Christ in Psalms

Psalm 1 is the porch of the whole Psalter, and it sets two ways before the reader before a single prayer is prayed. There is the blessed man who does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly but whose delight is in the law of the LORD , and who is therefore like a tree planted by the rivers of water , fruitful and unwithering (vv. 1-3); and there are the ungodly, like the chaff which the wind driveth away , too weightless to stand in the judgment (vv. 4-5). The psalm ends on…

Psalm 2 is the second leaf of the Psalter’s double doorway. Psalm 1 set before us the blessed man ; Psalm 2 sets before us the blessed King - and both psalms end on the same Hebrew word, ashrei , “O the blessednesses.” Here the nations rage and the kings of the earth take counsel against the LORD, and against his anointed (vv. 1-2), and the One who sits in the heavens answers first with laughter and then with a settled word: Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion…

Psalm 3 is the first psalm in the book to carry a story in its title - A Psalm of David, when he fled from Absalom his son - and so it becomes the first model of how to pray when the trouble is closest and most personal. David is driven from his own city by his own child, and voices on every side press the cruelest taunt of all: There is no help for him in God (v. 2). On that word the whole psalm turns - not with denial, but with a single defiant But : But thou, O LORD, ar…

Psalm 4 is the evening prayer of a soul lying down in the dark - and it moves, like the whole life of faith, from a cry to a calm. It opens urgently, Hear me when I call, O God of my righteousness (v. 1), under the weight of people who turn my glory into shame and love vanity (v. 2); and it answers them not with counter-attack but with a turning inward: Stand in awe, and sin not: commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still (v. 4). When the many ask, Who will sh…

Psalm 5 is a morning prayer - the soul waking and ordering its plea before God the way a priest lays the wood on the altar at dawn. My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O LORD; in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up (v. 3): the day begins with a lifted face. The psalm is honest about the holiness it approaches - thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness: neither shall evil dwell with thee (v. 4) - and then turns on a single word, b…

Psalm 6 is the first of the church’s great penitential psalms, a prayer offered from sickness, sleeplessness, and the nearness of the grave. It begins not with the enemies but with the dread that God Himself has turned against the sufferer: O LORD, rebuke me not in thine anger, neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure (v. 1). From there it sinks lower - have mercy upon me, O LORD; for I am weak… my bones are vexed… my soul is also sore vexed: but thou, O LOR…

Psalm 7 is the prayer of a man hunted by a lie. Charged with a wrong he did not do, David does not defend his name before men or take the matter into his own hands; he carries the whole case up to the One which saveth the upright in heart . He opens in trust - O LORD my God, in thee do I put my trust: save me from all them that persecute me (v. 1) - and stakes everything on the integrity of his cause, even calling down ruin on himself if he is guilty (vv. 3-5). Then he han…

Psalm 8 is the first song of unbroken praise in the Psalter, and it is framed like a jewel: it opens and closes with the same line - O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! (vv. 1, 9). Between those brackets David stands beneath the night sky, sees the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained as the mere work of thy fingers , and is overtaken by a question: What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? (vv.…

Psalm 9 is a thanksgiving sung from the far side of trouble - I will praise thee, O LORD, with my whole heart; I will shew forth all thy marvellous works (v. 1) - and its center of gravity is a throne. The LORD shall endure for ever: he hath prepared his throne for judgment. And he shall judge the world in righteousness (vv. 7-8). To a world weary of corrupt courts that is not a threat but a hope, and the psalm says so at once: The LORD also will be a refuge for the oppres…

Psalm 10 is the prayer for every hour when God seems absent and evil seems to win. It opens with a wound, not a doxology: Why standest thou afar off, O LORD? why hidest thou thyself in times of trouble? (v. 1). Then it draws the wicked man in pitiless close-up - proud, predatory, a lion crouched in the grass to catch the poor (v. 9) - and exposes the single lie holding his whole life together: God hath forgotten: he hideth his face; he will never see it (v. 11). That is th…

Psalm 11 is the psalm of the man who will not run. With arrows already on the string and the very foundations giving way, every reasonable voice presses the same counsel - Flee as a bird to your mountain (v. 1) - and David answers the whole storm with a single fixed point: In the LORD put I my trust (v. 1). He refuses to relocate his hope to a safer hill, because he has found a surer one. When the panic asks its honest question - If the foundations be destroyed, what can t…

Psalm 12 is a prayer for a time when honest speech has run out. Help, LORD; for the godly man ceaseth; for the faithful fail from among the children of men (v. 1) - the trustworthy voices are vanishing, and what is left is a hum of flattering lips and a double heart (v. 2), of tongues so proud they boast our lips are our own: who is lord over us? (v. 4). Into that flood of empty words the LORD speaks two answers. The first is Himself in motion: For the oppression of the po…

Psalm 13 is the shortest and clearest model in the Psalter of the prayer that begins in the dark and ends in song. It opens with the same word, four times over - How long? - pressed at God Himself: How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? for ever? how long wilt thou hide thy face from me? (vv. 1-2). There is no pretending here; the felt absence of God is named to His face, and the daily sorrow in my heart is laid out plainly. Out of that darkness rises a prayer for one thing…

Psalm 14 opens on the bleakest line in the Psalter - The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God (v. 1) - and then widens that single denial into a portrait of a whole world bent out of true: they are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good. The verdict tolls three times like a bell (vv. 1, 3), and the apostle Paul gathers it up word for word at the head of his great argument that all alike stand in need: There is none righteous, no, no…

Psalm 15 opens with the question that stands beneath all worship: LORD, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? who shall dwell in thy holy hill? (v. 1). Who may come into the presence of God and stay there, at home? The answer the psalm gives is not a rite to perform but a life to live - a portrait of wholeness: one who walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart (v. 2), who guards his tongue, keeps his word even when it costs him, and wil…

Psalm 16 is a quiet song of trust that turns, in its final breath, into the brightest prophecy of resurrection in the Hebrew Scriptures. It opens with a single word of dependence - Preserve me, O God: for in thee do I put my trust (v. 1) - and builds a whole life around one settled choice: the LORD Himself, not any rival, is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup (v. 5). The one who can say that finds the boundary-lines of his life fallen… in pleasant places…

Psalm 17 is a prayer offered from unfeigned lips (v. 1), the plea of a man who can ask God to search his heart in the night and find nothing amiss (v. 3). It rises from a courtroom appeal - let my sentence come forth from thy presence (v. 2) - into the tenderest images of shelter in all of Scripture: Keep me as the apple of the eye, hide me under the shadow of thy wings (v. 8), the cry of one who would be guarded as closely as the pupil and covered as a chick beneath its m…

Psalm 18 is the great royal thanksgiving of David, sung when the LORD had delivered him out of the hand of all his enemies, and it pours itself out first in a flood of names: The LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer… my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower (vv. 1-2). From the grip of the sorrows of death and the snares of death (vv. 4-5) the king cries, and the answer is a storm that splits the sky - he bowed the heavens also, and c…

Psalm 19 sets two great witnesses side by side and lets them sing the same God. First the skies: The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork (v. 1) - a speech without speech, pouring out day unto day , reaching where no words can: their line is gone out through all the earth (v. 4), with the sun rising like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber and rejoicing as a strong man to run a race (v. 5). Then the word given to the soul: The law of…

