How Many Psalms Are There?
A Horrifying Scandal
Donald P. Goodman III
A stupid question, surely; there are one hundred fifty (150) psalms. We all know this; one can simply open a Bible and look at the chapter number on the last one, or count them oneself if one doesn't believe the editor. Sure, the numbers of some are different, given the Septuagint versus the Masoretic numbering, but it's still all the same actual text. One hundred fifty psalms; surely modernity hasn't complicated even this?
Oh, sweet summer child, I have bad news: modernity has, indeed, complicated even this. You see, according to the moderns, there are actually only one hundred forty-seven (147) psalms. At least, according to the modern Novus Ordo liturgy.
But it gets even more difficult; rather than 2,461 verses in the psalms, there are only 2,341 (or thereabouts, depending on how we count) verses in the psalms now; one hundred twenty (120) verses, give or take, are now gone. A quick bit of math shows that nearly five percent of the Psalms have been excised, vanished into the depths of enlightened postconciliar bliss.
What happened?
In the Roman rite, there is a set of prayers called the office; sometimes this used to be called the breviary, and is now called “the liturgy of the hours”. These prayers are prayed primarily by clergy, though laity can also pray them, and consist mostly of the psalms. The psalms are central because they are the prayers that God Himelf wrote and gave to us to pray to Him; they are also the only prayers, besides the Our Father, that Jesus Christ Himself verifiably prayed. Given this, it is hard to imagine a more important prayerbook for the Christian Church.
In the preconciliar Church, going back at least to the third or fourth century and likely earlier, all one hundred fifty psalms were prayed in the course of a week; in 1970, the reformers decided that this was much too hard, and set all the psalms to be prayed once every four weeks.
But some psalms (and some verses of psalms) are imprecatory, which means roughly “cursing”; that is, they sound really, really mean. Some verses are so very mean, in fact, that the Novus Ordo liturgy (including the “liturgy of the hours”) have completed excised them. These hundred and twenty verses are too mean to be in the liturgy; they are gone, vanished into the memory hole. Most Catholics have no idea that this has happened; many priests, even, will confidently claim that they pray the entire psalter every four weeks, blissfully ignorant that they never, ever pray almost five percent of it.
Psalm 57 (58, in the Masoretic and Protestant numbering that the postconciliar Church insists on using); Psalm 82 (83); and Ps 108 (109) are gone. Just gone; they are apparently no good anymore. They contain sixty-two verses all by themselves; the remainder are deleted from many other psalms, which we'll list out shortly. We just don't pray these verses in the Church's official prayer anymore.
Why? Who dared to hold themselves better than God Himself, Who wrote these psalms for His people to pray, which Jesus Christ Himself prayed throughout His life?
Perhaps unsurprisingly, that would Pope Paul VI and the consilium he assigned to reform the liturgy. In the Institutio Generalis Liturgiæ Horarum, the official document dated in 1971 which tells priests how to pray the new liturgy, we read:
Three psalms are omitted from the current psalter because of their imprecatory character. These are Ps 57, Ps 82 and Ps 108. For similar reasons verses from several psalms are passed over; these verses are noted at the beginning of the psalm. Such omissions are made because of certain psychological difficulties, even though the imprecatory psalms themselves may be found quoted in the New Testament, e.g. Rev 6:10, and in no way are intended to be used as curses. IGLH 131
This is genuinely all we get to explain the omission of the revealed Word of God. For let's make no mistake: that's exactly what we're doing here. We are choosing to omit the revealed Word of God—choosing not to pray what He Himself gave to us to pray—because of “certain psychological difficulties”.
What monstrous impertinence! What a monstrous scandal!
