.

One hundred of the psalms are attributed in their titles: 73 to David, 12 to the Sons of Korah, 12 to Asaph, 2 to Solomon, 1 to Ethan, 1 to Heman, and 1 to Moses. While there are poems in the Bible outside the Book of Psalms, Psalms was collected for a very specific purpose. The psalms are not arranged chronologically but according to a particular plan.

The main characteristic of Hebrew poetry is not its form or rhyme, but the parallelism or correspondence of meaning between lines or stanzas, known as “semantic parallelism” or “antithesis.” This feature of Hebrew poetry allows Psalms to largely retain its original charm, power, and beauty when translated into almost any other language, with minimal loss. This is truly God’s wondrous design, that all the earth might sing to the glory of His name!