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Psalm 96 of 150

Psalm 96

An enthronement hymn calling all nations and all creation to praise the God whose glory exceeds every other god — and who is coming to judge the earth with righteousness.

Summary

Psalm 96 is the most fully universal of the enthronement psalms. While Psalm 93 is focused on cosmic sovereignty over the sea and Psalm 95 is addressed primarily to Israel, Psalm 96 calls all nations, all the families of the peoples, to bring offerings and come into God's courts. The theological claim is explicit: 'For the Lord is great, and greatly to be praised; he is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of the nations are idols: but the Lord made the heavens.' The polemic against other gods is not violent but ontological — they are nothings — while the Lord's superiority is evidenced by the act of creation.

The psalm's closing command to creation — 'let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; let the sea roar, and the fulness thereof; let the field be joyful, and all that is therein; then shall all the trees of the wood rejoice' — extends the scope of praise beyond the human to the natural world, anticipating the pattern of Psalm 148. This is not metaphor in the dismissive sense; the psalm treats the creation as genuinely capable of a response to God's kingship, a response that comes to completion when God comes to judge. The nearly identical passage in 1 Chronicles 16:23-33 suggests that Psalm 96 or a close ancestor was composed for the occasion of the ark's arrival in Jerusalem and subsequently incorporated into the Psalter.

Appears
Psalms
Themes
The full range of the religious affections The royal and messianic register
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  1. Psalm 1Psalm 1 is the Psalter's prologue, probably placed here by editors to announce the whole collection's orientation.
  2. Psalm 2Psalm 2 is a royal psalm—probably composed for the coronation of a Davidic king at Jerusalem—that became the most quoted psalm in the New Testament because of the declaration in verse 7: 'You are my Son; today I have begotten you.' The poem moves through four stanzas: the nations rage against God's anointed; God laughs and installs his king on Zion; the king recites the divine decree announcing his divine sonship and universal dominion; and a wisdom warning closes the psalm, calling the kings of the earth to serve the Lord with fear.
  3. Psalm 3Psalm 3 opens the Psalter's first great lament cluster and is the first psalm with a specific historical superscription: 'A psalm of David, when he fled from Absalom his son.' The crisis is present: many are risen against the speaker, many say there is no help for him in God.
  4. Psalm 4Psalm 4 pairs naturally with Psalm 3 as an evening complement to that morning prayer.
  5. Psalm 5Psalm 5 is an individual lament opened specifically in the morning—'in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up.' The speaker asks to be heard and immediately articulates the basis for expectation: God does not delight in wickedness, evil does not dwell with him, the arrogant and liars and men of blood he hates.
  6. Psalm 6Psalm 6 is the first of the seven psalms traditionally designated as penitential in the Western church—Psalms 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, 143.
  7. Psalm 7Psalm 7 is an individual lament structured as a legal appeal.
  8. Psalm 8Psalm 8 asks one of the oldest questions in religious poetry: what is man, that God should care for him at all? The question is born of a specific astonishment—the speaker looks at the night sky, at the moon and stars which God has made, and feels the weight of human smallness.
  9. Psalm 9Psalms 9 and 10 form a single acrostic poem in the Hebrew—the alphabetic sequence runs across both—though they are split in the canonical numbering.
  10. Psalm 10Psalm 10 continues the alphabetic acrostic of Psalm 9 and shifts sharply into lament.
  11. Psalm 11Psalm 11 is a brief confidence psalm that dramatizes a moment of crisis through a contrast between two voices.
  12. Psalm 12Psalm 12 shifts from individual to communal lament and focuses entirely on language.
  13. Psalm 13Psalm 13 is one of the most formally perfect laments in the Psalter.
  14. Psalm 14Psalm 14 (repeated nearly identically in Psalm 53) begins with one of the Psalter's most famous lines: 'The fool says in his heart, There is no God.' The Hebrew nabal—fool—is not a term for intellectual error but for moral recklessness, the one who acts as if there were no accountability.