Psalm 20 is a blessing the people sing over their king as he goes out to war - and so it becomes a window onto the King over all kings. The congregation prays a sevenfold petition: The LORD hear thee in the day of trouble; the name of the God of Jacob defend thee; Send thee help from the sanctuary… Remember all thy offerings… Grant thee according to thine own heart (vv. 1-4), and pledges to raise its banners in thy salvation (v. 5). Then a single voice answer…

Psalm 21 is the song sung on the far side of the battle - the companion to Psalm 20’s prayer, now answered. It opens not on the king’s strength but on God’s: The king shall joy in thy strength, O LORD; and in thy salvation how greatly shall he rejoice! (v. 1). Every good thing the king holds is named as a gift received, not a prize seized: thou hast given him his heart’s desire (v. 2), thou settest a crown of pure gold on his head (v. 3), and then the line that breaks past…

Psalm 22 is the psalm Jesus took up from the cross. He cried its opening line into the dark - My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? (v. 1) - and the Gospels record the words on His lips at the ninth hour (Matt. 27:46; Mark 15:34). What follows reads less like ancient poetry than like an eyewitness report written a thousand years early. The Sufferer is a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people (v. 6); the watchers shoot out the lip and sneer, He…

Psalm 23 hands its dominant image straight to Jesus, who took it up in His own mouth: I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep (John 10:11). Every line of the psalm becomes a portrait of life under that Shepherd’s care, and every line of it the New Testament hears as His. The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want (v. 1) - He knows His own, He says, and is known of them (John 10:14); He leads them to green pastures and still waters , and resto…

Psalm 24 opens its arms as wide as the world: The earth is the LORD’S, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein (v. 1) - every acre and every soul belongs to the One who hath founded it upon the seas (v. 2). Then the psalm narrows to a single searching question: Who shall ascend into the hill of the LORD? or who shall stand in his holy place? (v. 3), and answers, He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart (v. 4) - the generation that seek thy face (v…

Psalm 25 is an alphabetical prayer - each verse opening with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet - and it spends that careful, A-to-Z structure on a single thing: handing the whole self to God and asking to be taught His way. It begins lifted: Unto thee, O LORD, do I lift up my soul (v. 1). At its heart is the petition the psalm keeps returning to: Shew me thy ways, O LORD; teach me thy paths. Lead me in thy truth, and teach me (vv. 4-5). And the ground of the asking is…

Psalm 26 is the prayer of a man who asks to be looked at closely: Judge me, O LORD; for I have walked in mine integrity: I have trusted also in the LORD; therefore I shall not slide (v. 1). It is bold, but it is not a boast of being sinless - the integrity he names is tom , wholeness, an undivided heart, and the very next breath leans not on his record but on his trust. He invites the deepest scrutiny there is: Examine me, O LORD, and prove me; try my reins and my heart (v…

Psalm 27 begins with a sentence that has steadied frightened hearts for three thousand years: The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the LORD is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? (v. 1). It is fearlessness, but not the kind that pretends there is nothing to fear - an host may encamp, war may rise (v. 3); it is fearlessness because of who the LORD is. The Hebrew runs deep here: ’or , light, the dispelling of the dark in which threats loo…

Psalm 28 moves the whole way from a cry in the dark to a song in the light, and Christ stands at both ends of it. It opens on a name: Unto thee will I cry, O LORD my rock; be not silent to me (v. 1) - the rock (Hebrew tsur ) that is firm footing and sure shelter, the same Rock the New Testament says was Christ (1 Cor. 10:4), the stone on which a whole people would be built (Matt. 16:18). David dreads only one thing, a silence from heaven that would leave him like them that…

Psalm 29 is a storm seen from inside the throne room. It opens with a summons to the heavenly host to give unto the LORD glory and strength and to worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness (vv. 1-2), and then the storm breaks: seven times the psalm sounds the phrase the voice of the LORD (Hebrew qol YHWH ), rolling in over the great sea - the voice of the LORD is upon the waters: the God of glory thundereth (v. 3) - then inland, snapping the cedars of Lebanon (v. 5), maki…

Psalm 30 is the song of a man who has been hauled back from the brink of the grave and cannot stop giving thanks for it: I will extol thee, O LORD; for thou hast lifted me up, and hast not made my foes to rejoice over me (v. 1). The verbs are physical - he has been drawn up like a bucket from a deep well, his soul brought up… from the grave , kept alive that I should not go down to the pit (v. 3). At the centre is the line the whole world has borrowed for its dark n…

Psalm 31 is the prayer David prayed in the net of his enemies - and it is the prayer the Lord Jesus prayed with His last breath. From the cross He took verse 5 onto His own lips: Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit (Luke 23:46), and Stephen borrowed it in turn as he was stoned: Lord Jesus, receive my spirit (Acts 7:59). The psalm’s middle is unsparing - a man forgotten as a dead man out of mind , slandered, plotted against, like a broken vessel (vv. 12-13) - which i…

Psalm 32 is the song of a man who finally stopped hiding, and it opens with one of the great beatitudes of the Old Testament: Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the LORD imputeth not iniquity (vv. 1-2). The Hebrew lays three verbs over the same wound - sin is forgiven ( nasa’ , lifted off and carried away), covered ( kasah , hidden from sight), and not imputed ( chashab , not reckoned to the account). Before th…

Psalm 33 is a hymn that begins with a summons to a fresh, skilful, loud-voiced music - Sing unto him a new song; play skilfully with a loud noise (v. 3) - and then names the reason such praise is fitting: the world we sing in was spoken into being. By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth (v. 6), and the maker did not labour or strain to bring it about - For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast…

Psalm 34 is the testimony of a man fresh out of danger who turns the whole congregation into a choir: I will bless the LORD at all times: his praise shall continually be in my mouth (v. 1). The rescue is concrete - I sought the LORD, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears (v. 4); this poor man cried, and the LORD heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles (v. 6) - and around the fearful the singer sees an unseen guard: The angel of the LORD encampeth rou…

Psalm 35 is the prayer of an innocent man encircled by liars, and from the first line he does the one thing that keeps the psalm from curdling into revenge: he hands the whole fight to God. Plead my cause, O LORD, with them that strive with me: fight against them that fight against me (v. 1). He asks the LORD to be both Warrior and Judge - to take hold of shield and buckler (v. 2) and to say unto my soul, I am thy salvation (v. 3) - and then to settle the case at the bar o…

Psalm 36 holds two worlds up against each other and lets the contrast do the preaching. The first is the sealed-off heart of the wicked, who has argued himself out of reverence: The transgression of the wicked saith within my heart, that there is no fear of God before his eyes (v. 1), a man who flattereth himself in his own eyes (v. 2) and deviseth mischief upon his bed (v. 4). Then the sky tears open and the psalm floods with a different reality: Thy mercy, O LORD, is in…

Psalm 37 is wisdom spoken to the heart that has worn itself out watching the wicked win, and its whole cure is a change of sight. Fret not thyself because of evildoers… for they shall soon be cut down like the grass (vv. 1-2); instead, Trust in the LORD, and do good (v. 3), Delight thyself also in the LORD (v. 4), Commit thy way unto the LORD; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass (v. 5). At the center stands the promise the world cannot see coming - the…

