Book IV of the Psalter · Psalms 90 to 106 · 17 psalms

The LORD reigns

The book opens with the oldest voice in the Psalter. Moses prays here before Israel had a king, and the book answers the crisis of Psalm 89 by turning from the throne in Jerusalem to the throne of God.

Sealed by: Psalm 106:48
Where it stands in the argument: Gerald Wilson (The Editing of the Hebrew Psalter, 1985) read the enthronement psalms here as the deliberate answer to Psalm 89: when the human throne fails, God is still King.
Who the headings name: Moses in Psalm 90 and David in Psalms 101 and 103. The rest carry no name.

Every psalm in Book IV

17 doors, coloured by the kind of psalm

Penitential 1
Historical recital 2
Royal 1
Wisdom and Torah 1
Thanksgiving 1
Lament and trust 2
Praise 9

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.

Penitential: The prayers of a man confessing sin and asking to be forgiven. The church has read seven of them together since Cassiodorus in the sixth century, and the seventh, Psalm 130, stands under the ascents above.
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

Of MosesPsalms 90
A prayer of Moses the man of God, on the shortness of a life before an everlasting God.
The enthronement psalmsPsalms 93, 95 to 99
The psalms that say the LORD reigns, and call the whole earth to sing a new song.
The recitalsPsalms 105 to 106
Two histories set side by side: what God did, and what Israel did with it.

The name of God in this book

The LORD, and the book says the name as a claim: the LORD reigns, over against every throne that has fallen.

What the kinds of psalm come to here

Penitential 1
Historical recital 2
Royal 1
Wisdom and Torah 1
Thanksgiving 1
Lament and trust 2
Praise 9

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 106:48, Berean Standard Bible

48Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. Let all the people say, “Amen!” Hallelujah!
Psalm 106:48, 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.