  15. Psalm 15Psalm 15 is a short wisdom or entrance liturgy: who shall ascend the hill of the Lord, and who shall stand in his holy place? The answer is not a ritual requirement but a moral one.
  16. Psalm 16Psalm 16 is a miktam of David—a term of uncertain meaning, possibly 'golden poem'—and it is one of the Psalter's most sustained expressions of contentment with one's allotted place.
  17. Psalm 17Psalm 17 is an individual lament structured as a legal petition—the speaker approaches God as a judge whose verdict he trusts because he is confident of his own integrity.
  18. Psalm 18Psalm 18 is the Psalter's grandest royal psalm and its longest piece of thanksgiving poetry.
  19. Psalm 19Psalm 19 is one of the most admired poems in the Psalter, combining two apparently separate hymns—one to creation's testimony, one to the Torah—into a unified meditation.
  20. Psalm 20Psalm 20 is a royal psalm of intercession—the people pray on behalf of their king as he prepares for battle.
  21. Psalm 21Psalm 21 is the companion psalm to Psalm 20—the thanksgiving that follows the pre-battle prayer.
  22. Psalm 22Psalm 22 is the Psalter's supreme lament.
  23. Psalm 23Psalm 23 is the most widely memorized, most frequently recited, and most quoted psalm in the Western tradition.
  24. Psalm 24Psalm 24 is a processional hymn, probably used in liturgical practice at the gates of the Jerusalem temple.
  25. Psalm 25Psalm 25 is an alphabetic acrostic—each verse begins with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet—that combines lament, petition for guidance, and confession of sin into a single sustained prayer.
  26. Psalm 26Psalm 26 is another psalm of protestation—the speaker asks God to vindicate him because he has walked in integrity and trusted in the Lord without wavering.
  27. Psalm 27Psalm 27 is one of the Psalter's most beloved psalms and one of its most structurally interesting: its first half (verses 1-6) is a psalm of radiant confidence, and its second half (verses 7-14) is a psalm of urgent petition and near-lament.
  28. Psalm 28Psalm 28 opens with a fear of divine silence—'Do not be deaf to me, lest, if you are silent to me, I become like those who go down to the pit'—then petitions God not to drag the speaker away with the wicked who speak peace while planning evil in their hearts.
  29. Psalm 29Psalm 29 is the Psalter's most concentrated storm theophany—a hymn in which 'the voice of the Lord' appears seven times, each time describing a different manifestation of divine power in nature.
  30. Psalm 30Psalm 30 is a hymn of thanksgiving for healing, with the superscription 'A song at the dedication of the temple.' Whether the dedication connection is original or secondary is debated; the poem itself is intensely personal—an individual's testimony about being brought to the brink of Sheol and drawn back.
  31. Psalm 31Psalm 31 is a lament of a man surrounded by enemies and forsaken by his neighbors, but it is also one of the Psalter's most sustained performances of the lament form's characteristic pivot.
  32. Psalm 32Psalm 32 is one of the seven traditional penitential psalms of Christian liturgy, and it is the one that begins on the far side of confession, with the beatitude of forgiveness already granted.
  33. Psalm 33Psalm 33 is a creation hymn without superscription — one of the psalms attributed to no one — and one of the Psalter's most explicit statements about the relation between God's speech and the existence of the world.
  34. Psalm 34Psalm 34 is an acrostic: each of its twenty-two verses begins with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet, a formal feature that appears in eight psalms and signals careful literary composition.
  35. Psalm 35Psalm 35 is one of the major imprecatory psalms — the psalms that pray for bad things to happen to enemies — and one of the most fully developed examples of the genre.
  36. Psalm 36Psalm 36 moves in two sharply distinguished directions: downward into the wickedness of the wicked (who flatter themselves, cease to be wise, devise mischief on their beds) and upward into the transcendence of God's hesed — his lovingkindness, the covenantal steadfastness that is one of the Hebrew Bible's central theological terms.