Psalm 38 is the prayer of a man crushed at once in body and in conscience, and from the first verse he does the bravest thing a sufferer can do - he points at no one but himself: neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sin (v. 3); mine iniquities are gone over mine head: as an heavy burden they are too heavy for me (v. 4). The weight is unbearable, and it is his own. Yet the psalm gathers up two motifs that the Gospel would one day lift to their furthest reach.…

Psalm 39 begins with a man biting his tongue. David sets a guard on his mouth before the wicked - I will keep my mouth with a bridle (v. 1) - and the held-in grief turns to fire: My heart was hot within me, while I was musing the fire burned: then spake I with my tongue (v. 3). But when the dam breaks, what pours out is not a complaint against his enemies; it is a prayer about how short he is: LORD, make me to know mine end, and the measure of my days, what it is; that I m…

Psalm 40 begins as one man’s testimony of rescue - I waited patiently for the LORD; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry (v. 1) - and the picture is of someone hauled up out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay and set, at last, with his feet upon a rock (v. 2). Out of that deliverance God puts a new song in his mouth, a praise that draws others to trust (v. 3). But at its center the psalm says something that would have stopped an Israelite worshipper in his track…

Psalm 41 closes the first book of the Psalter, and it closes it with a wound. It opens with a beatitude - Blessed is he that considereth the poor (v. 1) - the promise that the one who stoops to the weak will himself be upheld in the day of trouble. But the song soon turns to a sickbed, and from the sickbed to a betrayal so intimate it has echoed down every age since: Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel agains…

Psalm 42 opens with one of the most vivid pictures of longing in all of Scripture: As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God (v. 1). It is not a calm devotion but a desperate one - My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God? (v. 2) - the cry of a man cut off from the house of God and taunted in his grief, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God? (v. 3). That thirst is the very a…

Psalm 43 is a five-verse plea with no heading of its own - the back half of the song that opens at Psalm 42, carrying the very same refrain. It begins in a courtroom: Judge me, O God, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation (v. 1), the cry of one who asks not to crush his enemies but to be vindicated and delivered. It moves to a prayer that names exactly what a soul lost in the dark most needs: O send out thy light and thy truth: let them lead me; let them bring me un…

Psalm 44 is the lament of a faithful people crushed without an explanation, and it refuses every easy comfort. It opens with the old certainty - God didst drive out the heathen with thy hand , and the fathers won the land not… by their own sword, neither did their own arm save them: but thy right hand, and thine arm (vv. 2-3) - the bedrock confession that salvation is God’s doing, not human strength: I will not trust in my bow, neither shall my sword save me (v. 6).…

Psalm 45 is a wedding song for a king that the New Testament hears as a song about the King of kings. It opens with a poet so moved he cannot keep silent - my heart is inditing a good matter… my tongue is the pen of a ready writer (v. 1) - and his subject is a King fairer than the children of men , with grace… poured into thy lips (v. 2), who rides out not in raw force but because of truth and meekness and righteousness (v. 4). Then the song rises to a height…

Psalm 46 sings the steadiness of God while the whole world shakes - God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea (vv. 1-2). Against the roaring waters and raging nations it sets one unshaken city watered by a hidden stream: There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God… God is in the midst of her; she shall…

Psalm 47 is an enthronement song - the whole earth summoned to acclaim God as King - and its central image runs straight into the Gospel. It opens with a command to every nation, not just one: O clap your hands, all ye people; shout unto God with the voice of triumph (v. 1), for the LORD most high is terrible; he is a great King over all the earth (v. 2). Then comes the line the whole psalm turns on: God is gone up with a shout, the LORD with the sound of a trumpet (v. 5)…

Psalm 48 is a song in praise of Zion - though its true subject is never the stones but the God who dwells among them: Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountain of his holiness (v. 1). It calls the city Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth… the city of the great King (v. 2), and that one title runs straight into the Gospel, for Jesus quotes this very phrase of Jerusalem - swear not by Jerusalem; for it is the…

Psalm 49 is a wisdom song addressed to all ye inhabitants of the world (v. 1), and it walks straight up to the one fact that levels every life: death comes to rich and poor, to the wise man and the fool alike, and no amount of money can buy a way past it. Its sharpest line names a debt no human being can pay: None of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him: (For the redemption of their soul is precious, and it ceaseth for ever:) That he s…

Psalm 50 opens like a courtroom and a sunrise at once: The mighty God, even the LORD, hath spoken, and called the earth from the rising of the sun unto the going down thereof (v. 1) - three names of God stacked in the Hebrew, El, Elohim, YHWH , the fullness of the One now rising to speak. Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath shined… Our God shall come, and shall not keep silence: a fire shall devour before him (vv. 2-3). He summons heaven and earth as His…

Psalm 51 is the prayer David prayed after the prophet Nathan exposed his sin with Bathsheba and the death of her husband - and it has become the church’s own model of repentance ever since. It does not begin with excuse but with mercy: Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness… blot out my transgressions (v. 1). The verb is machah , to wipe away, to erase the record; and beside it stands kabas (v. 2), to scrub a garment clean - wash me, and I shall…

Psalm 52 is David’s answer to a powerful man who has made evil his strength - written, the title says, after Doeg the Edomite informed on the priests of Nob and they were cut down for it. It opens with a stinging question, Why boastest thou thyself in mischief, O mighty man? the goodness of God endureth continually (v. 1), and turns at once to the weapon such a man trusts: his words. Thy tongue deviseth mischiefs; like a sharp rasor, working deceitfully… Thou lovest…

Psalm 53 sings again the bleakest line in the Psalter - The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God (v. 1) - and from that single inward denial paints a whole world bent out of true: corrupt are they, and have done abominable iniquity; there is none that doeth good. Here the verdict is spoken not under the covenant name but under the broad name Elohim , “God,” so that the indictment plainly reaches the whole human family, and it tolls to its hardest close - there is n…

Psalm 54 is a short, whole prayer of David, breathed out when the men of Ziph sold his hiding-place to Saul, and its very first word sets the pattern: Save me, O God, by thy name, and judge me by thy strength (v. 1). Betrayed and hunted, David does not trust his own sword or his own innocence - he trusts the name of God, His revealed character and His saving power. He names the danger honestly - strangers are risen up against me, and oppressors seek after my soul: they hav…

Psalm 55 is the prayer of a heart under a double weight - hunted by enemies in a city full of violence, and cut to the core by the betrayal of a trusted friend. David does not hide the anguish: My heart is sore pained within me: and the terrors of death are fallen upon me. Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me, and horror hath overwhelmed me (vv. 4-5). His first instinct is to flee - Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest (v. 6). Bu…

Psalm 56 is sung from one of the tightest corners David ever knew - when the Philistines took him in Gath , the city of Goliath, surrounded by men who wanted him dead. He does not pretend to a courage he lacks: Be merciful unto me, O God: for man would swallow me up; he fighting daily oppresseth me (v. 1). And then, out of the fear itself, he forges one of the bravest refrains in all of Scripture, repeated twice so we will not miss it: What time I am afraid, I will trust i…

