Psalms

A hundred and fifty songs, written across centuries and gathered into five books, the way the law of Moses is five books. Some carry a name in the title — David, Asaph, the sons of Korah, Solomon, Moses, Heman, Ethan — and some carry none at all. Some were written for a choirmaster and name the tune. Others were written in a cave.

What holds them together is that nothing is kept back. There is praise here, and there is also rage, envy, terror, the wish for revenge, and one psalm that ends in the dark without resolving. They were given to the people of God as the words to use when their own ran out.

Every psalm has a note

Each of the 150 has a short piece written for it: what the psalm is, what is in the title, and when a person would reach for it. A psalm page here is not only the text. It tells you what you are holding.

Open it by what you need

The way in is not chapter one. It is a question — what do you need today — and the doors go to psalms for grief, fear, thankfulness, worship, waiting, repentance and anger. There is also a map of all 150 coloured by kind, a psalm of the day, and a way to be given one at random.

Pray one, slowly

Pray mode takes a psalm one verse at a time and will not hurry you. Where the text says Selah, the app stops, because that is what the word appears to be for. You can highlight a verse, keep it, put it on a shelf, write a note on it, and make a card out of it to send to somebody.

Three translations, and the Hebrew titles

King James, the Berean Standard Bible and the Reina-Valera 1909 in Spanish. The Hebrew titles — the superscriptions that sit above the first verse — are shown as titles rather than buried in verse one, because that is what they are. Free, no account, and it works with the aeroplane mode on.