  37. Psalm 37Psalm 37 is a wisdom psalm and an acrostic, its twenty-two stanzas (two verses each in Hebrew) organized by successive letters of the alphabet.
  38. Psalm 38Psalm 38 is the third of the seven traditional penitential psalms and one of the most physically vivid laments in the Psalter.
  39. Psalm 39Psalm 39 opens with one of the Psalter's most interesting narrative premises: the speaker has resolved to say nothing, to keep his mouth closed in the presence of the wicked.
  40. Psalm 40Psalm 40 is structurally unusual: it begins as a thanksgiving (God drew me from the pit, set my feet on a rock, put a new song in my mouth) and ends as a lament (I am poor and needy; enemies surround me; O Lord, make haste).
  41. Psalm 41Psalm 41 closes the first book of the Psalter with a beatitude — 'Blessed is he that considereth the poor; the Lord will deliver him in time of trouble' — before moving into individual lament.
  42. Psalm 42Psalm 42 opens Book 2 and is the first of the Korahite psalms — attributed to the sons of Korah rather than to David.
  43. Psalm 43Psalm 43 is almost certainly the second half of the poem that begins in Psalm 42, sharing its meter, its imagery, and most importantly its repeated refrain: 'Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope in God; for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.' The psalm opens with a petition for judgment against an ungodly nation and unfaithful men, then asks God to send his light and truth as guides back to the holy hill and altar.
  44. Psalm 44Psalm 44 is one of the Psalter's great communal laments — a psalm in which the whole nation speaks rather than an individual — and one of its most theologically daring.
  45. Psalm 45Psalm 45 is a royal psalm and the only wedding poem in the Psalter.
  46. Psalm 46Psalm 46 is a Zion hymn — a psalm celebrating God's presence in Jerusalem as the source of the city's security against every threat — and one of the most formally complete psalms in the Psalter.
  47. Psalm 47Psalm 47 is an enthronement hymn — one of the psalms (47, 93, 95-99) that celebrate the kingship of YHWH over all creation and all nations.
  48. Psalm 48Psalm 48 is a Zion psalm, one of the purest celebrations of Jerusalem as the city where God dwells.
  49. Psalm 49Psalm 49 is a wisdom psalm — addressed to 'all peoples' rather than to God or Israel — and it takes death as its subject with the candor of Ecclesiastes.
  50. Psalm 50Psalm 50 is an Asaph psalm — the first of the twelve attributed to Asaph — and one of the most prophetic in character.
  51. Psalm 51Psalm 51 is the central penitential psalm of the Psalter and one of the most theologically concentrated poems in the Hebrew Bible.
  52. Psalm 52Psalm 52 opens with a direct address to a 'mighty man' who boasts in evil and whose tongue is a sharp razor.
  53. Psalm 53Psalm 53 is almost identical to Psalm 14, with the substitution of the generic divine name Elohim for the personal name YHWH throughout.
  54. Psalm 54Psalm 54 is one of the shorter biographical psalms, its superscription connecting it to the moment the Ziphites told Saul where David was hiding (1 Samuel 23:19).
  55. Psalm 55Psalm 55 is a lament of unusual emotional range, covering both the desire to flee into the wilderness ('O that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest') and one of the most bitter betrayal passages in the Psalter.
  56. Psalm 56Psalm 56 is connected in its superscription to David's capture by the Philistines at Gath — the same episode linked to Psalm 34.
  57. Psalm 57Psalm 57 is connected to David's flight into the cave during Saul's pursuit — the cave of Adullam or En Gedi of 1 Samuel 22 and 24.
  58. Psalm 58Psalm 58 opens with a direct challenge to those in power: 'Do ye indeed speak righteousness, O congregation? do ye judge uprightly, O ye sons of men?' The answer is immediately given in the negative, and the psalm's central section — the imprecation against unjust judges — is one of the most graphically violent in the Psalter.
  59. Psalm 59Psalm 59 is connected to the night Saul sent men to watch David's house to kill him — the episode of 1 Samuel 19, when Michal lowered David from the window.
