Tehillim for beginners: how to start saying Psalms every day

Tehillim is the book people reach for when they do not know what else to say. It is said for someone who is ill, on a hard day, on a good one, by whole communities together and by one person on a bus. It is also one of the easiest places in the Tanakh to begin, because every psalm stands on its own. You do not need to know what came before.

This is a short guide for someone who has never made Tehillim a habit: what the book is, the traditional cycles for saying it, and how to start small.

What the book is

The book of Psalms has 150 chapters and 2,527 verses, and it sits at the head of Ketuvim, the third part of the Tanakh. Tradition attributes it to King David, who the Talmud (Bava Batra 14b) says included psalms by earlier figures such as Adam, Abraham and Moses. Psalm 90 is headed “a prayer of Moses.”

The book is divided into five smaller books, the first four each ending with a line of blessing: Psalms 1-41, 42-72, 73-89, 90-106 and 107-150. The midrash on Psalms says that just as Moses gave Israel five books of Torah, David gave them five books of Psalms.

The psalms vary enormously. Some are two verses long and some are dozens. Some are praise, some are pleading, some are history, and some are a person alone at night asking how long. Psalm 119 is an alphabetical acrostic, eight verses for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet, 176 verses in all.

You already say more Tehillim than you think

Large parts of the siddur are psalms. Psalm 145, which begins Tehillah leDavid and is said as Ashrei, comes three times a day; the Talmud (Berakhot 4b) singles it out for being said that often. At the heart of Pesukei Dezimra, the morning’s verses of praise, are Psalms 145 to 150, the last six in the book. Kabbalat Shabbat is built from Psalms 95 to 99 and 29, and Shabbat itself has its own, Psalm 92.

There is also a psalm for each day of the week, the one the Levites sang in the Temple on that day, according to the Mishnah (Tamid 7:4). It is said at the end of Shacharit.

The weekly and monthly cycles

Many people say the entire book on a fixed cycle. There are two traditional ones.

The monthly cycle divides the book across the days of the Hebrew month, about five psalms a day. Most Tehillim books print the division in the margin. Psalm 119 is long enough to take up two days by itself.

The weekly cycle finishes the book every seven days. It is a much bigger commitment, about 361 verses a day.

Where to begin if you never have

Neither cycle is the place to start. Start smaller, and let the habit come first.

• One psalm a day, in order. Start at Psalm 1 and read one psalm each day. Most are short. In five months you will have read the whole book, and you will know which ones you want to come back to.
• One book of the five. Book One, Psalms 1 to 41, is 637 verses. A month at about 22 verses a day finishes it, and it contains many of the best-known psalms, including 23.
• A fixed psalm. Some people say the same psalm every day for a period, often Psalm 20 or 121 for someone who needs help, or Psalm 23 before sleep.

Read it in Hebrew if you can, slowly, and look across at the English. Psalms are poetry, and most verses are two halves that say one thing twice in different words. Once you notice that, the Hebrew becomes much easier to follow, because the second half usually tells you what the first half meant.

Tehillim on your phone

When you set up Torah Feed, Tehillim is one of the three places it offers to start, along with Beresheet and this week’s parasha. Each pasuk gets its own screen in Hebrew with English beneath, which suits the two-halves rhythm of a psalm. And there is a challenge for it: Tehillim Book One, Psalms 1 to 41, in a month. The app keeps your place, so a psalm on the way to work and another one waiting for the kettle carry you through the book without any planning.

You can also read every psalm here, starting with Psalm 1. If you want to read the psalms in the original, our post on learning Biblical Hebrew by reading side by side has a method that works especially well for them.

Common questions