Psalm [sä(l)m, noun, adj.] Sacred song, namely one of the 150 in the book of Psalms.
Adjective, Psalmic [SÄ(L)M•ik]
The ancient Hebrews wrote many songs to worship God, following their style of poetry. These were sung as part of God’s regular temple worship. Levites who weren’t qualified to serve as priests, would stay on the temple grounds to sing God’s praises, 24 hours a day. So they needed psalms. Lots of them.
We have limited information about the ancient Hebrew psalms. We know there were way more than the psalms in the bible; Solomon composed more than a thousand by himself. We don’t know how the tunes went: If the ancient Hebrews knew how to write in musical notation, we haven’t found it. The only clues we have are the musical directions, usually found in what we call “verse 0,” which I describe below. Or the “seláh” we find at the end of many verses.
But from what we do have, we can deduce the sort of worship one might find in the temple. We know they used every sort of musical instrument their culture had; they didn’t ban any of them as “evil” or “inappropriate,” unlike certain Christians. We know they practiced call-and-respond. We know they had psalms for special occasions, like when a king was crowned or when a victory was won.
We know the book of Psalms is made up of five books—Ps 1-45, Ps 42-72, Ps 73-89, Ps 90-106, and Ps 107-150—which were likely collected at different points in history, possibly from different parts of Israel. King David wrote nearly half the psalms in the entire book. Other composers wrote groups of psalms: The sons (or school) of Korah wrote numbers 42-49, 84, 85, 87, and 88. Asaph and his sons (or school) wrote numbers 50, and 73-83. Heman (one of Korah’s sons), wrote number 88; Ethan wrote 89; Moses (yep, that Moses) wrote 90; Solomon wrote 72 and 127.
Types of psalms.
Psalms were written for many occasions and purposes. Praise is a feature of nearly all of them, but some of them were specifically written for praise, singing hallelú Yah, which literally means “all praise Yah[weh].” Praise psalms are often called hallél psalms. There’s a group of them written by Egyptian Jews called the “Egyptian Hallel.” There’s a group of ascents, travel psalms you sang as you were ascending the hill to Jerusalem. There’s the short praise psalms at the end of the book.
There are laments, songs used for mourning, or to complain to God. In these songs, the author was being persecuted, harassed, or chased by enemies. He was conquered, injured, defeated, or otherwise miserable. He wanted God to take his side, rescue him, and smite his foes. Lamentations consists of several lamenting psalms, written by Jeremiah for precisely this purpose. Many Christians actually try to dodge the laments because they find them depressing, mean-spirited, or vengeful. I admit, they don’t reflect God’s forgiveness and grace very much; instead, they reflect the psalmists’ anger and frustration. But they’re valuable in that they make it clear to us it’s not only okay to complain to God: We can totally cut loose, and pour out our hearts to him. It’s far better to vent at God, than take revenge.
There are wisdom psalms, written specifically to give revelation about God. They describe how he created the universe, and what his plans for it are. They get into the purpose of the Law. The longest psalm is one huge acrostic wisdom psalm.
There are Zion psalms, which are about the city of Jerusalem. There are royal psalms, which are either about how God is king of the universe, or how Israel’s king is God’s servant (or is supposed to be, anyway). Because one of the king’s titles was Messiah, Christians regularly use the royal psalms as Messianic prophecies. Not all of them are, but Jesus certainly fulfills a lot of them.
And many were written to thank and praise God. Scholars have invented all sorts of categories to lump the psalms into, as have musicians and other fans.
Verse 0.
Most psalms begin with an introduction and information about the song. Fr’instance, Psalm 60:
To the music director. By shushán edút. A miktám of David, to teach of when he struggled with Arám Naharayím and Arám Chováh, when Joab returned, when he struck down 12 companies of Edomites in Salt Valley.
—David, Psalm 60.0 KWL
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Notice in the Hebrew text, this is verses 1-2. But in English, this is the introduction: It didn’t get a verse number. The editors of the King James Version didn’t consider them a proper part of the text. So they began the psalm at verse 3, which is our verse 1. Of course, this means the verses don’t always line up between the Hebrew text and Christian translations, so you’ll have to compare it with a Jewish translation like the JPS.
Once Christians began computerizing the bible, and turning the scriptures into a searchable database, we needed to include these introductions. After all, they are part of the bible. And since computers begin their counts with zero instead of one, some programmer decided to call these introductions “verse 0.” The name stuck.
As you can see, this introduction has a few Hebrew terms in it which I’ve left untranslated. That’s because interpreters don’t entirely know what they mean. But here’s our best guess: Shushán edút literally means “lily of testimony.” That sounds like a really odd name for a musical style; it sounds more like a song title. So we figure David wrote the psalm to the tune of a popular song, instead of writing his own tune. This used to be done all the time, before copyright laws put a stop to it. More than half our hymns used to be popular songs. Songwriters simply borrowed the popular tunes from other songwriters. (Even “The Star-Spangled Banner” used to be a drinking song—and still is, sometimes.) So if you’re wondering whether there’s any deeper, significant, mystical meaning to shushán edút—or shoshanním/“lilies,” mahalát/“dancing,” yonát elem rekhokim/“the silent faraway dove,” al-takhshét/“don’t destroy,” —there’s likely not.
Now, as to some other terms, like maskíl, miktám, shemnít, or makhalát l’annót… well, they’re not song titles. They’re forms of music, but as to what form—slow or fast, rock or blues, sung in the morning or evening, sung by soloists or choirs—we don’t know. Your guess is as good as anyone’s.
Some of the introductions have a backstory, so you can tell when they were written. Some, nothing. And some psalms have no introduction at all—and it’s entirely possible they’re just a second part of the previous psalm. When the bible was translated into Greek, they lumped psalms 9-10 and 114-115 together, and split psalms 116 and 147 into two psalms each. That’s why the chapters don’t always line up between Orthodox/Catholic and Hebrew/Protestant bibles. We all have 150 psalms in the book; we just number ’em different.
Hebrew/Protestant Orthodox/Catholic 1-8 1-8 9-10 9 11-113 10-112 114-115 113 116 114-115 117-146 116-145 147 146-147 148-150 148-150
How they’ve been used.
The writers of the New Testament considered the psalms, as part of the bible, to be inspired by God. So often they treated the psalms as prophecy, especially the royal psalms. Psalms is quoted about 85 times as part of Jesus and his students’ teachings, and of course Christian teachers and pastors throughout history have used them to teach about all sorts of subjects. We quote Psalms nearly as often as we quote the New Testament—so much so, many stand-alone copies of the New Testament include Psalms (and Proverbs) for convenience.
Since psalms were originally music, they’ve been the basis for music throughout Christian history. Musicians have either set an entire psalm to music, or taken individual verses and based a song on them. In the 1600s, the Puritans even went so far as to ban every form of worship music from their churches unless they were directly from Psalms. So every song in their church was Psalms-based; and in fact a Scotsman named John Brown took the entire book and converted it into English poetry—with rhyme and meter—so it could be sung to standard worship tunes.
More frequently, psalms are used for prayer. To this day Christian monks recite the entire book of Psalms as part of their morning and evening worship: They can go all 150 psalms three times a year. (Do this yourself, regularly enough, and you’ll get all of them memorized!) Many other Christians recite psalms, or read from Psalms, as part of daily devotions.
And poetry fans consider them poetry. (Which they are.) So they read them for their imagery, metaphor, creative use of language, and all the other things poetry fans appreciate about really good writing. Used, of course, in the service of worshiping God.