  60. Psalm 60Psalm 60 is a communal lament after military setback, unusual in the Psalter for its blunt acknowledgment that God is the source of the defeat: 'O God, thou hast cast us off, thou hast scattered us, thou hast been displeased; O turn thyself to us again.
  61. Psalm 61Psalm 61 is a short royal lament (eight verses) with the structure of petition, vow, and confidence characteristic of the genre.
  62. Psalm 62Psalm 62 opens with one of the most quoted lines in the Psalter: 'Truly my soul silently waits for God; from Him comes my salvation.' The Hebrew word translated 'silently' or 'alone' (akh) sets the psalm's tone: exclusive, direct, stripping away every other source of confidence.
  63. Psalm 63Psalm 63 is a psalm of trust and longing, traditionally associated with David's time in the Judean wilderness during Absalom's rebellion.
  64. Psalm 64Psalm 64 is a lament against a specific kind of enemy: those who conspire in secret and use words as weapons.
  65. Psalm 65Psalm 65 is a hymn of praise that moves through three registers: praise for God's forgiveness of transgressions (verses 1-4), praise for God's acts in creation and history (verses 5-8), and praise for the agricultural abundance of the year (verses 9-13).
  66. Psalm 66Psalm 66 divides into two clear movements.
  67. Psalm 67Psalm 67 is one of the shortest psalms (seven verses) and one of the most missionally oriented.
  68. Psalm 68Psalm 68 is among the most complex and debated psalms in the collection.
  69. Psalm 69Psalm 69 is a lament of extraordinary reach and density.
  70. Psalm 70Psalm 70 is a brief lament (five verses) that duplicates almost exactly verses 13-17 of Psalm 40.
  71. Psalm 71Psalm 71 is one of the few psalms explicitly concerned with old age.
  72. Psalm 72Psalm 72 is the last psalm of Book 2 and one of the great royal psalms.
  73. Psalm 73Psalm 73 opens Book 3 and is one of the great wisdom psalms of the Psalter.
  74. Psalm 74Psalm 74 is a communal lament for what appears to be the destruction of the Jerusalem temple, almost certainly by the Babylonians in 586 BCE.
  75. Psalm 75Psalm 75 is a short thanksgiving (ten verses) with an unusual structure: after an opening verse of communal thanksgiving, God speaks directly in verses 2-5, declaring that he will judge with equity and warning the boastful not to lift up their horn.
  76. Psalm 76Psalm 76 is a hymn of victory celebrating God's defeat of Israel's enemies, traditionally associated with Sennacherib's destruction outside Jerusalem (2 Kings 19).
  77. Psalm 77Psalm 77 is one of the great laments of the Psalter.
  78. Psalm 78Psalm 78 (72 verses) is the second longest psalm and the Psalter's most extended historical meditation.
  79. Psalm 79Psalm 79 is a communal lament for the destruction of Jerusalem, closely paired with Psalm 74 and almost certainly arising from the same catastrophe — the Babylonian sack of 586 BCE.
  80. Psalm 80Psalm 80 is a communal lament for the northern kingdom of Israel — the tribes of Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh are named — and may date to the Assyrian destruction of the north in 722 BCE.
  81. Psalm 81Psalm 81 opens as a joyful festival hymn — 'Sing aloud unto God our strength: make a joyful noise unto the God of Jacob.
  82. Psalm 82Psalm 82 is one of the most unusual and theologically complex psalms in the collection.
  83. Psalm 83Psalm 83 is a communal lament against a coalition of Israel's enemies.
  84. Psalm 84Psalm 84 is one of the Psalter's most beloved lyrics and one of the Zion songs — a group of psalms celebrating God's identification with the Jerusalem temple.
  85. Psalm 85Psalm 85 moves through three sections: a remembrance of past restoration (verses 1-3, possibly the return from Babylonian exile), a lament for present distress and petition for renewed favor (4-7), and a prophetic confidence about what God will speak (8-13).