The following are the verses God wrote which the reformers think shouldn't be there:
| Verse(s) | Text |
|---|---|
| Ps 5:11 | “5:11 [J]udge them, O God. Let them fall from their devices: according to the multitude of their wickedness cast them out: for they have provoked thee, O Lord.” |
| Ps 20:9-13 | “20:9 Let thy hand be found by all thy enemies: let thy right hand find out all them that hate thee. 20:10 Thou shalt make them as an oven of fire, in the time of thy anger: the Lord shall trouble them in his wrath, and fire shall devour them. 20:11 Their fruit shalt thou destroy from the earth: and their seed from among the children of men. 20:12 For they have intended evils against thee: they have devised counsels which they have not been able to establish. 20:13 For thou shalt make them turn their back: in thy remnants thou shalt prepare their face.” |
| Ps 27:4-5 | “27:4 Give them according to their works, and according to the wickedness of their inventions. According to the works of their hands give thou to them: render to them their reward. 27:5 Because they have not understood the works of the Lord, and the operations of his hands: thou shalt destroy them, and shalt not build them up.” |
| Ps 30:18-19 | “30:18 Let me not be confounded, O Lord, for I have called upon thee. Let the wicked be ashamed, and be brought down to hell. 30:19 Let deceitful lips be made dumb. Which speak iniquity against the just, with pride and abuse.” |
| Ps 34:3-8; 20-21; 24-26 | “34:3 Bring out the sword, and shut up the way against them that persecute me: say to my soul: I am thy salvation. 34:4 Let them be confounded and ashamed that seek after my soul. Let them be turned back and be confounded that devise evil against me. 34:5 Let them become as dust before the wind: and let the angel of the Lord straiten them. 34:6 Let their way become dark and slippery; and let the angel of the Lord pursue them. 34:7 For without cause they have hidden their net for me unto destruction: without cause they have upbraided my soul. 34:8 Let the snare which he knoweth not come upon him: and let the net which he hath hidden catch him: and into that very snare let them fall.… 34:20 For they spoke indeed peaceably to me; and speaking in the anger of the earth they devised guile. 34:21 And they opened their mouth wide against me; they said: Well done, well done, our eyes have seen it.… 34:24 Judge me, O Lord my God according to thy justice, and let them not rejoice over me. 34:25 Let them not say in their hearts: It is well, it is well, to our mind: neither let them say: We have swallowed him up. 34:26 Let them blush: and be ashamed together, who rejoice at my evils. Let them be clothed with confusion and shame, who speak great things against me.” |
| Ps 39:15-16 | “39:15 Let them be confounded and ashamed together, that seek after my soul to take it away. Let them be turned backward and be ashamed that desire evils to me. 39:16 Let them immediately bear their confusion, that say to me: 'T is well, 't is well.” |
| Ps 53:7 | “53:7 Turn back the evils upon my enemies; and cut them off in thy truth.” |
| Ps 54:16 | “54:16 Let death come upon them, and let them go down alive into hell. For there is wickedness in their dwellings: in the midst of them.” |
| Ps 55:8 | “55:8 for nothing shalt thou save them: in thy anger thou shalt break the people in pieces.” |
| Ps 58:6-9, 12-16 | “58:6 Rise up thou to meet me, and behold: even thou, O Lord, the God of hosts, the God of Israel. Attend to visit all the nations: have no mercy on all them that work iniquity. 58:7 They shall return at evening, and shall suffer hunger like dogs: and shall go round about the city. 58:8 Behold they shall speak with their mouth, and a sword is in their lips: for who, say they, hath heard us? 58:9 But thou, O Lord, shalt laugh at them: thou shalt bring all the nations to nothing.… 58:12 God shall let me see over my enemies: slay them not, lest at any time my people forget. Scatter them by thy power; and bring them down, O Lord, my protector: 58:13 For the sin of their mouth, and the word of their lips: and let them be taken in their pride. And for their cursing and lying they shall be talked of, 58:14 when they are consumed: when they are consumed by thy wrath, and they shall be no more. And they shall know that God will rule Jacob, and all the ends of the earth. 58:15 They shall return at evening and shall suffer hunger like dogs: and shall go round about the city. 58:16 They shall be scattered abroad to eat, and shall murmur if they be not filled.” |
| Ps 62:10-12 | “62:10 But they have sought my soul in vain, they shall go into the lower parts of the earth: 62:11 They shall be delivered into the hands of the sword, they shall be the portions of foxes. 62:12 But the king shall rejoice in God, all they shall be praised that swear by him: because the mouth is stopped of them that speak wicked things.” |