Psalm 57 is the song of a man driven into a cave by a king who wants him dead, and yet it climbs from a trembling plea all the way to soaring praise. David’s first instinct under threat is to take cover in God: Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me: for my soul trusteth in thee: yea, in the shadow of thy wings will I make my refuge, until these calamities be overpast (v. 1). The image of sheltering in the shadow of thy wings opens straight onto the gathering, pro…

Psalm 58 is a song wrung out of a world where the very people charged with justice have become its enemies - rulers and judges who speak righteousness with their mouths but in heart… work wickedness and weigh the violence of their hands in the earth (vv. 1-2). David draws their portrait without flinching: their words drip poison… like the poison of a serpent , and they will not be reasoned with, like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear (vv. 4-5). Yet what he…

Psalm 59 is the prayer of a man with assassins at his door - sung, the title tells us, on the night Saul sent men to watch David’s house and kill him in the morning. The danger is named without flinching: deliver me from mine enemies, O my God: defend me from them that rise up against me… for, lo, they lie in wait for my soul (vv. 1-3) - and the enemies are pictured as a pack of scavenging dogs that haunt the city at nightfall: they return at evening: they make a no…

Psalm 60 is a prayer wrung out of a national disaster, and it does not pretend the loss away. The title sets it amid hard fighting on every front, and the opening is a raw complaint laid directly at God’s feet: O God, thou hast cast us off, thou hast scattered us, thou hast been displeased; O turn thyself to us again (v. 1), a people who have been made to drink the wine of astonishment (v. 3), the reeling, staggering cup of defeat. And then, on a single word, the prayer tu…

Psalm 61 is the prayer of a man worn down and far from home, calling out from the end of the earth… when my heart is overwhelmed (vv. 1-2). His deepest cry is not for an easy escape but to be lifted higher than he can climb on his own: lead me to the rock that is higher than I - a rock above his reach, to which only God can bring him. That higher Rock has a name in the gospel, for that Rock was Christ (1 Cor. 10:4), the sure foundation beyond all our striving onto w…

Psalm 62 is a song of settled, waiting trust, and its drumbeat is a single small word - only. Against the schemes of men and the lure of riches, David stakes everything on one fact and says it twice, like a refrain that steadies the whole psalm: He only is my rock and my salvation; he is my defence; I shall not be greatly moved (vv. 2, 6). His first instinct is not to fight but to wait: Truly my soul waiteth upon God: from him cometh my salvation (v. 1) - and he turns and…

Psalm 63 is sung from a literal desert - David, hunted and far from the sanctuary, in the wilderness of Judah - and out of that dryness rises one of the most passionate cries of longing in all of Scripture: O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is (v. 1). The thirst is total, body and soul together, and it is aimed past water at God Himself - the very thirst the Lord J…

Psalm 64 is a prayer against the hidden plot - the conspiracy that meets in the dark, the slander shot in secret at the innocent. David asks not first for rescue but for steadiness of heart: Hear my voice, O God, in my prayer: preserve my life from fear of the enemy. Hide me from the secret counsel of the wicked, from the insurrection of the workers of iniquity (vv. 1-2). The danger is one of the most modern in all the Psalter, because its weapon is the tongue: Who whet th…

Psalm 65 is a song of praise that widens in three great circles - from the temple, to the cosmos, to the harvest - and at the center of all three stands a God who draws near. It opens with worship already waiting before a word is spoken: Praise waiteth for thee, O God, in Sion… O thou that hearest prayer, unto thee shall all flesh come (vv. 1-2) - a door thrown open to every nation, the gathering the Lord Jesus foresaw when He said, I, if I be lifted up from the ear…

Psalm 66 begins as wide as the world and narrows to a single grateful soul. It summons every nation to praise - Make a joyful noise unto God, all ye lands… say unto God, How terrible art thou in thy works! (vv. 1, 3) - and grounds that worldwide worship in one remembered rescue: Come and see the works of God… He turned the sea into dry land: they went through the flood on foot (vv. 5-6). The sea that opened for Israel was the great picture of salvation, the d…

Psalm 67 takes the ancient words of the priestly blessing - God be merciful unto us, and bless us; and cause his face to shine upon us (v. 1) - and turns them outward, naming a purpose for the blessing that reaches past Israel to the whole world: That thy way may be known upon earth, thy saving health among all nations (v. 2). The shining of God’s face on one people is meant to become a light for all peoples - the very thing old Simeon saw when he held the child and called…

Psalm 68 is a thunderous processional - the song of God marching out at the head of His people, scattering every enemy and leading a train of the rescued up to His holy hill. It opens with the ancient battle cry first spoken when the ark set out: Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered (v. 1; cf. Num. 10:35). The God who rides the heavens by His name JAH (v. 4) is no distant power but a father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows (v. 5), who setteth the solitar…

Psalm 69 is the cry of a man going under - Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto my soul. I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing (vv. 1-2) - and it is, after Psalm 22, the passion psalm the New Testament reaches for most often. David is drowning in trouble and in the hatred of enemies who oppose him without a cause (v. 4); he bears reproach for thy sake (v. 7), consumed by the zeal of thine house (v. 9). He is honest that he is no innocent - O God, thou…

Psalm 70 is prayer stripped to its bone - five urgent verses, almost word for word the close of Psalm 40, that say only what a person can manage to say when the water is at the chin: Make haste, O God, to deliver me; make haste to help me, O LORD (v. 1). There is no eloquence here, only the doubled cry make haste… make haste , the plea of someone who cannot hold on much longer. Around him are enemies who seek after my soul and jeer Aha, aha (vv. 2-3), the cruel laug…

Psalm 71 is the prayer of a believer grown old, and it is held together by one long line of trust that runs from before birth to the edge of the grave. The singer can say thou art my trust from my youth (v. 5) and, further back still, by thee have I been holden up from the womb (v. 6) - a whole life carried by God. Out of that long faithfulness rises the psalm’s most famous cry, the prayer of every aging saint: Cast me not off in the time of old age; forsake me not when my…

Psalm 72 is Solomon’s coronation prayer that outgrows every throne it was written for. It asks God to hand the king His own justice - Give the king thy judgments, O God, and thy righteousness unto the king’s son (v. 1) - and then describes a reign no son of David ever fully delivered: a king who shall judge thy people with righteousness, and thy poor with judgment (v. 2), who comes down like rain upon the mown grass (v. 6), whose dominion runs from sea to sea, and from the…

Psalm 73 opens the third book of the Psalter with one of Scripture’s most honest confessions of doubt. Asaph believes that Truly God is good to Israel (v. 1) - and yet, looking at the world, he nearly loses his faith over it: my feet were almost gone; my steps had well nigh slipped. For I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked (vv. 2-3). The ungodly are sleek and untroubled, their riches multiplying, their mouths set against heaven (vv. 4-12),…

Psalm 74 is a song sung over the ashes of the sanctuary, and it is one of Scripture’s rawest cries against catastrophe: O God, why hast thou cast us off for ever? why doth thine anger smoke against the sheep of thy pasture? (v. 1). The enemy has burned the holy place - They have cast fire into thy sanctuary, they have defiled by casting down the dwelling place of thy name to the ground (v. 7) - and worst of all, there is no more any prophet: neither is there among us any t…