  86. Psalm 86Psalm 86 is one of only four psalms in Book 3 attributed to David.
  87. Psalm 87Psalm 87 is one of the Psalter's most compact and most mysterious psalms (seven verses).
  88. Psalm 88Psalm 88 is the darkest psalm in the Psalter and, by most readings, the darkest text in the Hebrew Bible.
  89. Psalm 89Psalm 89 is the longest psalm of Book 3 (52 verses) and the most structurally dramatic in the entire Psalter.
  90. Psalm 90Psalm 90 opens Book 4 and is the only psalm attributed to Moses in the entire Psalter.
  91. Psalm 91Psalm 91 opens in the third person — 'he who dwells in the shelter of the Most High' — before shifting in verse 2 to the first person speaker who claims the promise, then in verse 9 to the second person ('you'), and finally in verses 14-16 to the voice of God himself speaking back.
  92. Psalm 92Psalm 92 carries the unique superscription 'A Psalm or Song for the Sabbath day,' the only such day-specific heading in the entire Psalter, and its content coheres with the assignment: it is a psalm of orientation, celebrating the morning-evening rhythm of praise that maps onto the created week.
  93. Psalm 93Psalm 93 is five verses, and it is one of the most concentrated theological statements in the Psalter.
  94. Psalm 94Psalm 94 is unusual in addressing God not as shepherd or king but as 'God of vengeance,' a title that appears only here in the Psalter.
  95. Psalm 95Psalm 95 is structured in two sharply contrasting movements.
  96. Psalm 96Psalm 96 opens with the command 'O sing unto the Lord a new song: sing unto the Lord, all the earth' — the 'new song' formula that appears also in Psalms 33, 98, and 144, and which the book of Revelation will borrow for the song of the redeemed.
  97. Psalm 97Psalm 97 opens with the enthronement declaration 'The Lord reigneth; let the earth rejoice; let the multitude of isles be glad thereof' and then immediately surrounds the divine throne with the full apparatus of theophanic storm: clouds and darkness, fire going before him, lightning illuminating the world, the earth trembling, the hills melting like wax.
  98. Psalm 98Psalm 98 is a song of praise that moves in concentric circles from Israel to the nations to creation.
  99. Psalm 99Psalm 99 closes the enthronement cluster of Book 4 and is the most liturgically structured of the group, built around a threefold refrain: 'He is holy' appears in verses 3, 5, and 9, each time following a call to exalt the Lord and each time intensified by the preceding description of God's greatness.
  100. Psalm 100Psalm 100, the Jubilate, is the shortest complete hymn in the Psalter and one of its most influential.
  101. Psalm 101Psalm 101 is a royal psalm in the first person, and unlike Psalms 2, 18, or 110, it is not about God's action toward the king but about the king's own vow regarding his conduct.
  102. Psalm 102Psalm 102 carries a superscription unique in the Psalter: 'A Prayer of the afflicted, when he is overwhelmed, and poureth out his complaint before the Lord.' It is not attributed to David or any named author — it is simply 'the afflicted,' and this anonymity makes it the most general of the lament psalms in the sense that it belongs to whoever is in this condition.
  103. Psalm 103Psalm 103 opens with the most personal of the Psalter's calls to praise: 'Bless the Lord, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name.' The call is to the self, not to a congregation, and the first ten verses are a list of what God has done for this speaker: forgiven all iniquities, healed all diseases, redeemed from destruction, crowned with lovingkindness, satisfied with good, renewed youth.
  104. Psalm 104Psalm 104 is the most sustained piece of nature poetry in the Psalter and one of the longest creation psalms in any ancient literature.
  105. Psalm 105Psalm 105 is a historical psalm, moving through the patriarchal narratives (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob), the Joseph story, the plagues of Egypt, and the Exodus, in order to demonstrate the faithfulness of God to the covenant he made with Abraham.
  106. Psalm 106Psalm 106 tells the same history as Psalm 105 but through the lens of Israel's persistent unfaithfulness rather than God's persistent faithfulness.
