Psalms: the prayer book Jesus prayed
A guide to the book of Psalms: who wrote them, how the five books are arranged, the main types of psalm, how they point to Christ, and how to pray them.
The book of Psalms is a collection of 150 songs and prayers gathered over many centuries for the worship of Israel. It sits at the center of the Bible, and for most of church history it has been the church’s prayer book as well. Jesus grew up singing these words, quoted them often, and prayed one of them from the cross.
What makes the Psalms unusual is their direction. Most of Scripture is God speaking to us. The Psalms are people speaking to God, in every mood a human being can have: joy, fear, guilt, anger, boredom, confusion, and wonder.
The collection is arranged in five books and includes praise, lament, thanksgiving, confession, royal songs, and wisdom poems. Its two great lessons are simple. First, you may bring anything to God honestly. Second, honest prayer, followed through, ends in praise. If you are new to the Psalms, start with Psalms 1, 23, 51, 103, and 139.
Who wrote the Psalms, and when
Nearly half the psalms carry David’s name in their titles, which is why people often call it the book of David. But it is really a hymnbook with many contributors. The titles also name Asaph, the sons of Korah, Solomon, Heman, Ethan, and Moses, whose prayer is Psalm 90. Around a third of the psalms are anonymous.
The collection grew over a very long time. If Moses wrote Psalm 90, the earliest psalm comes from the time of the exodus, while Psalm 137 was clearly written during the exile in Babylon many centuries later. The traditional view is that the book reached its final shape sometime after the return from exile.
Scholars discuss how much weight to give the titles, since they were added by editors rather than being part of the poems themselves. This site takes them seriously as ancient tradition while recognizing that a phrase like of David can mean written by him, written for him, or written in his style.
Why the Psalms were written, and for whom
The Hebrew title of the book is Tehillim, which means praises. These were songs for the temple, sung by choirs and by pilgrims on the road to Jerusalem.
At the same time, most psalms speak in the first person singular. One voice cries out, confesses, or gives thanks, and the whole congregation takes up that voice as its own. That double use, personal and public, is built into the book. The Psalms were written for a nation at worship and for an individual alone at night, and they still serve both.
How the book is structured
The Psalms are divided into five books, perhaps to echo the five books of Moses. Each book ends with a short burst of praise.
- Book 1: Psalms 1–41, almost all by David.
- Book 2: Psalms 42–72, including psalms of the sons of Korah.
- Book 3: Psalms 73–89, dominated by Asaph and marked by national crisis.
- Book 4: Psalms 90–106, beginning with Moses and celebrating God as king.
- Book 5: Psalms 107–150, including the songs of ascents (120–134) and the closing praise (146–150).
Psalms 1 and 2 serve as a gateway. The first calls you to delight in God’s law; the second announces God’s anointed king. The whole book is read through those two doors, and it ends with five psalms in which every line is praise.
Within the books, it helps to recognize the main types. Laments, which are the largest group, cry out to God from trouble. Praise psalms celebrate who God is. Thanksgiving psalms look back on a rescue. Royal psalms concern the king. Wisdom psalms teach how to live. Penitential psalms confess sin.
Key passages to know
The two ways
1 Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, or set foot on the path of sinners, or sit in the seat of mockers. 2 But his delight is in the Law of the LORD, and on His law he meditates day and night. 3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water, yielding its fruit in season, whose leaf does not wither, and who prospers in all he does.
— Psalm 1:1-3 (BSB)
The book opens with a choice between two paths and a picture of the person who loves God’s word: rooted, fruitful, and alive.
Honest lament
1 For the choirmaster. A Psalm of David. How long, O LORD? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me? 2 How long must I wrestle in my soul, with sorrow in my heart each day? How long will my enemy dominate me?
— Psalm 13:1-2 (BSB)
Four times in two verses David asks how long. The Psalms give believers permission to say exactly how things feel. This psalm, like most laments, then turns to trust and ends in song.
Confession
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.
— Psalm 51:10 (BSB)
Written, according to its title, after David’s sin with Bathsheba, this is the Bible’s model of repentance. David asks not for a lighter sentence but for a new heart.
The character of God
The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in loving devotion.
— Psalm 103:8 (BSB)
This line quotes God’s own description of Himself from Exodus 34. The psalmist takes the ancient words and turns them into praise that the church still sings.
