The five ‘books’ of the Psalter
Psalm 40 ends with this verse: “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel from age to age. Amen.
Amen.” Already in olden times, specialists had noted that three other psalms finish with a similar flourish: psalms 71 (“Blessed be
the Lord, God of Israel, who alone works wonders, ever blessed his glorious name. Let his glory fill the earth. Amen! Amen!”), 88
(“Blessed be the Lord for ever. Amen, amen!”) and 105 (“Blessed be the Lord, God of Israel, for ever, from age to age. Let all the
people cry out: ‘Amen! Amen!’”)
It was thought that these verses must serve as markers, indicating the end of sections of the
Psalter. The one hundred and fifty psalms could therefore be divided into five unequal groups: 3-40; 41-71; 72-88; 89-105; and 106-150.
Psalm 150, a canticle of praise, concludes not only the fifth grouping, but the whole Book of psalms. Psalms 1 and 2 would together
form an introduction to the whole Psalter.
Many specialists believe that this five-part division is itself a late adjustment
by an editor who wanted thereby to give tribute to the Torah, the Jewish Law, which itself comprises the first five books of the Bible:
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. (These first five books are also called the Pentateuch, a Greek word which means…
five books!)
In fact, no links can be found between the content of the book of Genesis and psalms 3-40, nor between Exodus and
psalms 41-71, etc. It therefore seems that this division is completely arbitrary. Yet further studies show that this might not be
the case.
Psalm 71, which concludes the second group, has an extra verse at the end that reads: “Here ends the prayers of David,
son of Jesse.” This finale, the only one of its kind in the Psalter, seems to imply that at some time the Book of psalms ended with
psalm 71. When we study the poems that make up the first two groups, we see that very few of them refer to the Exile, a terrible event
that deeply marked the consciousness of the Jewish people. The fall of
On the other hand, many psalms of the third group (psalms 72-88) seem to refer to the destruction of
the
As
for the last two groups (psalms 89-150) they can often be understood in the context of the return to
This reconstruction of the history of the writing of the psalter is but a hypothesis. But it helps us understand
that, even if we cannot set the precise date of redaction of any individual psalm, the whole collection is bound closely to the history
of the people of