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Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān / Psalms

The title of a book of religious songs and poems of praise and prayer poems in the Hebrew Bible to which, according to most interpretations, reference is made in the Qurʾān. It is called Tehillim in rabbinical Hebrew (lit. “songs of praise”) with the connotation in post-exilitic Bible books of “songs of Temple worship”; psalmos is Greek for “a song sung to a harp.” One of the common words for this kind of composition found in the book of Psalms itself is mizmōr, which is related to the Arabic mizmār, “single-pipe woodwind instrument resembling the oboe,” and mazmūr, “psalm.” The Hebrew psalms were not all composed at the same time but — because they exist in Greek translation — they must date back to at least the second half of the second century b.c.e. The so-called Davidic psalms constituted the very first stage in the compilation of the Hebrew book of Psalms.

Although the various versions of the book of Psalms consist of 149, 150 or 151 psalms, 150 seems to be the ideal number because the Greek version contains an additional psalm which is considered supernumerary, that is, Psalm 151 which is also marked as apocryphal. ¶ The book of Psalms is divided into five chapters or books, each comprising a number of psalms. Each of the first four books is marked off by a doxology or formulaic expression of praise to God, for instance, “Blessed is the Lord, from eternity to eternity,” “Blessed be the Lord into eternity,” or “Amen and amen.”

There are several genres to be distinguished in the Psalms: the leading one is the hymn. Some psalms specifically extol God's royal role in the universe, his city, and his Torah (q.v.). About one third of the Psalter is devoted to laments in which the speaker may be either the individual or the community (faced with national oppression or misfortune) making a strong plea for divine help. Those songs in which one is sure of God's help are called “psalms of confidence.” There is also the genre of thanksgiving. The “royal psalms,” in which the center of attention is the anointed one (Messiah) of God, the earthly king of Israel, and which contain no direct reference to a reigning monarch, constitute a separate class. Another genre derives from wisdom literature; psalms of this type may be reflective or sententious. The contents are often linked to particular situations such as repentance for the sins of the poet, or thanksgiving to the lord for liberating the poet from his enemies (see gratitude and ingratitude ).

The mixing of genres to be found in the Psalms is paralleled in the Qurʾān, which is not a homogeneous collection but a combination of many genres whose sūras (q.v.) are often mixed compositions (see form and structure of the qurʾān ). A comparison of the two holy books — the Hebrew Psalms and the Arabic Qurʾān — makes us aware of the complex composition of these sacred scriptures: individual genres such as hymns, wisdom ¶ sentences, prophecies and poetry are combined, each genre having its own style, vocabulary and formal language (see language and style of the qurʾān ). Some sense of this similarity is captured in the Qurʾān, where the zabūr, “the book of Psalms granted by God to David” ( q 4:163; 17:55), is recognized as a holy scripture preceding the Qurʾān (see scripture and the qurʾān ).

Legendary authors of psalms were the kings David (q.v.) and, to a lesser extent, Solomon (q.v.), and sometimes the situation of the poet in the psalms can be linked to events that took place during David's lifetime. The book of Psalms was considered as “the writings of David.” Musical-recitative accompaniment is attributed to Davidic innovation (2 Chron 23:18). According to the Talmud, the Psalms were inspired (Pes. 117a) and music helped to supply the inspiration: “A harp was suspended above the bed of David. When midnight came the north wind blew on it and it produced music of its own accord. Immediately David arose and occupied himself with the Torah…. Until midnight he occupied himself with the Torah; and from then with songs and praises.” In Islamic literature, the tradition that David devoted himself to the Torah is also mentioned by al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923; Taʾrīkh, i, 567; Eng. trans. History, iii, 147).

In the Qurʾān, the ḥadīth (see ḥadīth and the qurʾān ), the “tales of the prophets” ( qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ; see prophets and prophethood; narratives) and Arabic historical writings, the prophet David is considered a famous musician. He is mentioned in several places in the Qurʾān. In q 21:105 the word zabūr is used again by God: “We have written in the zabūr… that my righteous servants shall inherit the earth,” which verse is reminiscent of a Hebrew psalm (Ps 37:9, 11, 29: “they who shall inherit the earth”). God gave David ¶ the rule of the kingdom (see kings and rulers ), knowledge ( ʿilm; see knowledge and learning ) and wisdom (q.v.; ḥikma), and the ability to do justice ( ḥukm, esp. q 21:78 f.; cf. 38:20-4, 26; see justice and injustice ). God made the birds and mountains his servants, so that they unite in his praise ( q 21:79; 34:10; 38:18 f.). There is no mention of the wrong David did to Uriah in order to win Bathsheba's affection, but some qurʾānic verses show that the king feels himself to be guilty. His prayer for forgiveness (q.v.) is heard ( q 38:24 f.).