Psalm 75 is a courtroom set to music, and the Judge takes the stand to speak for Himself. It opens in thanksgiving - unto thee, O God, do we give thanks… for that thy name is near (v. 1) - and then God’s own voice breaks in: When I shall receive the congregation I will judge uprightly (v. 2). The day of reckoning is not random or overdue; it is a set time already on His calendar, and meanwhile I bear up the pillars of a tottering earth (v. 3). To the arrogant He say…

Psalm 76, one of the songs of Asaph, sings over a battlefield that God Himself has cleared, and its first move is to name where He lives: In Judah is God known: his name is great in Israel. In Salem also is his tabernacle, and his dwelling place in Zion (vv. 1-2). God here is no rumour; He has made Himself known by what He has done. And that name Salem - the old name of Jerusalem, woven from the word for peace - carries its own quiet promise, for it was here, generations b…

Psalm 77 is the prayer of a man awake in the dark, and it is honest about the dark in a way few prayers dare to be. Asaph cries to God and finds no relief - my sore ran in the night, and ceased not: my soul refused to be comforted (v. 2) - and then he presses into the most desolate questions a believer can ask: Will the Lord cast off for ever? and will he be favourable no more? Is his mercy clean gone for ever? … Hath God forgotten to be gracious? (vv. 7-9). The psa…

Psalm 78 is a father’s long telling of the family story, sung so the children will not repeat it: I will open my mouth in a parable: I will utter dark sayings of old (v. 2). Asaph charges one generation to hand the next the praises of the LORD, and his strength, and his wonderful works that he hath done (v. 4), to one end - that they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God (v. 7). Then he tells the truth about both God and Israel. God divided the sea (…

Psalm 79 is a communal lament sung over the ruins of a desecrated Jerusalem, and it is one of Scripture’s rawest cries against the violation of holy things: O God, the heathen are come into thine inheritance; thy holy temple have they defiled; they have laid Jerusalem on heaps (v. 1). The bodies of God’s servants are left to the birds and beasts, their blood poured out like water round about Jerusalem; and there was none to bury them (vv. 2-3), and the survivors have becom…

Psalm 80 is the prayer of a people in the dark, and it circles, three times over, around one plea: Turn us again, O God… cause thy face to shine; and we shall be saved (vv. 3, 7, 19). It opens by naming God the Shepherd of Israel, thou that leadest Joseph like a flock; thou that dwellest between the cherubims - and begging that Shepherd to shine forth (v. 1), for His face seems hidden and His people are fed the bread of tears (v. 5). Then the psalm tells Israel’s wh…

Psalm 81 begins as a festival fanfare - Sing aloud unto God our strength… Blow up the trumpet in the new moon, in the time appointed, on our solemn feast day (vv. 1, 3). The trumpet and the new-moon feast are a yearly weapon against forgetting, a summons to remember the testimony God ordained in Joseph… when he went out through the land of Egypt (v. 5). Then the music stops and God Himself begins to speak. He recalls the Exodus, the burden lifted from Israel’…

Psalm 82 is a courtroom scene, and God is on His feet: God standeth in the congregation of the mighty; he judgeth among the gods (v. 1). The ones being judged are those who held the authority to judge - and they have betrayed it. So God presses His charge: How long will ye judge unjustly, and accept the persons of the wicked? (v. 2), and names the duty they have abandoned: Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy. Deliver the poor and needy: ri…

Psalm 83, the last of the songs of Asaph, is a cry wrung out of a moment when God seems to say nothing while His enemies say everything: Keep not thou silence, O God: hold not thy peace, and be not still, O God (v. 1). A ring of nations has formed - ten of them named, from Edom to Assur - and they are not merely at war; they have taken crafty counsel against thy people, and consulted against thy hidden ones (v. 3), plotting to cut them off from being a nation; that the nam…

Psalm 84 is the song of a heart that has discovered the one thing it cannot live without - the presence of God - and the New Testament hears that longing answered in Christ at every turn. The pilgrim faints for the courts of the LORD ; his heart and flesh cry out for the living God (vv. 1-2), and Jesus stood in the very temple this psalm aches for and said, in this place is one greater than the temple (Matt. 12:6), pointing past the building to Himself: Destroy this temple…

Psalm 85 begins in memory and ends in wonder. The sons of Korah look back on a season of grace - thou hast forgiven the iniquity of thy people, thou hast covered all their sin (v. 2) - and out of that memory they pray for more: Turn us, O God of our salvation… Wilt thou not revive us again: that thy people may rejoice in thee? Shew us thy mercy, O LORD, and grant us thy salvation (vv. 4, 6, 7). Then the singer stops asking and starts listening: I will hear what God…

Psalm 86 is the prayer of a man with empty hands - Bow down thine ear, O LORD, hear me: for I am poor and needy (v. 1) - who has nothing to offer God but his need and his trust, and finds that this is enough. He does not argue that he deserves to be heard; he leans the whole weight of his prayer on who God has revealed Himself to be: For thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive; and plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon thee (v. 5). The God of this psalm is inc…

Psalm 87 is a short song with a vast horizon. It praises Zion as the city God Himself laid down and loves - His foundation is in the holy mountains. The LORD loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob. Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God (vv. 1-3) - and then does something startling: God opens His register of citizens and reads out the names of the nations, even Israel’s ancient enemies, as people born there. I will make mention of Rahab (a…

Psalm 88 is the darkest song in the book of Psalms - the one lament that begins in trouble and ends in trouble, with no turn to praise and no glimpse of rescue. My soul is full of troubles: and my life draweth nigh unto the grave (v. 3); I am counted with them that go down into the pit… Free among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave (vv. 4-5); thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps (v. 6). It is the only psalm whose last word is, l…

Psalm 89 is built on a single, staggering promise and the crisis it provokes. God swears Himself to one family for ever: I have made a covenant with my chosen, I have sworn unto David my servant, Thy seed will I establish for ever, and build up thy throne to all generations (vv. 3-4). He calls that king my firstborn, higher than the kings of the earth (v. 27), and binds the oath in the strongest terms language has: My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is…

Psalm 90 stands further back than any other psalm to take in the whole sweep of time, and from that distance two things come into focus - the eternity of God, and the brevity of us. Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations (v. 1); Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God (v. 2). Against that boundless permanence the psalm measures a single human life and…

Psalm 91 is the great psalm of refuge, and its first word is a place to live: He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty (v. 1). The one who makes God his home does not pretend the dark is empty - the psalm names the terror by night, the arrow that flieth by day, the pestilence, and the destruction that wasteth at noonday - yet over every one of them it sets a covering, and makes it personal: I will say of the LORD, H…

Psalm 92 is the one psalm in the Psalter inscribed A Psalm or Song for the sabbath day (v. 1), and what it asks of the day of rest is not silence but song: It is a good thing to give thanks unto the LORD, and to sing praises unto thy name, O most High (v. 1), to shew forth thy lovingkindness in the morning, and thy faithfulness every night (v. 2). It is a psalm about what lasts. The wicked are real and, for a season, they prosper - When the wicked spring as the grass, and…

