The book of Psalms is a long book in the middle of the Old Testament, part of the ‘Wisdom’ genre of literature. It is one of the longest books in the Bible (the longest by chapters and the 3rd longest in terms of number of words.)
Different religious traditions number the psalms differently, though most Jewish, Protestant and Catholic versions of the book each include 150 individual works. The Eastern Orthodox Church’s Septuagint Bible includes a 151st psalm, while some versions of the Bible used by Middle Eastern Syriac churches have 155 psalms. The reason for the different numbering is that the Hebrew numbering sometimes combines (splices, joins) a psalm that is reckoned as two psalms in the Greek numbering–and vice versa.
Part of the popularity of the Psalms lies in the fact that they are often quite short to read and in many Christian traditions, the Psalms are read regularly, either monthly or bi-monthly, something that is easy to do because of their individual composition. Because they are individual prayers, they can be read individually without necessarily losing the ‘thread’ of the story (as with the historical books or the Gospels), though as we will discover later, they still retain a unity which means we should read them all regularly, not simply dipping in for our ‘chocolate box’ fix of promises!
Eugene Peterson reminds us, ‘The Psalms come to us embedded in Holy Scripture. They have their own identity as a book, 150 prayers with a clearly marked beginning and end. They are, at the same time, an integral part of a larger book, the Bible… They have the Torah for their mother, the Prophets for their father and a luxuriantly rambling family tree.’ (‘Answering God’, P 16) Each of the books of the Bible is necessary (2 Tim 3:16), but none is complete in itself; we need to read and study the Psalms keeping ‘the bigger picture’ of the whole story of Scripture in mind