I love the Psalms: praying them, singing them, and reading them every day. The Psalter is the prayer book God gave his people. It is a liturgical resource, a collection of sung prayers to guide OT Israel and the New Covenant Israel of God in daily worship, both corporate and private. I am not an exclusive psalmodist, but the Book of Psalms is indispensable in my own commitment to and habits of personal devotion and weekly celebration of the Lord’s Day. It is the framework and primary substance of my daily prayer, contemplation, and devotion. As much as I value, am committed to, and recommend systematic daily Bible reading, if I had to choose between a general Bible reading plan and praying through the Psalms each month, I would choose the latter, every time, without hesitation, and without question. In praying and singing the Psalms, we are singing with God’s people in all generations.
The Psalms are prayers, and they are meant to be prayed, not just read. The Psalms are not like the rest of Scripture. There are psalms in other parts of the Bible (e.g. Hab. 3; 1Sam. 2:1-10; Lk. 1:46-55), and all of Scripture can (and should) be prayed in one way or another (e.g. Dan. 9:1-3; Eph. 3:14-21). But reading through the Book of Psalms is not merely to be devotional reading. It is not inappropriate to read the Psalms as you read other chapters of the Bible, but this ought to be an exception rather than the rule. It is not the way the Book of Psalms was designed to be used. We are to pray our way through the Psalter, and for most of the last 3,000 years, that has meant singing the Psalms, reverently and regularly, from beginning to end.
The Church is commanded to sing the Psalms (Eph. 5:19; Col. 3:16), and even if theologically orthodox hymns written by uninspired men are admitted, the inspired hymns we have in Scripture--including psalms outside of the Book of Psalms and New Testament canticles (e.g. 1Tim. 3:16; Rev. 4:8, 11; 5:9-10, 12, 13)--ought to be the foundation of the Church’s regular and perpetual praise. Unfortunately, this is not the case in many congregations. Psalm-singing is unfamiliar to many believers, and when they are first exposed to it, the practice may seem strange and be very uncomfortable. Christians who are accustomed to singing the same seven words eleven times while a rock band plays on Sunday may have difficulty adapting to the more robust theology of Psalm 33, 88, 109, or 139.
Most Christians have sung at least some of the psalms or portions of them. Musical arrangements of Psalm 23 are well-known, and Psalm 19:7-11 has often been sung as an aid to memorizing it. Isaac Watts paraphrased many of the psalms and wrote other hymns based loosely on the language of the Psalter, so even those who have never sung the Psalms deliberately will be somewhat familiar with portions of it if they have any experience with traditional Christian hymnody.
As a minister in a Reformed church, I serve a congregation that is committed to singing (all) of the Psalms, not just paraphrases and adaptations (though we sing those too). Half of our hymns in morning and evening worship every Lord’s Day are psalms from the OT. The Reformed tradition has usually sung the Psalms in metrical arrangements. The 1650 Scottish Psalter arranged each of the 150 psalms into a common meter form (8.6.8.6). Since most people already know many common meter tunes--whether they realize it or not--you can easily sing the entire OT Psalter using one or more familiar tunes (although Yankee Doodle Dandy the theme from Gilligan’s Island are not the most dignified choices for psalm singing). Our congregation sings from the Trinity Psalter Hymnal which contains 278 psalm renditions. This includes translations of all 150 OT psalms as well as other historical arrangements, paraphrases, and selections. It is a tremendous resource for corporate, family, and private worship. There are many other metrical psalters that have been published and many free versions can be accessed online or through smart phone apps.
Metrical psalm singing is not difficult, and for those who are familiar with traditional church hymns, the transition to or incorporation of metrical psalms in worship will not be too challenging. But there is an easier, more ancient, more accurate way to sing the psalms, the way they have been sung among the Jews and in all churches until the last five hundred years, the way they are still sung in the majority of psalm singing, liturgical communions. Psalms are meant to be chanted, which is how singing was done in the ancient world.
The type of singing we are familiar with today is a relatively modern development. The invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century and Martin Luther’s hymn writing in the sixteenth century helped modern hymn singing to develop and be widely adopted in Protestant churches. Isaac Watts’s hymns and adaptations of the psalms in the seventeenth century led most Protestant congregations to eventually move away from the Church’s historic dependence on the Book of Psalms, scriptural canticles, and ancient hymns in corporate worship.
There is not just one way to chant the Psalms. The Jews used very simple chants to sing the Psalms in ancient times, and that type of chanting continues to be used to the present day. The ancient Church’s earliest chanting may best be preserved in the Byzantine or Eastern Orthodox tradition where chanting remains the way in which prayer and praise are sung to God. Gregorian chant is the best known form of monophonic, plainchant used in the western Church, and it grew and changed in many ways between A.D. 500-1000. The later Anglican tradition created even more sophisticated and beautiful chants than the earlier plainsong versions. Traditional Lutheran churches also use a simple form of chanting to sing and pray the Psalms which can be learned quite easily from the Lutheran Service Book, Concordia Psalter, or through several resources online (cf. my favorite is HERE).
The Church has always chanted the Psalms because that was the way they were originally meant to be sung--in fact, it was the only way anything was sung for many centuries--and because plainsong is (relatively) easy to learn and accessible to all believers, even those without a printed psalter or musical training, even those who are illiterate. The easiest way to demonstrate this is by using a simple, monophonic chant. Select a note that is easy for you to maintain on a piano, keyboard, or simply by humming. Then chant the first line of one of the psalms while keeping your voice at that pitch. On the last 1-3 syllables of the line, raise the pitch of your voice slightly while keeping it in a comfortable range. Now do the same thing for the second line of the psalm, using the original reciting note, and on the last 1-3 syllables slightly lower the pitch of your voice while keeping it in a comfortable range. There are more sophisticated ways to chant the Psalms and many established chants you can learn, but this is the basic practice. You can also learn how to chant by repeating lines of the psalm one at a time as someone who knows how to sing the chant leads you. Earlier this year Joseph Svendsen, a professor of music at UNLV and Choir Director at a Missouri Synod Lutheran congregation, began uploading tutorials and helps for chanting the Psalms to YouTube. His videos are the best I have seen for the Lutheran chants which are much simpler and easier to learn and sing than Anglican, Byzantine, or many more sophisticated Gregorian forms.
God means us to sing and pray the Psalms. He gave us the Psalter for this reason, and as we do so, we are using it in the same way the Lord Jesus did. The Psalms are ultimately the songs of Jesus. He is the righteous man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly (Ps. 1) and who can dwell on God’s holy hill (Ps. 15). He is the King enthroned on Mt. Zion (Ps. 2), the righteous sufferer whose death was followed by resurrection and gospel proclamation to succeeding generations (Ps. 22). Whether you chant, sing metrical versions, or use arrangements which conform to modern tunes, when you sing the Psalms you are singing and praying with the catholic (universal) Church. --JME