The ḥadīth (accounts of Muḥammad's deeds and sayings) stress David's zeal in prayer (q.v.) and especially in fasting (q.v.) and his readiness to do penance (see repentance and penance ). Another favorite theme is David's gift in singing psalms. His voice has magical power over not only humans but also over wild beasts and inanimate nature (see magic ). In other Islamic literature, such as that of Qurʾān commentators, historians and compilers of the “tales of the prophets,” the works of the two historians al-Yaʿqūbī (d. ca. 292/905) and al-Ṭabarī are especially important. Even though both probably based their works upon texts derived from the same sources (cf. Thaʿlabī-Brinner, Lives, 462-81), the works of these two men are strikingly independent of each other.

Al-Yaʿqūbī has a long passage about David (cf. Ebied and Wickham, Al-Yaʿḳūbī's account, 87-91 for an Eng. trans. of al-Yaʿqūbī's text on David). He is portrayed as the successor to Saul (q.v.) and as subduing the Philistines. The affair with Bathsheba and the prophet Nathan's words of reproach to David are mentioned, the child he had with Bathsheba being the later king, Solomon. The family affairs with his brothers are described more or less according to the Bible, such as the revolt ¶ by his son Absalom, who is killed by Yoab. Contrary to the biblical version, in al-Yaʿqūbī's text Barzillay marched against David and when God saved David from his hands, David recited a psalm. This psalm is reported in Arabic and is very similar to Psalm 18, in which he thanks God for having saved him from his enemies. There then follows an Arabic rendition of Psalm 1, which begins “Blessed are the ones who do not follow the path of the sinners.” Other laudatory psalms are quoted in Arabic, reflecting, respectively, Psalms 148, 149 and 150. Then the apocryphal Psalm 151 is also quoted in Arabic. This psalm is conceived as highly autobiographical: in it David tells us that he was the youngest among his brethren, herded the sheep of his father and cut flutes from reed. But God sent his angels and took him away from his sheep and from his brethren and destined him to fight Goliath (q.v.). David killed this worshipper of idols (see idolatry and idolaters ) by cutting off his head with his own sword. After this passage, al-Yaʿqūbī deals with David's old age and Solomon, David's successor.

Al-Ṭabarī collects the comments of early qurʾānic exegetes (see exegesis of the qurʾān: classical and medieval ) in his Tafsīr (his exegetical work), including definitions of terms such as zabūr (with the plural zubur), which vary depending on the verse. In his commentary on q 21:105, he records a variety of meanings for zabūr: “all the books of the prophets that God brought down to them” (Saʿīd b. Jubayr, Ibn Zayd; see book ), “the books revealed to the prophets after Moses” (q.v.; Ibn ʿAbbās, al-Ḍaḥḥāk) and “a specific book revealed to David” (ʿĀmir, al-Shaʿbī). In his commentary on q 3:184, al-zubur is a generic term for a book based on pre-Islamic poetic evidence (see poetry and poets; pre-islamic arabia and the qurʾān). Commenting on q 4:163, he writes “the ¶ Arabs (q.v.) say zabūr dāwūd ( David), and because of that the rest of the peoples know his book.”

Al-Ṭabarī includes a section on Saul, David and Solomon in his Taʾrīkh, i.e. his history of the world. In this work, he explains David's connection with the Psalms thus:

When the Israelites gathered around David, God revealed the Psalms to him, and taught him ironworking, making it supple for him. He also ordered the mountains and the birds to sing praise with him when he sang. According to what they have mentioned, God did not give anyone in his creation a voice like his. So when David recited the Psalms, wild beasts would gaze at him with delight, until they were lined up, intently listening upon hearing his voice. The demons invented flutes, lutes and cymbals with only his voice as a model. David was extremely diligent, constant in worship (q.v.) and wept much (Taʾrīkh, i, 562; Eng. trans. History, iii, 143; see weeping ).

