Psalms

Take a Bible with the Old and New Testament. Lay it on a table and try to open right in the middle of the pages. You will probably open it to the book of Psalms. So what is this book where the words are laid out funny, it says everything twice and always talks about sheep and cups "runneth overing"?

Song Book, Prayer Book and More

Have you ever noticed how music is not just something you hear, it is something you feel? Christmas time "feels" like Christmas partly because of Christmas carols. A scary movie has scary music to make you afraid. When you sing at church, don't you think about God more?

Well, the Bible book of Psalms is a song book with 150 special songs for ancient Israelites. The book talks about how they felt when they were happy, when they were very sad, when the were upset because the bad guys seemed to be winning and how they prayed to God by themselves and when they worshipped God together.

King David

King David was the greatest king Israel ever had. The most famous thing he did was probably killing Goliath. You can read all about it in I Samuel 17. But, one of the other things that David is remembered for is writing some of the Psalms. Lots and lots of the Psalms say right in the heading "A Psalm of David." The most famous Psalm of all is Psalm 23 and it was written by David.

Not all the Psalms

David wrote lots of Psalms but he did not write all of them. For example Solomon (one of David's sons) wrote some (Psalms 72, 127). Other people who wrote some Psalms are Moses (Psalms 90), the sons of Korah (Psalms 42, 44-49, 84, 85, 97 & 88 [Korah was a priest.]) Also, Asaph (Psalms 50, 73-83); Jeduthun [sometimes he's called Ethan] (Psalms 39, 62, 77 & 89) and Heman (Psalms 88).

Five Books

If you look really closely at the book of Psalms you will see it is really five books.

Book 1	Psalms 1-41	Mostly by David	Mostly about when he is sad
Book 2	Psalms 42-72	Lots of these are by David too but if you look at the list above you can see that Asaph and the sons of Korah wrote some.	Most of these are about times when the Israelites would worship God, like when the Temple was dedicated, when a new king was crowned, when they would worship at the temple or at holidays.
Book 3	Psalms 73-89	Lots of these are by Asaph and the sons of Korah	Most of these are about times of worship like those in Book 2, but there are also some about when all the Israelites were sad about bad things that had happened to their entire nation.
Book 4	Psalm 90-106	Most of these don't have any title or anything about who wrote them.	These are about times of worship too. Like some of the ones in Books 2 & 3.
Book 5	Psalm 107-150	Lots are by David and lots don't say who wrote them.	More worshipping God stuff like in Books 2, 3 & 4.

What's this Selah Thing Mean?

Remember that Psalms is a kind of songbook. You may wonder how they knew the tune when there are no musical notes or anything? Well, one of the ways was that the would hear their parents, grandparents and even great-grandparents singing these Psalms. Also, they would be sure to teach their own kids how to sing these songs too. But that's just part of the answer.

If your Bible class teacher said, "We are going to sing the names of the apostles to the tune of Jesus Loves Me." Everyone could begin to sing words on the left because you all would know the tune to the words in red on right.

Jesus called them one by one;	Jesus loves me this I know,
Peter, Andrew, James and John;	for the Bible tells me so.
Next came Philip, Thomas too,	Little ones to Him belong;
Matthew and Bartholomew;	They are weak but He is strong.

Yes, Jesus called them. Yes, Jesus called them.	Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me.
Yes, Jesus called them, and they all followed Him.	Yes, Jesus loves me, the Bible tells me so.

James the one they called the less,	Jesus loves me this I know,
Simon also Thaddaeus,	for the Bible tells me so.
The twelfth apostle Judas made;	Little ones to Him belong;
Jesus was by him betrayed.	They are weak but He is strong.

Yes, Jesus called them. Yes, Jesus called them.	Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me.
Yes, Jesus called them, and they all followed Him.	Yes, Jesus loves me, the Bible tells me so.

You could do the same thing if someone said to sing a song to the tune of Amazing Grace or Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.

Well, lots of people believe that the words at the start of many of the Psalms are there to help the Israelites sing them. So, when Psalm 22 talks about "Doe of the Morning" that may have been familiar to ancient Israelites as Jesus Loves Me is today.

Thirty-nine of the Psalms have the word Selah in them. That was probably a cue to the people on how to sing it. It may have meant "pause here" or "get louder" or "worshippers say something now." Nobody is really sure.

What all of this means is that the Psalms are exciting and active. They are more than just words on paper, they express things that our hearts feel but we can't always find words to say.

You Call That Poetry?!? It Doesn't Even Rhyme!

You may have already learned that the Psalms are poetry. But when we think of poetry we usually think of something like this:

I love you, I love you, I love you, I do!
But don't get excited, I love monkeys too!

Okay, that one is just silly but you know it is poetry because it rhymes. Also, it has poetic meter. That just means that there are the same number of syllables in the first line as in the second line.

In English that works. But it doesn't work in Spanish:

¡Te amo, te amo, te amo, yov!
¡Pero no consiga excitado, yo aman monos también!

It doesn't work in German:

Ich liebe dich, ich liebe dich, ich liebe dich, ich!
Aber erhalten Sie nicht, ich lieben Affen auch aufgeregt!

And it doesn't work in French

Je t'aime, je t'aime, je t'aime, je !
Mais n'obtenez pas passionnant, j'aiment des singes aussi!

The Psalms were written in Hebrew so if they rhymed in Hebrew they wouldn't rhyme in English or Spanish. In fact, like our silly poem above, they might not even make much sense in another language.

But, God wants the Bible, including Psalms, to be for everyone no matter what language they speak.

The poetry in Pslams works no matter what language it is translated in to. It is cool how smart God is!

Parallelism

Hebrew poetry never rhymes. It uses different forms. It uses parallelism most of all. That is just a big word that means words or ideas are repeated immediately before or after each other.

Here's an example from the very first verse in Psalms:

Blessed is the man
who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked
or stand in the way of sinners
or sit in the seat of mockers.

Now, the words in blue, red and green all basically mean a man is blessed and happy if he doesn't act like bad people. But, because of the way it repeats the idea we learn lots of things like if you do bad it gets harder to stop doing bad. First the bad man is walking, then he is standing still, then he has pulled up a chair and gotten comfortable with sin. That is how bad behavior is. It pulls us in unless we act like the good man who is blessed.

Also, we see that 1) wicked people, 2) sinners and 3) mockers (people who make fun of good things) are all the opposite of the blessed people who follow God.

The rest of the Psalm goes on to tell how the good man is better off than the bad man.

If, Psalm 1, used rhyming poetry it might work in one language. For example:

Blessed is the man who isn't like the bad,
While he will be happy, the wicked will be sad.

Okay, it's not great poetry but you get the idea. That works in English but would not work in Spanish.

The Psalms work because they can speak to us no matter what language we speak, how old we are, or how much education we have. They expressed what people like King David felt and can express what you feel. As you grow they will become even more meaningful to you.

Psalms Are for You!

God intended for the Psalms to touch us, teach us and let us say things to Him and each other in ways that we never could by ourselves.

The Psalms will help you whether you are 7 years old or 97 years old. They will help you when you are sad, when you want to praise God, when you are so mad at people you can't think. They can help you when it seems that the whole world is against you and being mean or when you are full of love for God and your family.

I hope you will start to read and enjoy the Psalms right now.