Praise ye the Lord. Praise the Lord, O my soul.
Praise ye Jah! Praise, O my soul, Jehovah.
Hallelujah! Praise Jehovah, O my soul.
Hallelujah! Praise the LORD, O my soul.
The Psalms were not written to be read silently. They were sheet music. David set aside whole families of Levites to lead the singing, and 1 Chronicles 23:5 counts four thousand of them praising the LORD with instruments David had made. Three great guilds carried the work — the sons of Asaph, of Heman, and of Jeduthun — and their names still sit at the top of psalms we sing today.
The little lines above many psalms are performance directions left in the text. "To the chief Musician" points to the worship leader. "Neginoth" means stringed instruments. "Selah," scattered seventy-one times, is most likely a musical pause or a swell. The temple had trumpets, harps, lyres, and cymbals, and the sound of them carried across the city.
Three times a year every Israelite family that could travel went up to Jerusalem for a feast. Psalms 120 through 134 are labeled Songs of Ascents — short, portable songs sung on the climb up to the city, which sits high in the hill country. Other groups had fixed places too: Psalms 113–118, the Egyptian Hallel, were sung at Passover, which is almost certainly the hymn Jesus and the disciples sang at the Last Supper.
Because the book grew over centuries, it carries the whole history of the nation inside it. Psalm 90 comes from the wilderness. Many psalms come from David's years running from Saul and reigning in Jerusalem. Psalm 137 was written by people sitting beside the canals of Babylon with their harps hung up in the trees. The hymnbook outlived the temple that first sang it.
For the first hearers, the Psalms were the words God gave them to say back to Him. A farmer who could not read still knew these songs by heart, because he had sung them at the feasts since he was a child. When his crops failed or his enemies closed in, he already had the language for it.
They also taught Israel that God could take honesty. Almost a third of the Psalter is lament — complaint, grief, even anger, brought straight to God instead of swallowed. The book teaches the worshiper to carry everything to the LORD and leave the settling of scores with Him, and then it ends with five straight songs of pure praise, so that the last word of the human heart is praise.
Psalms — The canon's longest book — 150 Psalms edited into five doxology-bookended books, composed across a millennium, attributed to David, Asaph, Korah's sons, Moses, Solomon, Heman, Ethan, and anonymous voices. A ''Torah of David''; the Bible's longest continuous liturgical-devotional corpus.
Voices3
Praise the Lord, O my soul. He did not say, praise the body, but, praise, O my soul; not that he condemned the body, but he condemned the works of the flesh. Praise the Lord, O my soul. The soul exhorts itself. Just as if David were to say, Praise the Lord, O David; so too the soul itself says to itself, Praise the Lord, O my soul.
Jerome· Homily 55, on Psalm 145, 420patristic
Praise ye the Lord,....
John Gill· Exposition of the Entire Bible, 1771reformed
. Ver. 1. Praise ye the LORD, or, Hallelujah. It is saddening to remember how this majestic word has been trailed in the mire of late. Its irreverent use is an aggravated instance of taking the name of Jehovah our God in vain. Let us hope that it has been done in ignorance by the ruder sort; but great responsibility lies with leaders who countenance and even copy this blasphemy. With holy awe let us pronounce the word HALLELUJAH, and by it summon ourselves and all others to adore the God of the whole earth.
Charles Spurgeon· The Treasury of David, 1892reformed
Rare words are the text's own signal of a deliberate thread — the fewer the occurrences, the more the places it appears belong together.
The walk8
Two steps out along the cross-reference floor, votes-ranked — destinations reached by more than one path rise (the text's own hubs). Every stop is a page, and every stop travels with its words.
Through
Psalms 103:1Bless the LORD, O my soul; all that is within me, bless His holy name.
leads to
Hallelujah! Praise the LORD, O my soul.
My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast. I will sing and make music.
God is Spirit, and His worshipers must worship Him in spirit and in truth.”
Hallelujah! I will give thanks to the LORD with all my heart in the council of the upright and in the assembly.
What then shall I do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my mind. I will sing with my spirit, but I will also sing with my mind.
Through
Psalms 105:45that they might keep His statutes and obey His laws. Hallelujah!
leads to
Keep His statutes and commandments, which I am giving you today, so that you and your children after you may prosper, and that you may live long in the land that the LORD your…
Through
Psalms 103:22Bless the LORD, all His works in all places of His dominion. Bless the LORD, O my soul!
leads to
Shout for joy, O heavens; rejoice, O earth; break forth in song, O mountains! For the LORD has comforted His people, and He will have compassion on His afflicted ones.
All You have made will give You thanks, O LORD, and Your saints will bless You.
The whole web at once: see the Arc.
The verses this one reaches12
Bless the LORD, O my soul; all that is within me, bless His holy name.
I will give thanks to the LORD with all my heart; I will recount all Your wonders.
Bless the LORD, all His works in all places of His dominion. Bless the LORD, O my soul!
I will praise You, O Lord my God, with all my heart; I will glorify Your name forever.
After this I heard a sound like the roar of a great multitude in heaven, shouting: “Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God!
Rest in God alone, O my soul, for my hope comes from Him.
Hallelujah! Praise the LORD from the heavens; praise Him in the highest places.
and the residents of one city will go to another, saying: ‘Let us go at once to plead before the LORD and to seek the LORD of Hosts. I myself am going.’
May sinners vanish from the earth and the wicked be no more. Bless the LORD, O my soul. Hallelujah!
that my heart may sing Your praises and not be silent. O LORD my God, I will give thanks forever.
that they might keep His statutes and obey His laws. Hallelujah!
So I will bless You as long as I live; in Your name I will lift my hands.
2 more linked verses are grouped by book below ↓
Every other verse the study tradition links to this one, in the Bible’s own order. The first links in each book carry a line of their text; every reference opens its full verse page.
Cross-reference data: Treasury of Scripture Knowledge; OpenBible.info (CC-BY).