Psalm 93 opens with a coronation cry - The LORD reigneth, he is clothed with majesty; the LORD is clothed with strength, wherewith he hath girded himself (v. 1) - and on that one settled fact it builds a whole vision of the world. Because the King reigns, the world also is stablished, that it cannot be moved (v. 1); and His rule is no recent thing: Thy throne is established of old: thou art from everlasting (v. 2). Then the psalm lets the chaos speak. Three times the water…

Psalm 94 begins where the heart goes when the wicked seem to win - O LORD God, to whom vengeance belongeth; O God, to whom vengeance belongeth, shew thyself (v. 1). It is not a man sharpening his own sword; it is a man handing the sword back to its owner, asking the judge of the earth (v. 2) to rise where he himself must not. The proud have a creed, and the psalm quotes it: they slay the widow and the stranger, and murder the fatherless , and tell themselves The LORD shall…

Psalm 95 begins as pure invitation - O come, let us sing unto the LORD: let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation (v. 1) - and the worship it summons is grounded in who God is and what His hands have made: For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods (v. 3), whose hands formed the dry land (v. 5). Then it bends the knee and softens the voice: O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the LORD our maker. For he is our God; and we…

Psalm 96 is the Psalter’s great missionary song, and from its first line it cannot be contained inside one nation: O sing unto the LORD a new song: sing unto the LORD, all the earth (v. 1). The summons widens with every verse - shew forth his salvation from day to day (v. 2), declare his glory among the heathen, his wonders among all people (v. 3) - until the whole earth is gathered into a single choir. Over against the worship of the nations stands the verdict that emptie…

Psalm 97 is an enthronement song that opens not with a request but with a verdict already rendered over the universe: The LORD reigneth; let the earth rejoice; let the multitude of isles be glad thereof (v. 1). The King is wrapped in storm-glory - Clouds and darkness are round about him: righteousness and judgment are the habitation of his throne (v. 2) - and creation answers in upheaval: His lightnings enlightened the world: the earth saw, and trembled. The hills melted l…

Psalm 98 is a short, exultant summons to sing - O sing unto the LORD a new song; for he hath done marvellous things: his right hand, and his holy arm, hath gotten him the victory (v. 1) - and the reason for the new song is a salvation that God has worked with His own arm and then thrown open to the whole world. The LORD hath made known his salvation: his righteousness hath he openly shewed in the sight of the heathen. He hath remembered his mercy and his truth toward the h…

Psalm 99 crowns the run of enthronement psalms with a single, ringing announcement - The LORD reigneth; let the people tremble: he sitteth between the cherubims; let the earth be moved (v. 1) - and then circles, three times, around the one word that names what kind of King this is. He is great in Zion , and high above all the people (v. 2); His is a rule that shakes the earth and yet stoops to dwell among His own. The psalm presses that majesty to a point: Let them praise…

Psalm 100 is five verses of pure summons - Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all ye lands. Serve the LORD with gladness: come before his presence with singing (vv. 1-2) - and the wonder of it is how wide the doors are flung. Not Israel only but all ye lands are called to the same glad worship. The psalm then gives the bedrock under that worship in a single sentence: Know ye that the LORD he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and t…

Psalm 101 is the vow of a king who means to rule the way God rules - I will sing of mercy and judgment: unto thee, O LORD, will I sing (v. 1) - and the striking thing is where the reform begins. Not with the army, not with the law, but with the man on the throne and the rooms of his own house: I will behave myself wisely in a perfect way… I will walk within my house with a perfect heart (v. 2); I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes (v. 3); a froward heart shal…

Psalm 102 is the prayer of a man pouring out his complaint from the very bottom - Hear my prayer, O LORD, and let my cry come unto thee (v. 1) - whose suffering has worn him down to almost nothing: my days are consumed like smoke, and my bones are burned as an hearth (v. 3), I am like a pelican of the wilderness: I am like an owl of the desert (v. 6), I am withered like grass (v. 11). The whole psalm hangs on the hinge of a single word - But thou, O LORD, shalt endure for…

Psalm 103 is a man rousing his own soul to worship - Bless the LORD, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name (v. 1) - and the worship is built not on changed circumstances but on remembered mercy: forget not all his benefits: Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases; who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies (vv. 2-4). At the psalm’s heart stands the oldest thing Israel knew a…

Psalm 104 is a long, unhurried walk through the made world, and every step of it turns into praise: Bless the LORD, O my soul. O LORD my God, thou art very great; thou art clothed with honour and majesty (v. 1). The psalmist watches God wear light like clothing - Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment: who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain (v. 2) - and then walks the whole creation as evidence of one Maker’s hand: the springs in the valleys, the wild bea…

Psalm 105 is praise in the form of memory - a long, deliberate walk back through Israel’s history that finds, at every turn, one God keeping one word. Its summons is Remember his marvellous works that he hath done (v. 5), and its hinge is a single repeated verb: He hath remembered his covenant for ever, the word which he commanded to a thousand generations (v. 8). That covenant is the spine of the whole psalm - the promise he made with Abraham, and his oath unto Isaac (v.…

Psalm 106 is the prayer of a people who have run out of every defense but the mercy of God. It opens in praise - O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever (v. 1) - then turns and confesses, We have sinned with our fathers, we have committed iniquity, we have done wickedly (v. 6), and walks the whole history of Israel as a record not of merit but of rescue. At the Red Sea the verdict is set once for all: Nevertheless he saved them for his…

Psalm 107 opens the last book of the Psalter with a summons and then hands the microphone to those summoned: O give thanks unto the LORD, for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever. Let the redeemed of the LORD say so, whom he hath redeemed from the hand of the enemy (vv. 1-2). What follows is the testimony of the redeemed in four scenes - wanderers lost and starving in the wilderness, prisoners in darkness and in the shadow of death, being bound in affliction and iro…

Psalm 108 is a song stitched together from two earlier psalms - a fixed heart that praises God among the nations, and a fixed prayer that leans on God for victory. It opens with a settled, immovable resolve: O God, my heart is fixed; I will sing and give praise, even with my glory. Awake, psaltery and harp: I myself will awake early (vv. 1-2). And the praise will not stay private; it reaches outward to the whole world: I will praise thee, O LORD, among the people: and I wi…

Psalm 109 is the prayer of a man under a storm of lies, who has done nothing to earn it: they have rewarded me evil for good, and hatred for my love (v. 5), and fought against me without a cause (v. 3). His answer to slander is striking - not counter-attack, but prayer: but I give myself unto prayer (v. 4). Then comes the hardest stretch in the Psalter, a long call for judgment on the chief accuser: Set thou a wicked man over him: and let Satan stand at his right hand (v.…

Psalm 110 is seven verses long and stands behind more of the New Testament than any other passage in the Old. It is built on two oath-backed oracles. The first opens it: The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool (v. 1). David, the king, overhears God speaking to another whom David calls my Lord - and Jesus made that distinction the hinge of a question no one could answer: If David then call him Lord, how is he his son?…

Psalm 111 is a short acrostic of pure praise - in the Hebrew each line begins with the next letter of the alphabet, so the song runs from beginning to end as if to say there is no part of speech that does not belong to God’s praise. It opens, Praise ye the LORD. I will praise the LORD with my whole heart, in the assembly of the upright, and in the congregation (v. 1), and fixes its whole gaze on what God has done: The works of the LORD are great, sought out of all them tha…