Al-Ṭabarī incorporates Qurʾān as well as ḥadīth passages into his Taʾrīkh; among them is q 38:17-8, in which God describes David to Muḥammad, saying: “And remember our servant David, possessor of might. Lo! We subdued the hills to sing the praises with him at nightfall and sunrise.” Al-Ṭabarī adds, “It has also been mentioned to us that David would stay up at night and fast half of the time. And according to what has been mentioned, four thousand men guarded him every day and night.” Just as Abraham (q.v.) was put to the test with the sacrifice (q.v.) of his son, and Jacob (q.v.) was tested with his grief over his son Joseph (q.v.), David wanted to be tested. But he did not withstand the temptation when confronted with the seductive beauty of Bathsheba, who ¶ was married to Uriah (Ahriya). Although in the Qurʾān there is no mention of the Bathsheba story, al-Ṭabarī quotes q 38:24 when speaking about David's repentance for marrying Bathsheba and getting rid of her husband Uriah: “He fell down prostrate (see bowing and prostration ) and he repented.” All these items of course refer to David as the singer of psalms in praise of God as well as of penitential ones. (See also Hasson, David; according to other Muslim traditions Bathseba was only engaged to Uriah, not married to him.)

At an early stage, the book of Psalms was available in Arabic translation, as we have learned from the translations of al-Yaʿqūbī. A fragment of a Christian Arabic translation of the Psalms (containing Ps 78:20-31, 51-61 in Greek majuscule writing from the second/eighth century) was identified in Damascus by B. Violet (Ein zweisprachiges Psalmfragment).

In Jewish and Christian circles, the Tafsīr (= translation into Arabic with commentary) by Saʿadyā Gaon alias Saʿd b. Yūsuf al-Fayyūmī (d. 331/942) was especially famous, but members of the Karaite sect such as Japheth b. Eli (Abū ʿAlī Ḥasan b. ʿAlī al-Baṣrī; fourth/tenth century) are also worth mentioning. In Spain, interest in the Psalms reached its apogee with Ibn Ḥazm's (384-456/994-1064) “Book on religions” (al-Fiṣal fī l-milal). Already in third/ninth century Muslim Spain, Ḥafṣ al-Qūṭī translated the Psalter into Arabic rajaz verse, probably not directly from Arabic but from a Latin version of Jerome (347-420 c.e.). By that time there were already two prose translations of the Psalms in al-Andalus. Ibn Ḥazm in his Fiṣal criticized very much the contents of a number of psalms, such as Psalm 2:7, which has a statement about God's son (see ezra; jesus; polemic and polemical language). He also dealt with about ten other psalms, e.g. Ps 81:6 and ¶ 44:7 (cf. Ljamai, Ibn Ḥazm, 115-8). This is a sign of the immense popularity of the Psalms, which is also reflected in the style of some poems by poets from the east as well as the west of the Islamic world, such as Abū l-ʿAtāhiya (130-211/748-826) and Ibn Khafāja (450-533/1058-1139). The Andalusian poet Ibn Khafāja says in one of his poems (Dīwān, no. 162): “Happy is the one who stands in the fear of the lord (q.v.) while darkness (q.v.) sets up its cupola of darkness,” which clearly echoes Psalm 1:1. In modern times the Urdu poet Iqbāl (1877-1938) has composed a Psalter, but the poems are not really reminiscent of Davidic psalms (see also literature and the qurʾān ; see esp. nature as signs; praise for discussion of “psalmodic” qurʾānic passages).

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Bibliography

Primary

Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, i, 153-9

Ibn Ḥazm, Milal, ch. 15 (end: criticisms of the Psalms of David)

Sp. trans. M. Asín Palacios, Abenházam de Córdoba y su Historia crítica de las ideas religiosas, Madrid 1928, ii, 363-6

Ibn Khafāja, Dīwān, ed. M. Ghāzī, Alexandria 1960

M. Iqbal, Persian psalms (Zabūr-i ʿajam), trans. A.J. Arberry, Lahore 1948

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Kisāʾī, Qiṣaṣ, 252-78

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Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, ed. Shākir, v, 354-71; ix, 401-2; xi, 507-8; xvii [ed. M.M. al-Ḥalabī, 30 vols, Cairo 1968], 50-4

id., Taʾrīkh, ed. M.J. de Goeje, i, 554-72

Eng. trans. W. Brinner, The history of al-Ṭabarī. iii. The Children of Israel, New York 1991, 135-51

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A discussion of translations from three psalms (Ps. 50, 1 and 2), in U. Vermeulen et al. (eds.), Law, Christianity, and modernism in Islamic society, Leuven 1998, 133-46

B. Violet, Ein zweisprachiges Psalmfragment aus Damascus, in olz 4 (1901), 384-403, 425-41, 475-88

Wild, Text, 95

Cite this page

Schippers, Arie, “Psalms”, in: Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, General Editor: Jane Dammen McAuliffe, Georgetown University, Washington DC. Consulted online on 07 January 2017 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1875-3922_q3_EQSIM_00346>

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