The Psalms

After our church, Holy Trinity Huddersfield, celebrated its 200th Anniversary in 2019 and we were asked to read through the Bible in a year as a church, I decided the focus in 2020 would be about worship, so I started by blogging about the psalms of ascent, songs that are sung by pilgrims going to Jerusalem. That was the start of an on-and-off series on the psalms, organised into categories such as the psalms by Asaph or the Sons of Korah. two and a half years later I’m halfway through them.

The books of Psalms are roughly themed like this:

Book 1: Psalms 1 – 41: God is beside us.
Book 2: Psalms 42 – 72: God goes before us
Book 3: Psalms 73 – 89: God is all around us.
Book 4: Psalms 90 – 106: God is above us.
Book 5: Psalms 107 – 150: God is among us.

Psalms of David

I am dealing with all of book 1 of the psalms (Psalms 1 to 41) together as they mostly are written by David and concern his reign. They are mostly personal songs, so I will be looking at how they apply to us personally. Social and communal aspects of life and work do not come in until the later books of psalms.

This is part of looking at the psalms by David, but as there are so few psalms in Book 1 not attributed to David I shall work through all 41 of them. As ever I shall be looking at poetic form as well as for direct meaning, if any.

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