  107. Psalm 107Psalm 107 opens Book 5 of the Psalter and is its programmatic introduction, a psalm of thanksgiving that presents four archetypal situations of human extremity, each followed by divine rescue and the same responsorial refrain: 'Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men!' The four tableaux are: wanderers in the desert, lost, hungry, and thirsty, who cry to the Lord and are led to a city of habitation; prisoners in darkness and the shadow of death, bound in affliction and iron, who cry to the Lord and are freed; the sick who are near death, abhorring all food, who cry to the Lord and are healed; and sailors in a storm, tossed up and down, their souls melting for trouble, who cry to the Lord and are brought to a haven.
  108. Psalm 108Psalm 108 is a rare case in the Psalter of a psalm explicitly composed from portions of two other psalms.
  109. Psalm 109Psalm 109 is the longest and most concentrated of the imprecatory psalms and the one that has caused the most sustained discomfort in interpreters.
  110. Psalm 110Psalm 110 is the most theologically consequential psalm in the Psalter, quoted or alluded to more often in the New Testament than any other single Old Testament passage.
  111. Psalm 111Psalm 111 is an alphabetic acrostic in Hebrew: each of its twenty-two half-lines begins with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet.
  112. Psalm 112Psalm 112 is the exact structural partner of Psalm 111: another alphabetic acrostic with twenty-two half-lines, in which the same Hebrew vocabulary is now applied not to God but to the human being who fears the Lord.
  113. Psalm 113Psalm 113 opens the Egyptian Hallel (Psalms 113-118), the group of psalms traditionally sung at the Passover seder.
  114. Psalm 114Psalm 114 is one of the most admired pieces of poetry in the Psalter for the compression and vividness of its eight verses.
  115. Psalm 115Psalm 115 opens with a disavowal: 'Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory.' This negative declaration of motives — the speaker does not seek his own glory — frames what follows as genuinely theocentric.
  116. Psalm 116Psalm 116 is an individual psalm of thanksgiving, and unusually for the Psalter, it opens with the speaker's own emotional state before describing either the crisis or the divine response: 'I love the Lord, because he hath heard my voice and my supplications.' The crisis, described in the psalm's central section, was severe: 'The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell gat hold upon me: I found trouble and sorrow.' The speaker cried to the Lord; the Lord heard and saved.
  117. Psalm 117Psalm 117 is two verses long, making it the shortest psalm, the shortest chapter in the Bible, and — given the Psalter's total of 150 psalms — the exact midpoint of the Book of Psalms by chapter count.
  118. Psalm 118Psalm 118 closes the Egyptian Hallel and is the last psalm Jesus and his disciples almost certainly sang before going to Gethsemane.
  119. Psalm 119Psalm 119 is unlike anything else in the Psalter.
  120. Psalm 120Psalm 120 is the first of the fifteen Songs of Ascents (Psalms 120-134), traditionally understood as the pilgrimage songs sung on the road up to Jerusalem for the great festivals.
  121. Psalm 121Psalm 121 is the most beloved of the Songs of Ascents and perhaps the most memorised short poem in the Psalter.
  122. Psalm 122Psalm 122 is the arrival psalm of the Songs of Ascents — the moment the traveller, who has been looking up to the hills in Psalm 121, reaches the gates.
  123. Psalm 123Psalm 123 is four verses, one image: the servant watching the master's hand.
  124. Psalm 124Psalm 124, attributed to David, is structured around a conditional that is never completed: 'If it had not been the Lord who was on our side — now may Israel say — if it had not been the Lord who was on our side, when men rose up against us: Then they had swallowed us up quick, when their wrath was kindled against us.' The conditional opens twice, emphatically, and then the 'then' that follows piles image upon image of what the disaster would have looked like.
  125. Psalm 125Psalm 125 is a five-verse confidence psalm that works by analogy between geography and theology.
  126. Psalm 126Psalm 126 is in two halves, and the break between them is the break between memory and present need.
  127. Psalm 127Psalm 127 is attributed to Solomon and is one of two wisdom psalms in the Songs of Ascents (the other is 128).