| Ps 68:23-29 | “68:23 Let their table become as a snare before them, and a recompense, and a stumblingblock. 68:24 Let their eyes be darkened that they see not; and their back bend thou down always. 68:25 Pour out thy indignation upon them: and let thy wrathful anger take hold of them. 68:26 Let their habitation be made desolate: and let there be none to dwell in their tabernacles. 68:27 Because they have persecuted him whom thou hast smitten; and they have added to the grief of my wounds. 68:28 Add thou iniquity upon their iniquity: and let them not come into thy justice. 68:29 Let them be blotted out of the book of the living; and with the just let them not be written.” |
| Ps 71:20 | “71:20 The praises of David, the son of Jesse, are ended.” |
| Ps 78:6-7 | “78:6 Pour out thy wrath upon the nations that have not known thee: and upon the kingdoms that have not called upon thy name. 78:7 Because they have devoured Jacob; and have laid waste his place.… 78:12 And render to our neighbours sevenfold in their bosom: the reproach wherewith they have reproached thee, O Lord.” |
| Ps 109:6 | “109:6 He shall judge among nations, he shall fill ruins: he shall crush the heads in the land of many.” |
| Ps 136:7-9 | “136:7 Remember, O Lord, the children of Edom, in the day of Jerusalem: Who say: Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof. 136:8 O daughter of Babylon, miserable: blessed shall he be who shall repay thee thy payment which thou hast paid us. 136:9 Blessed be he that shall take and dash thy little ones against the rock.” |
| Ps 138:19-22 | “138:19 If thou wilt kill the wicked, O God: ye men of blood, depart from me: 138:20 Because you say in thought: They shall receive thy cities in vain. 138:21 Have I not hated them, O Lord, that hated thee: and pined away because of thy enemies? 138:22 I have hated them with a perfect hatred: and they are become enemies to me.” |
| Ps 139:10-12 | “139:10 The head of them compassing me about: the labour of their lips shall overwhelm them. 139:11 Burning coals shall fall upon them; thou wilt cast them down into the fire: in miseries they shall not be able to stand. 139:12 A man full of tongue shall not be established in the earth: evil shall catch the unjust man unto destruction.” |
| Ps 140:10 | “140:10 The wicked shall fall in his net: I am alone until I pass.” |
| Ps 142:12 | “142:12 and in thy mercy thou wilt destroy my enemies. And thou wilt cut off all them that afflict my soul: for I am thy servant.” |
In addition, of course, Psalms 57, 82, and 108 are completely gone; reading them is left as an exercise for the ready, lest we overburden this post with quotation. Sure, all of these verses are still in the Bible; but in the Church's public prayer, they are gone.
One may legitimately ask what the “psychological difficulties” with some of these omissions might be; e.g., the omission of Ps71:20. But all of these omitted verses are important; trying to understand the meaning of the imprecatory psalms and verses, which Christians have been interpreting and internalizing and devoutly praying for two millennia, is our duty, not something to be ignored and pushed under the modernity rug. These psalms, which have been prayed not only by all Christians, but also by Jews and Hebrews before us, and by Jesus Christ, God the Son, Himself, are an essential part of our rich heritage and have been the subject of powerful contemplation by our great saints and mystics for millenia. We need these psalms, if we are to be true to what has been handed down to us.
But even more importantly, and what makes these omissions more than just an inadvisable change, is the undeniable scandal of the whole thing.
It's impossible to overemphasize this hideous scandal. The Roman Church, the see of Peter, the Mother of Churches, has promulgated an official liturgy which deems certain parts of the revealed, infallible Word of God too mean, too dangerous, too “psychologically difficult” to be prayed!
To put it another way, the Roman Church, the see of Peter, the Mother of Churches, considers the prayers written by God for His people in His Scriptures, and prayed by Jesus Christ Himself, psychologically problematic! Indeed, so psychologically problematic that they needed to be excised from her public prayer!
This is horrifying, a betrayal of the Church's divine mission to keep, whole and entire, the deposit of Faith handed down to her, to proclaim the Word of God, whole and entire, exactly as it was given to her.
If anyone wonders if the Novus Ordo reformed liturgy was a good idea, the mindset that would allow the excision of 5% of the psalter should permanently settle the issue.
Pray the psalms—all of them, as God wrote them and gave them to us. And pray that all those who would deprive us of even the smallest part of our tradition, the tiniest jot or tittle of the Faith of the Apostles as received from Jesus Christ, may be defeated like the enemies of the Lord.
Praise be to Christ the King!