Hello, I'm Gary Stevens, and welcome to the History in the Bible podcast.

All the history, in all the books, in all the Bibles.

Thank you. Episode 1.37. David and the Psalms.

In the last episode of the history in the Bible, we began our survey of the book of Psalms.

We finish it in this episode. The Psalms form an important part of the Jewish prayer book, the Soudoir. The Psalms pervade the everyday life of a pious

Jew. Half of the 150 appear at some points in the annual cycle of the liturgy and also at special occasions.

The daily orthodox morning service includes Psalms 20 and 145.

The Shabbas service each Friday at sunset opens with Psalms 95 to 99 and Psalm 20.

Psalms are said as grace before a meal, before retiring at night, before commencing a journey,

before a burial, at weddings, when blessing a house, and when tending to a sick person.

In the Christian tradition, Psalms is the second book of the division called

Wisdom Literature, following the Book of Job. The Septuagint, and later the Latin Vulgate,

numbered the Psalms differently to the Masoretic text. They divided some Psalms and

amalgamated others. The Orthodox churches and older Catholic texts follow the Septuagint.

Modern Catholic translations nowadays follow the Hebrew, often noting the vulgate number as an aside.

Protestants follow the Jewish numbering, and that's the numbering I will use. There

were also differences in numbering the verses within each Psalm. Most Psalms begin with a

superscription. For example, Psalm 4 starts with for the leader, with instrumental music,

a Psalm of David.

Older English translations, such as the King James Version,

treated the superscription as part of verse 1 of the Psalm.

The trend in all modern English translations is to follow the Hebrew versification,

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