  128. Psalm 128Psalm 128 is the companion to Psalm 127 — another wisdom psalm in the Songs of Ascents, this one structured as a beatitude on the family.
  129. Psalm 129Psalm 129 is a communal retrospect on persecution voiced by the nation as a single speaker.
  130. Psalm 130Psalm 130, known in Latin as the De Profundis, is one of the seven traditional penitential psalms of the Christian church and is among the most frequently cited poems in the Psalter.
  131. Psalm 131Psalm 131 is one of the shortest psalms in the collection — three verses — and one of the most distinctive.
  132. Psalm 132Psalm 132 is the longest of the Songs of Ascents at eighteen verses and the most explicitly royal.
  133. Psalm 133Psalm 133 is three verses and two images, both of them excessive by ordinary standards and both making the same point.
  134. Psalm 134Psalm 134 is the fifteenth and final Song of Ascents, three verses, and functions as the closing benediction of the pilgrimage sequence.
  135. Psalm 135Psalm 135 is a large hymn of praise that opens the closing movement of Book 5.
  136. Psalm 136Psalm 136 is known in Jewish tradition as the Great Hallel, sung at the Passover seder after the Hallel psalms (113-118).
  137. Psalm 137Psalm 137 is nine verses and three movements, and it is the most discussed psalm in the Psalter outside of Psalms 22, 23, and 51.
  138. Psalm 138Psalm 138, attributed to David, opens with a declaration of whole-hearted praise: 'I will praise thee with my whole heart: before the gods will I sing praise unto thee.' The 'gods' referred to are the divine council or the gods of other nations — the speaker's praise of Israel's God is declared defiantly before competing powers.
  139. Psalm 139Psalm 139 is one of the most celebrated poems in the entire Hebrew Bible and is almost certainly the most discussed single psalm outside of Psalms 22 and 23.
  140. Psalm 140Psalm 140 is a lament against specific violent opponents, attributed to David.
  141. Psalm 141Psalm 141 is an evening prayer — 'Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense; and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice' — and it is one of the most liturgically used psalms in Christian worship, opening the traditional evening office in both Eastern and Western traditions.
  142. Psalm 142Psalm 142 carries the superscription 'Maskil of David.
  143. Psalm 143Psalm 143 is the seventh and final of the traditional penitential psalms of the Christian church, and it brings the penitential sequence to a close with one of the most candid openings in the Psalter: 'Hear my prayer, O Lord, give ear to my supplications: in thy faithfulness answer me, and in thy righteousness.
  144. Psalm 144Psalm 144 is a composite royal psalm, attributed to David, that draws on Psalm 18 for much of its first half.
  145. Psalm 145Psalm 145 is an acrostic poem — each verse beginning with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet — and it is the only psalm with the explicit heading 'a praise of David' (tehillah, from which the Hebrew name of the book, Tehillim, is derived).
  146. Psalm 146Psalm 146 opens with 'Praise ye the Lord' — the Hebrew is Hallelujah, and it opens and closes the psalm, as it will each of the final five psalms.
  147. Psalm 147Psalm 147 is the second of the five closing Hallelujahs and the most theologically wide-ranging.
  148. Psalm 148Psalm 148 is the third closing Hallelujah and the most cosmologically ambitious.
  149. Psalm 149Psalm 149 is the fourth closing Hallelujah and among the most surprising — it begins as a praise psalm and ends as a war psalm, and the combination has made it one of the most debated in the collection.
  150. Psalm 150Psalm 150 is the Psalter's final psalm and, in six verses, its most concentrated.
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Psalm 97
The book itself
Summary & story
What Psalms is, why it matters.
Analysis
Themes
Praise, lament, imprecation, royalty, and the longest unbroken conversation in human literature.
Who's who
The Psalter
The voices of Israel's prayer book.

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