Psalm 112 is the portrait that hangs beside Psalm 111. The earlier psalm sings the character of God; this one draws the man who fears Him - and the astonishment is that the two portraits begin to look alike. Praise ye the LORD. Blessed is the man that feareth the LORD, that delighteth greatly in his commandments (v. 1). From that single root - reverent, glad obedience - a whole life unfolds: a mighty seed, a flourishing house, and a thing that outlasts every fortune, his r…

Psalm 113 is the first of the Hallel psalms sung at the Passover meal - part of the very hymn Jesus and His disciples sang the night before the cross (Matt. 26:30) - and it turns on a wonder no other song states so plainly. It opens with the Name: Praise ye the LORD. Praise, O ye servants of the LORD, praise the name of the LORD (v. 1), a praise that spans all time, from this time forth and for evermore (v. 2), and all space, From the rising of the sun unto the going down…

Psalm 114 is a short Passover hymn that retells the Exodus in pictures, and every picture turns out to be a doorway. It opens at the moment of release - When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language; Judah was his sanctuary, and Israel his dominion (vv. 1-2) - a family pulled out of the house of bondage and claimed, in a single line, as the dwelling and the realm of God. Then it watches the whole created order respond to its Maker: The…

Psalm 115 begins with the great refusal that lies at the root of all true worship: Not unto us, O LORD, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory, for thy mercy, and for thy truth’s sake (v. 1). It will not let the worshipper keep a single beam of the glory for himself; everything is handed back to God’s name. Against the mocking question of the nations - Where is now their God? (v. 2) - it answers with quiet certainty, our God is in the heavens: he hath done whatsoever he…

Psalm 116 is the song of a man brought back from the edge of the grave, and it begins not with doctrine but with affection: I love the LORD, because he hath heard my voice and my supplications (v. 1). He does not hide how close the end had come - The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell gat hold upon me: I found trouble and sorrow (v. 3) - nor how raw he had been in it, confessing later, I said in my haste, All men are liars (v. 11). His rescue was as simpl…

Psalm 117 is the shortest chapter in the whole Bible - two verses - and yet it reaches as far as any: O praise the LORD, all ye nations: praise him, all ye people. For his merciful kindness is great toward us: and the truth of the LORD endureth for ever. Praise ye the LORD. The wonder of it is the address. The summons does not go out to Israel alone but to all ye nations , all ye people - every tongue and tribe on the face of the earth called into one act of worship. And t…

Psalm 118 is the last of the songs sung at Passover, which means it is almost certainly the last psalm Jesus sang with His disciples before walking out to Gethsemane - and when they had sung an hymn, they went out into the mount of Olives (Matt. 26:30). On His lips its words turn out to be a map of His own days. At its centre stands the line the New Testament quotes of Him more than almost any other: The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corn…

Psalm 119 is the longest sustained love of the word of God in Scripture, and from its first line it is the song of someone who longs to be made whole by what God has spoken: Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the LORD (v. 1). The whole psalm leans toward One who would walk that way without a single misstep, and who said of the law it praises, Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil (Mat…

Psalm 120 begins the pilgrim songs - the Songs of Ascents sung going up to Jerusalem - but it begins them far from home, in trouble, among people who use words as weapons. In my distress I cried unto the LORD, and he heard me (v. 1). The whole psalm hangs on those two facts: the distress, and the God who heard. What presses on the psalmist is not an army but a tongue: Deliver my soul, O LORD, from lying lips, and from a deceitful tongue (v. 2). He has been lied about, slan…

Psalm 121 is the keeper psalm, a Song of degrees sung by travellers climbing the long, exposed roads up to Jerusalem - roads where bandits waited, where the heat could kill, where a single misstep on the rocky path could end the journey. It begins with eyes lifted and a question answered: I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth (vv. 1-2). The pilgrim’s help is not in the hills themselves…

Psalm 122 is a pilgrim song, sung on the road up to Jerusalem, and it opens in pure gladness at the invitation to worship: I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the LORD. Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem (vv. 1-2). The city draws the scattered tribes into one place - Jerusalem is builded as a city that is compact together: whither the tribes go up… to give thanks unto the name of the LORD (vv. 3-4). And at its heart stand t…

Psalm 123 is four short verses of one steady gesture - the upward look of a soul that has nowhere else to turn. Unto thee lift I up mine eyes, O thou that dwellest in the heavens (v. 1): the pilgrim raises his gaze off the ground, off the faces of men, and fixes it on God. Then comes the image that gives the psalm its whole texture: Behold, as the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their masters, and as the eyes of a maiden unto the hand of her mistress; so our eyes wa…

Psalm 124 is a backward look at a rescue, a Song of degrees sung on the road up to Jerusalem by people who knew how close they had come to being destroyed. The whole song turns on one small word, repeated twice at the start: If. 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 (vv. 1-2). The psalmist makes the people imagine, out loud, the disaster that did not happen - and the…

Psalm 125 is a short Song of degrees about the security of everyone who trusts in the LORD, and it makes its case by pointing at a mountain. They that trust in the LORD shall be as mount Zion, which cannot be removed, but abideth for ever (v. 1). The pilgrim climbing up to Jerusalem could see the truth with his own eyes: Zion had stood through the rise and fall of kingdoms, and so, the psalm says, will the one whose confidence rests in God. Then the picture widens from the…

Psalm 126 is the song of the great reversal - a Song of degrees in which God turns weeping into laughter so suddenly that the rescued can hardly believe it is real. It opens in astonished memory: When the LORD turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing (vv. 1-2). The deliverance was so complete that even the watching nations had to admit it: then said they among the heathen, The LOR…

Psalm 127 is a short Song of degrees, headed for Solomon - the builder-king - and it turns on a single hard word: in vain. Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain (v. 1). The point is not that work is worthless but that work cut off from God comes to nothing - the house no firmer than its true Builder, the city no safer than its true Keeper. So the anxious, sleepless striving of the…

Psalm 128 is a Song of degrees about the blessed home of the one who fears God, and it opens with the great word that opens the whole Psalter: Blessed is every one that feareth the LORD; that walketh in his ways (v. 1). The fear it means is not terror but reverence - a life bent toward God and walking His way - and the blessing it promises is strikingly down-to-earth: For thou shalt eat the labour of thine hands: happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee (v. 2).…

Psalm 129 is a Song of degrees that looks back across a whole history of suffering and, in the looking, finds a reason to stand. Twice it opens the same way, like a survivor saying it once and then saying it again to be sure it is true: Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth, may Israel now say: Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth: yet they have not prevailed against me (vv. 1-2). The affliction is real and lifelong; the deliverance is that it has no…

Psalm 130 begins lower than almost any song in Scripture and climbs to one of its widest hopes. Counted among the seven penitential psalms and known for centuries by the first words of its Latin form, De Profundis , it opens at the bottom: Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O LORD. Lord, hear my voice; let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications (vv. 1-2). The depths here are not the depths of the sea but of the soul - the place where guilt collects…

Psalm 131 is three verses long and contains a whole spiritual climb - the steep one, out of restless self-importance into rest. David opens by laying down two things at once, the proud heart and the lifted eye: LORD, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty: neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me (v. 1). This is not laziness or small ambition; it is a deliberate refusal to grasp at what is above one’s place - to stop forcing the loc…

