Types of Psalms and their Setting
The Psalms originated as Israel's response to God's deeds and words, and indeed to what the psalmists saw as God's inaction and silence. As such, they reflect the experiences of human life: joy and sorrow. When the Israelites were in a harmonious relationship with God, they sang songs of praise to God. When they experienced distress, they took up their sorrow in the form of lamentation, and when their lamentation was heard, they responded with a song of thanksgiving. Brueggemann categorized these three genres as orientation, disorientation and reorientation. 1. Hymns or songs of praise: E.g., Pss 8; 19:1-6; 29; 33; 47; 65; 66:1-12; 78; 93; 95–100; 103–6; 111; 113; 114; 117; 134; 135; 136; 145–50. Hymns or songs of praise are the response of believers/community to God's work/saving intervention. This cult response takes the form of praise for what God has done in various possible life situations. Many of these hymns begin with a call to praise that calls the assembled community to praise the Lord (Ps. 33:1-3; 66:1-4; 100:1-3a; 105:1-6; 111:1; 113:1 –3; 117:1; 135:1–3; 136:1a; 146–50). The call to praise (113:1–3; 117:1) is followed by reasons for praise (113:4–6; 117:2), which may include God's power and majesty (113:4–5) as well as God's mercy in providing about individual persons (113:6–9). 2. Lamentation or prayers: This type of psalm is a common category in the psalter: a. Individual lament: Individual laments arise from various situations of individual crisis. In such circumstances, the sufferer may go to the shrine to pray or lament and perform the appropriate ritual acts. In some cases it is possible that the psalm was uttered by cultic personnel on behalf of the needy. This category includes: 3-7; 9–10; 13; (14); 17; 22; 25; 26; 28; 31; 35; (36); 38; (39); 40:11-17; 41; 42–43; 51; (52); (53); 54–59; 61; 64; 69; 70; 71; 77; 86; 88; 102; 109; 120; 130; 140–43. b. Communal lament: Communal laments arose from times of national crisis.
In the background of national lamentations is some disaster - such as a defeat in war, an epidemic, a famine that affects the whole people. These include Psalms 12; 44; 60; 74; 79; 80; 83; 85; 90; 94; 123; 129 and 137. 3. Psalms of thanksgiving: a. Individual thanksgiving: E.g.: Pss 30; 18; 34; 6; 40; 66; 92; 116; 118; 138; 31–45; 32; 66; 92. b. Community thanksgiving: E.g. Pss 67, 75, 107, 124, 136. 4. Royal Psalms. They are psalms composed for an event connected with the king's life. Included are Psalms 2; 18; 20; 21; 45; 72; 89; 101; 110; 132; and 144:1–11. 5. Wisdom and didactic poems: The wisdom psalms include 1; 19; 37; 49; 73; 112; 119; 127; 128 and 133. 6. Sub-types: In some cases the sub-categories do not have a clearly defined structure, but are linked by their common content, aim, etc. The significant classes are: Liturgy; The psalms that connect the liturgical actions with the words of the psalm are called Liturgies: 15; 24; 50; 81; 82; 95; 115 and 132.
Formation of the Book of Psalms
The English name "Psalms" came through the Greek biblos Psalmon via the Latin libre Psalmorum. The Septuagint used the word psalms to render the Hebrew Mizmor, a technical term for songs sung with musical instructions. The Alexandrian Greek manuscript of the OT called the book Psalterion, meaning "stringed instrument." From this name the Christian Church took the name "psalm" as the name of the book. However, the Hebrew Bible aptly titled the book "Praise" (tehillim), a word that occurs many times in various psalms. Authorship/origin: The modern study of the Psalms has developed in several stages of gradual clarification of the psalm literature and narrowing and sharpening of still unresolved questions. 19th-century scholars who challenged traditional religious assumptions that David and the singers of his generation wrote the psalms emphasized the post-exilic origin of the anthology and claimed to have even identified a large number of psalms dating back to the Maccabean period. They judged that many of the psalms, though hardly written by David, were pre-exilic, and many were post-exilic, probably composed before Maccabean times.
The origin and use of the psalm is still hotly debated without consensus. Division of the book: the five psalm sections provide considerable evidence of the compilation process, Book-I (1-41) stands aside as a collection attributed to David and overwhelmingly uses the divine name Yahweh. Book II (42-72) and Book III (73-89) stand together in two respects: the divine name Elohim and the dedicatory headings are arranged so that the Davidic psalms are surrounded by psalms associated with the temple musicians. Book IV (90-106) and Book V (107-150) are entitled together, suggesting that they were of more diverse origin and were grouped together. Several smaller collections: Examples: (i) Doublets: Ps. 14 = Ps 53. Ps 40:13-17 = Ps. 70:1-5 (ii) Triplets: Ps. 108 = Ps. 57:1-11=Ps. 60:5-12 (iii) In Ps. 72 at the end of David's prayer are finished, but Psalm 86 is again titled as David's prayer. (iv) The names (headings) given to the psalms are not uniformly distributed. Ps. 1-89 most psalms have titles, while like psalms 90-150 only a few psalms give titles.
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