A Child’s Guide to the Psalms

What are the psalms?

The Book of Psalms is a collection of prayers and songs that have been used by God’s people since before the time of Jesus Christ. According to Holy Tradition, most of the psalms were written by King David, who was one of the most important ancestors of Jesus and the holiest of the ancient Jewish kings. King David remains one of our most beloved saints to this day. We remember him for his strength as a warrior and leader, for his repentance when he did something wrong, and especially for the beautiful poetry that he gave us in the Book of Psalms.

King David’s story is told in the first two Books of Kingdoms (sometimes called the Books of Samuel) in the Old Testament. Other versions of his story appear in the Books of Chronicles.

Some of the psalms were written by other poets around the time of King David or during the time of David’s son, King Solomon. These other psalms were so beautiful that people decided to keep them alongside King David’s poetry to complete the book that we have in our Bibles today. In this guide, we will usually talk about King David as the author of all the psalms, because even when he did not write them himself, it was always his style and poetry that were their inspiration.

King David lived about a thousand years before the Birth of Jesus. This means that the psalms were being sung by the people of God for hundreds of years before Christ came to us, and the Church still uses these same psalms to this very day. This makes the Book of Psalms by far the most ancient and important book of prayers in our Orthodox Tradition.

Did you know? You will find psalms, or parts of psalms, in every single church service in the Orthodox Church. There is not one day that goes by without the Church praying the psalms!

In most Bibles and Psalters there are 150 psalms. In some Orthodox Bibles you may find 151 instead. This is because the Orthodox Bible has some extra poems that are not always included in other collections. Almost all the psalms are the same in every Bible. However, the numbers might sometimes be slightly different depending on which Bible or Book of Psalms you are using. In this book, we will use the numbers from the Ancient Faith Psalter, but don’t worry if you see the same psalm with a different number in another place.

All the psalms were originally written in the Hebrew language, the language of the ancient Jews, God’s chosen people. Most of the Old Testament in your Bible was originally written in Hebrew as well. In ancient times, about three hundred years before Jesus was born, the Psalms were also translated into Greek. They have been prayed in Greek as well as Hebrew ever since. Today the Psalms have been translated into almost every language in the world. In this book you will find the psalms written in English so that you can understand the words when you sing and pray them in church or at home.