Monday, October 6, 2014

Psalms

While I have been wanting to go through each book of Psalms, when I got to chapter 5 I realized that they weren't in chronological order and it didn't make sense to me, especially when reading the ones that David wrote. So, I've decided to try to find the chronological order of the Psalms that David wrote and review those.

In case you're like me and have always wondered what the heck the word Psalms means or how it relates to these writings: The Hebrew designation of Psalms is Tehillim, meaning "praises," a term that reflects much of the book's content. The book's name in Latin and English Bibles, however, comes from the Greek, Psalmoi, which means "twanging [of harp strings]," indicating that many are songs sung to the accompaniment of harps. This can also mean they are poems read or reflected to the music of harps. An alternate title, Psalterion, meaning "psaltery," and is a collection of harp songs, from which comes the English term "Psalter."

Most scholars seem to agree that David wrote 73 of the 150 Psalms in the Bible. The chronological order of David's psalms are hard to figure out. It depends which other book describing David's life you use to try to put them in order, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 2 Kings, or Chronicles. One such order of some of the psalms is like this: 59, 56, 34, 142, 63, 52, 54, 57, 7, 18, 60, 51, 32, 3, 30. But there are many versions for the order for these and the rest. Many of the other psalms contributed to him can be applied at more than one event in his life so knowing exactly when it was written is up to interpretation. The psalms contributed to him are 3-9, 11-32, 34-41, 51-66, 68-70, 86, 101, 103, 108-110, 122, 124, 131, 138-145.

I guess I'll try the most basic of orders and go out from there.

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