Psalms

Psalms is the most poetically written book in the whole Bible.  It basically contains a compilation of hymns and praises to God that were sung by the ancient Israelites.  The Psalms are written in five different collections and were in later centuries compiled to form the entire book of Psalms.  The compilation of the book of Psalms is an amazing testimony to the preservation of scripture.  The first book of Psalms is from chapters 1-41, the second book from chapters 42-72, the third book from chapters 73-89, the fourth book from chapters 90-106, and the fifth book from chapters 106-150.  When compiled into one book each of the five seperate collections were divided according to their themes and their main issues.  Book one was mainly written by David and deals frequently with the relation of humans and the Creator.  Book two was written mainly by David and also the sons of Korah from Numbers 17 and eals mainly with evenets that occurred in the Exodus that led to the deliverance and redemption of the Israelite slaves from Egypt.  The third book was written mainly by Asaph and patterns itself after Leviticus as it deals with worship and praise in the sanctuary of God.  The fourth book is for the most part anonymous and deals with the God's ways in the deserts of life and patterns itself after the book of Numbers.  The fifth book is mainly written by David although it is also written by anonymous authors and it deals mainly with God's law and the commemoration of it as it patterns itself after the book of Deuteronomy.  The Psalms contain twenty-eight of the messianic prophecies that were fulfilled in Christ.  Often times in Psalms a charactar goes through a particular action of which we find out the New Testament Christ also goes through.  This pattern occurs most if not all of the time with David and is especially clear in Chapter 22.  For more information on this, go to my page on Messianic Prophecies in the Old Testament.  Psalm 90:4 is the verse that refers to a day as being as a thousand years with the Lord and a thousand years as a day.  This is the basis for the millenial day hypothesis which was first conceived in the mind of a 2nd century BC Jewish Talmudic scholar.  This theory states that because a thousand years is as a day with the Lord and a day as a thousand years, God will let human history go on for 6000 years and then he will reign with his followers for 1000 years during the millenium.  Based on exegetical parallelism, that menas it would have to have taken God six thousand years to create the earth and for the seventh 1000 years, he would have rested from his work.