A psalm is a prayer — a prayer that is sung rather than spoken. Psalms are scattered throughout the Old Testament and the Book of Mormon, but the book of Psalms is special. It’s a collection of 150 psalms used for worship in ancient Israel, like an ancient hymnbook. Actually, it’s like five ancient hymnbooks, because the Hebrew text divides it into five books:
- Book I: Psalms 1-41
- Book II: Psalms 42-72
- Book III: Psalms 73-89
- Book IV: Psalms 90-106
- Book V: Psalms 107-150
The psalms themselves show us where these divisions fall. The word “Amen” only appears four times in the Psalter, at the end of psalms 41, 72, 89, and 106. Three of those times, it’s doubled for emphasis: “Amen, and Amen.” One of those times, it’s followed immediately by a section-ending announcement: “The prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended” (Psalm 72:20).
The five books aren’t entirely dissimilar to one another. All of them contain psalms of lamentation, psalms of praise, and psalms about the temple. However, lamentations are more prominent in the first book, while the last book contains the most psalms of praise. In fact, the phrase “praise ye the Lord” (Hallelujah in Hebrew) enters the book for the first time in Psalm 104 and dominates the last five psalms. So the overall shape of the book is sorrow giving way to joyful worship.
Did Lehi and his descendants have the book of Psalms? There is some textual evidence that they had at least some of them. John Hilton III has identified 43 cases where phrases from the book of Psalms appear in the Book of Mormon. (See “Old Testament Psalms in the Book of Mormon,” in Ascending the Mountain of the Lord: Temple, Praise, and Worship in the Old Testament, 2013).
Some of the most vivid allusions to psalms are Nephi watering his pillow with his tears (2 Nephi 33:3; compare Psalm 6:6), Alma urging his people to look up to God with a pure heart and clean hands (Alma 5:19; compare Psalm 24:3-4), and Jesus instructing the Nephites and Lamanites to replace animal sacrifice with a broken heart and a contrite spirit (3 Nephi 9:20; compare Psalm 34:18; 51:16-17). Nephi’s psalm, recorded in 2 Nephi 4:16-35, shares much phraseology with the psalter, as does Ammon’s psalm in Alma 26.
Over the next three weeks, as we study the book of Psalms, let’s consider how they can teach us the language of prayer. Let’s observe how the psalms influenced worship in the Book of Mormon, and let’s emulate psalmic language in our own prayers, as we express a range of emotions, including joyful praise.
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