Psalms

About the Book of Psalms

The Book of Psalms contains 150 songs called psalms. They were written hundreds of years before Jesus lived on earth.
Most of the psalms show the name of the writer at the top. King David wrote many of them.
The writers wrote the psalms for several different purposes. In some psalms, they remembered what God had done for his people in the past. There are happy psalms that praise God because he is great and good. In other psalms, the writers pray to God for help. They ask him to save them. Sometimes they pray that God will forgive them for the bad things that they have done. In some psalms, the writers ask God to destroy their enemies.
Many of the psalms look to future times when God's special king, the Messiah, will rule everything.
The psalms show how God worked in the lives of his people. They include many things that still happen in the lives of people today. Many people find help as they read the Psalms. We can read them when we are happy and we want to praise God. We can also read them when we are sad and we need God to help us. If we trust God, we know that he will help us in our trouble.
The psalms tell us how great and powerful God is. They show us that bad things make him angry. They also show how much he loves us.