psalms

The Psalms, or the Book of Psalms, is a collection of ancient Hebrew poems, songs, and prayers that constitutes the fifth book of the Hebrew Bible and a major part of the Christian Old Testament. It contains 150 distinct psalms, attributed in ancient tradition to several authors, most famously King David, though modern scholarship treats authorship as diverse and spanning several centuries. The Psalter was composed and edited over a long period, from the 10th to the 2nd centuries BCE, and was later arranged into five smaller books. This fivefold division is reflected in many manuscripts and helps organize themes from personal lament and praise to liturgical hymns and national prayers.

Psalms display a range of literary genres, including hymns of praise, individual and communal laments, thanksgivings, penitential psalms, wisdom prayers, and royal or messianic psalms. They frequently employ parallelism, imagery, and symbolic language; the Hebrew text contains alphabetic and acrostic patterns in some compositions, most notably in Psalm 119. The Psalms have been used in religious worship since ancient times and remain central in Jewish liturgy and Christian worship, appearing in daily prayers, chant, and liturgical cycles such as the Liturgy of the Hours. They have been set to music across centuries, influencing art song, choral works, and contemporary hymns. In translations, the Psalms retain various subtle differences in numbering and verse arrangement between Hebrew, Greek Septuagint, and Latin traditions.