March 13th, 2009 by Kristi Stephens

I am ITCHING to dive into Psalm one, but first I wanted to post a brief definition list for some of the strange words that you might run across in the Psalms.

The first thing we need to understand is that the book of Psalms was really Israel’s songbook. The Hebrew title for this book means “Praises,” while the Greek title means “Songs.” Literally, these are Praise Songs. We are reading the text of Israel’s “Billboard: top 150″ list!

Just like you would see technical musical terms if you opened a modern songbook, we run across the same thing in the book of Psalms.

For instance:

Some of the technical words describe the content of the Psalm.

• A Maskil teaches how to be skilful at living
• A Mikhtam seems to be a witty, ingenious poem

Some of the technical words describe the time of singing, just like we would have “prelude” or “walking music” in a modern hymnbook.

• Some say “to the choir director,” which indicates that they were to be used for public worship and sung by the Brooklyn Tab, I mean, the temple choir.
• Some say “song of ascents” – these were songs which were sung on the way up to Jerusalem when the people would journey there for the feasts.

Others are terms referring to specific melodies or instruments:

• A “gittith” was a stringed instrument
• If you look at Psalms 45, 69, and 80, they all indicate that they are to be sung to the melody “Shoshannim.” This was a commonly known melody, just like we sing “The A,B,C Song,” “Baa, baa, black sheep,” and “Twinkle, twinkle, little star” to the same melody. (did you know that? I just realized that a while ago and was quite stunned!)
• “Al-tashheth” is another melody indicated in psalms 57, 58, and 75.

Another common term in the Psalms that most people are more familiar with is “Selah.” Most likely Selah was an instruction to pause and think about the psalm being sung, or a musical interlude.

There are other terms such as Mahalath and Leannoth that are obscure – we just don’t know what they mean!

One last technical note about this amazing book. You will notice as you read through the psalms that they are divided into 5 books. Book one contains chapters 1-41, book two contains 42-72, book three contains 73-89, book four contains 90-106, and book five contains 107-150. People have tried to come up with themes to these psalms or an understanding of why they are grouped like this, but most likely it is simply the chronology of how they were collected – NOT the chronology in which they were written.

Psalm 72:20 says, “The prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended.” However, we still find psalms written by David throughout the rest of the book! (Psalm 101, 103, 108, etc.) The Psalms were written over a huge span of time – Moses wrote one of the Psalms, most are written by David, and there are some that were written during the exile and return to the land. It appears that these 5 books were probably 5 stages of collection – as they went along, they might go back and include some of the older psalms that had been written but overlooked or not included for some reason in the earlier “edition.”

Well, hopefully this post was not too nerdy and boring – you there, wake up! We’re done! Now you can go dust off your gittith and play some mikhtams to the tune of Shoshannim.

P.S. Another aspect of Psalms which people often find confusing are the “imprecatory psalms” – prayers for God’s swift vengeance against enemies.  People often feel conflicted about these, thinking that the only godly response to our enemies is prayers for mercy.  I enjoyed John Piper’s discussion of imprecatory psalms here.