The king at God’s right hand
A Psalm of David. The LORD said to my Lord: “Sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet.”
— Psalm 110:1 (BSB)
David speaks of a Lord who is greater than himself. Jesus asked the religious leaders how David’s son could also be David’s Lord, and the apostles quoted this verse to explain the ascension.
Main themes
God is a refuge. Again and again the psalmists run to God as a rock, a shelter, a fortress, and a shepherd. Trouble is assumed; the question is where you go with it.
God is king. Over creation, over the nations, and over Israel through His anointed king. Many psalms simply say so, and that saying is itself an act of faith when the world looks otherwise.
Loving devotion. The Hebrew word hesed, translated loving devotion or steadfast love, appears throughout the book. It describes God’s loyal, covenant-keeping love, the thing the psalmists count on most.
The word of God. Psalm 119, the longest chapter in the Bible, is a love song to God’s instruction. The psalmist writes that “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” (Psalm 119:105)
From lament to praise. The book as a whole moves from more laments in the early books to more praise at the end. Most individual laments make the same journey in miniature.
How the Psalms point to Christ
After His resurrection, Jesus told His disciples that everything written about Him in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms had to be fulfilled (Luke 24:44). He read the Psalms as being about Himself, and the apostles followed His lead.
Sometimes a psalm describes what Jesus would do or suffer. Psalm 22 begins with the cry Jesus took up on the cross:
For the choirmaster. To the tune of “The Doe of the Dawn.” A Psalm of David. My God, my God, why have You forsaken me? Why are You so far from saving me, so far from my words of groaning?
— Psalm 22:1 (BSB)
Matthew records those very words on His lips (Matthew 27:46). The same psalm speaks of enemies dividing his garments and casting lots for his clothing (Psalm 22:18). Psalm 118 speaks of the rejected stone becoming the cornerstone (Psalm 118:22), a verse Jesus applied to Himself. Psalm 2 speaks of God’s Son and anointed King, and the voice from heaven at Jesus’ baptism echoes it (Psalm 2:7).
But the deeper truth is that Jesus prayed the Psalms. He sang them in the synagogue, at Passover, and in Gethsemane. When Christians pray the Psalms today, they are praying words that their Lord prayed first. The laments become His laments on our behalf, and the praises become the praise He leads. Paul tells the church to sing psalms with gratitude in their hearts to God (Colossians 3:16), and the church has never stopped.
How to read the Psalms
One psalm a day takes five months. Five a day takes a month. Many Christians simply read the psalm that matches the day of the month and add 30 for each following week. There is no wrong pace, but there is a wrong method: reading psalms as information rather than praying them.
Read them aloud when you can. Hebrew poetry works by parallelism, saying one thing and then saying it again from a slightly different angle, so listen for the echo in each pair of lines. Watch for the turn, often marked by a word like but or yet, where a lament pivots toward trust.
Avoid three misreadings. First, do not lift a single line and treat it as a personal guarantee; the Psalms are prayers, not promises, and they must be read whole. Second, do not read the psalms that call down judgment as permission to hate. They hand vengeance to God precisely so that the one praying does not take it. Third, do not skip the laments because they seem gloomy. They are how Scripture teaches faith to speak when things are wrong.
A way to pray a psalm is to read it slowly once, then read it again and stop wherever a line fits your life, turning that line into your own words. When you have nothing to say, the psalmist’s self-talk is a good place to begin:
Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why the unease within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him for the salvation of His presence.
— Psalm 42:5 (BSB)
Where Christians differ
Faithful Christians read the titles differently, as noted above, and differ on how to handle the psalms that curse enemies. Some pray them against spiritual evil, some as historical prayers of Israel, and some as words now fulfilled and transformed in Christ. Churches also differ on whether to sing only psalms in worship or psalms alongside hymns and newer songs. These are matters of conscience and tradition, and none of them touches the heart of the faith.
Reading on
The best next step is to take one psalm and live in it for a week. A walk through the most loved of them is at Psalm 23 explained, and the wider question of prayer is treated at What does the Bible say about prayer. Other guides are collected at Books of the Bible.
Pray the Psalms, read them in your Bible in order, and sing them with a local church, where they have been sung for three thousand years. The book’s last line tells you where all of it is going:
Let everything that has breath praise the LORD! Hallelujah!
— Psalm 150:6 (BSB)