The return and the great Hallelujah

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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.

Songs of Ascents

Fifteen short psalms headed a song of ascents, sung by pilgrims going up to Jerusalem for the feasts. Psalm 130 is also one of the seven penitential psalms and Psalm 132 is a royal psalm, and both keep their own heading here.

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.

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 thanksgiving of the redeemedPsalms 107

  Four pictures of trouble and rescue, each closing with the same refrain.

• The third Davidic collectionPsalms 108 to 110, 138 to 145

  David again, including Psalm 110, the psalm the New Testament quotes most.

• The Egyptian HallelPsalms 113 to 118

  The psalms sung at Passover, and most likely the hymn sung at the Last Supper.

• Psalm 119Psalms 119

  An acrostic of twenty-two stanzas, eight verses each, on the word of God.

• The Songs of AscentsPsalms 120 to 134

  Fifteen pilgrim songs sung going up to Jerusalem.

• The Great HallelPsalms 136

  Twenty-six verses, each closing with the line that His loving devotion endures forever.

• The final HallelPsalms 146 to 150

  Five psalms that open and close with Hallelujah, the doxology of the whole Psalter.