Book III of the Psalter · Psalms 73 to 89 · 17 psalms

The crisis of the throne

This is the shortest book and the darkest. Asaph's psalms ask why the nation is ruined and the wicked are at ease, and the book ends with the covenant God made with David looking broken.

Sealed by: Psalm 89:52
Where it stands in the argument: Psalm 89 recites the promise that David's throne would stand for ever and then asks where that promise has gone, which is the question Book IV answers.
Who the headings name: Asaph, the sons of Korah, David in Psalm 86, Heman the Ezrahite in Psalm 88, and Ethan the Ezrahite in Psalm 89.

Every psalm in Book III

17 doors, coloured by the kind of psalm

Imprecatory 1
Historical recital 1
Royal 1
Wisdom and Torah 1
Thanksgiving 1
Lament and trust 8
Praise 4

The colour is the psalm's primary kind, following the form-critical categories of Hermann Gunkel (Einleitung in die Psalmen, 1933) as set out in C. Hassell Bullock, Encountering the Book of Psalms (2001). A psalm that carries more than one kind is filed under one of them, and each kind this book holds is explained below.

Imprecatory: Prayers that ask God to judge the wicked, in words that shock a modern reader. They hand the case to God rather than to the one praying, and Psalm 137 is the hardest of them.
Historical recital: Psalms that retell what God did in Egypt, at the sea and in the wilderness, so that the next generation learns the story by singing it.
Royal: Psalms about the king the LORD anoints, set at the seams of the book. The New Testament reads Psalms 2, 45 and 110 of Christ, and Psalm 132 stands under the ascents.
Wisdom and Torah: Psalms that teach rather than petition: the two ways, the law as delight, the prosperity of the wicked, and the shortness of a life. Psalms 127 and 128 teach in the same way and stand under the ascents.
Thanksgiving: The song of a man who asked and was answered, telling the congregation what happened. The Hebrew word is todah, the thank offering put into words.
Lament and trust: The largest kind: prayer out of trouble, spoken to God in the second person by someone who expects an answer, together with the psalms of quiet confidence that grow out of it, among them Psalms 16, 23, 27 and 62.
Praise: The hymn: God praised for who He is and what He made, including the enthronement psalms that say the LORD reigns and the songs of Zion.

The collections inside it

3 gathered groups, in the order they stand

AsaphPsalms 73 to 83
Eleven psalms of Asaph, mostly the complaint of the whole nation rather than of one man.
The sons of KorahPsalms 84 to 85, 87 to 88
Four more Korah psalms, including the longing for the courts of the LORD and the darkest psalm in the book.
Ethan the EzrahitePsalms 89
One psalm, and it carries the crisis of the collapsed throne.

The name of God in this book

Both names stand here. The Asaph psalms keep the Elohistic usage of Book II at the start, and the LORD returns as the book goes on.

What the kinds of psalm come to here

Imprecatory 1
Historical recital 1
Royal 1
Wisdom and Torah 1
Thanksgiving 1
Lament and trust 8
Praise 4

The same nine kinds colour every psalm on this page and on the four other books of the Psalter.

The doxology that seals it

Psalm 89:52, Berean Standard Bible

52Blessed be the LORD forever! Amen and amen.
Psalm 89:52, the closing blessing that marks the seam of the book.

Why the seam is marked

The doxology belongs to the collection rather than to the psalm it closes, which is how the five books can be seen in the text itself. The first four seams stand at Psalms 41:13, 72:18-19, 89:52 and 106:48, and the five psalms from 146 to 150, each opening and closing with Hallelujah, close the Psalter.