Psalm 132 is built on two oaths leaning toward each other, and the disproportion between them is the whole point. First comes David’s - a vow of such single-mindedness that he will not rest until God has a resting place: I will not give sleep to mine eyes, or slumber to mine eyelids, Until I find out a place for the LORD, an habitation for the mighty God of Jacob (vv. 4-5). The king of Israel will not rest until the King of Israel is housed. The ark is brought up with the…

Psalm 133 is three verses long and opens with a command to look : Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! (v. 1). David does not merely report that unity is good; he stops the pilgrim on the road and makes him stare at it, the way one stares at something rare and lovely. Then come two images, both about something poured out from above and flowing down. First the holy oil: unity is like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran d…

Psalm 134 is the last of the fifteen Songs of degrees, and the shortest - a night blessing sung at the top of the long climb, where the pilgrim road finally ends at the house of God. As the day’s crowds thin and the dark comes down, the song turns to the servants left on watch: Behold, bless ye the LORD, all ye servants of the LORD, which by night stand in the house of the LORD. Lift up your hands in the sanctuary, and bless the LORD (vv. 1-2). Twice the same word goes up…

Psalm 135 is a great gathering-up of praise, woven almost entirely out of older Scripture, and its first word is its theme: Praise ye the LORD. Praise ye the name of the LORD; praise him, O ye servants of the LORD (v. 1). The reason given is the goodness of God Himself - for the LORD is good: sing praises unto his name; for it is pleasant (v. 3) - and the wonder that He has bound a people to Himself: For the LORD hath chosen Jacob unto himself, and Israel for his peculiar…

Psalm 136 is the Great Hallel, and it is built like no other psalm: every one of its twenty-six verses ends in the same words - for his mercy endureth for ever. A leader sang the first half of each line; the people answered with the refrain, until the truth was not merely heard but worn into them. And what the half-lines recount is the whole story of God’s dealing with His people, every chapter of it sealed with mercy. It opens in thanks to the highest - O give thanks unto…

Psalm 137 is the song of a people who have lost everything - their city, their temple, their freedom - and it begins with grief so heavy it can only sit down and weep: By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion (v. 1). Carried far from home, the exiles are ordered to perform - they that carried us away captive required of us a song (v. 3) - and they will not turn their sorrow into entertainment for their captors: We hanged our harps…

Psalm 138 is a song of thanks sung out loud and unashamed - I will praise thee with my whole heart: before the gods will I sing praise unto thee (v. 1) - the worship of a man who has cried and been answered: In the day when I cried thou answeredst me, and strengthenedst me with strength in my soul (v. 3). The answer came inward before it came outward - not the trouble removed, but the soul made strong inside it - and that proved ground enough for a lifetime of praise. At i…

Psalm 139 is David’s long, unhurried wonder at a God who misses nothing - O LORD, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off (vv. 1-2). It is the most personal kind of knowledge: there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether (v. 4). David then tests whether such a God can be escaped, and finds He cannot - Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I fle…

Psalm 140 is the prayer of a man surrounded by people who mean him harm, and its first word sets the whole posture: Deliver me, O LORD, from the evil man: preserve me from the violent man (v. 1). The danger is concrete - men who imagine mischiefs in their heart and gather for war (v. 2), whose chosen weapon is the tongue: They have sharpened their tongues like a serpent; adders’ poison is under their lips (v. 3). That last line travels far beyond David’s trouble. When the…

Psalm 141 is an evening prayer that opens with urgency and stakes everything on being heard: LORD, I cry unto thee: make haste unto me; give ear unto my voice, when I cry unto thee (v. 1). Then David hands us the image the whole psalm turns on - prayer offered like the worship of the sanctuary: Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense; and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice (v. 2). His petitions are not first for rescue but for a guarded self: Set…

Psalm 142 is prayed from the floor of human experience - its heading places David in the cave , hunted and cornered, a fugitive with the walls of the earth closing around him - and the prayer withholds nothing: I poured out my complaint before him; I shewed before him my trouble (v. 2). It is honest even about the collapse of the one praying: When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, then thou knewest my path (v. 3) - the comfort being not that the darkness lifts but that…

Psalm 143 is the last of the seven penitential psalms, and its opening lines make a move that the whole gospel will later turn on. David does not ask God to weigh him and find him worthy; he asks the opposite: And enter not into judgment with thy servant: for in thy sight shall no man living be justified (v. 2). He has understood that if God should examine him on the basis of his own record, the verdict is settled before it begins - no one comes through that judgment stand…

Psalm 144 begins as a warrior-king’s thanksgiving and ends in a vision of peace, and the line that turns it toward Christ is the one where David stops his own praise to marvel: LORD, what is man, that thou takest knowledge of him! or the son of man, that thou makest account of him? Man is like to vanity: his days are as a shadow that passeth away (vv. 3-4). It is the wonder of Psalm 8 prayed again - that the God who teacheth my hands to war should stoop to notice so small…

Psalm 145 is David’s alphabet of praise - in the Hebrew each verse begins with the next letter, so the whole song runs from beginning to end as if to gather every word a tongue can form into the worship of God. It opens with a daily, unending resolve: I will extol thee, my God, O king; and I will bless thy name for ever and ever… Every day will I bless thee (vv. 1-2), and stands in awe before a greatness no mind can exhaust: Great is the LORD, and greatly to be prai…

Psalm 146 opens the great closing Hallelujah of the Psalter, and it does its praising by weighing two helps against each other. There is the help of the powerful - Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish (vv. 3-4) - a help that dies with the man who offered it. And there is the help that never fails: Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his…

Psalm 147 is a song that will not let go of either half of God - the One who flung the stars into place and the One who bends to a shattered heart - and it sets the two side by side without a seam: He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds. He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names (vv. 3-4). The same hand that numbers the galaxies binds up a single wound; Great is our Lord, and of great power: his understanding is infinite (v…

Psalm 148 is a summons to the whole universe to praise its Maker, and it leaves nothing out. It calls down from the top of creation - Praise ye the LORD from the heavens… Praise ye him, all his angels… Praise ye him, sun and moon: praise him, all ye stars of light (vv. 1-3) - and then turns and calls up from the bottom - Praise the LORD from the earth, ye dragons, and all deeps… mountains, and all hills… beasts, and all cattle… kings of t…

Psalm 149 is a new song raised in the gathered company of God’s people, and it moves in two beats. First it calls for praise and names its reason in mercy: Sing unto the LORD a new song… Let Israel rejoice in him that made him: let the children of Zion be joyful in their King… For the LORD taketh pleasure in his people: he will beautify the meek with salvation (vv. 1-4). Then it arms that praise: Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and a twoedged s…

Psalm 150 is the last word of the whole book of Psalms - the grand doxology that closes a hundred and fifty chapters of prayer and lament and thanksgiving in one unbroken shout. The word Praise sounds thirteen times in six verses, framed at both ends by the great cry Praise ye the LORD (vv. 1, 6). It names where - Praise God in his sanctuary: praise him in the firmament of his power (v. 1); why - Praise him for his mighty acts: praise him according to his excellent greatne…