Psalms תְּהִלִּים
150 psalms · 2527 verses
Tehillim — the Book of Psalms — is the songbook of the Jewish soul. Its one hundred and fifty psalms, arranged since antiquity into five books echoing the Five Books of the Torah, carry every register of the human voice before God: praise and lament, thanksgiving and terror, royal coronation and private confession, the pilgrim's song of ascents and the exile's cry by the rivers of Babylon. Tradition ascribes the book's heart to King David, the "sweet singer of Israel," alongside psalms attributed by their own superscriptions to Moses, Solomon, Asaph, the sons of Korah, Heman, Ethan, and singers whose names are lost. For three thousand years these words have been the daily prayer of Israel — recited in the Temple by the Levites, woven through every service of the siddur, and whispered at every bedside of joy or grief.
This edition presents each verse word by word: the Hebrew, its transliteration, its root, its gematria, and a form-true English gloss, beneath a complete modern English translation adapted from the public-domain Jewish Publication Society version of 1917, with the Divine Name rendered "Hashem." Six classical commentators accompany the text — Rashi, Radak, Ibn Ezra, Metzudat David, Metzudat Zion, and the Malbim — so that the plain sense, the grammar, and the inner architecture of each psalm can be studied on a single page. May these words be a lamp for those who say them.