The Psalter is the Book of Psalms arranged for prayer. It’s the 150 psalms traditionally attributed to King David, organized into twenty sections called kathismata so the Church can pray through the entire book systematically.
If you’ve been to Vespers or Matins at St. Michael’s, you’ve heard the Psalter. It’s not just read during services, it is the backbone of Orthodox worship. Every service is built around psalms. We chant them, we sit for them, we stand for the “Glory to the Father” that punctuates each section. The kathismata (the word means “sittings” in Greek) divide the Psalter so that monastics and parishes keeping the full cycle of services pray through all 150 psalms every week. During Great Lent, they go through it twice.
This isn’t a new practice. The early Christians inherited psalm-singing from the Temple and synagogue. The Apostles quoted the Psalter constantly. Christ Himself prayed the psalms and quoted them, even from the Cross. When the Church gathered for prayer in those first centuries, the Psalter gave them their words.
We use the Septuagint version, the ancient Greek translation that Christ and the Apostles knew. That’s why our numbering sometimes differs from Protestant Bibles, which follow the Hebrew text. Psalm 23 in most Bibles is Psalm 22 in Orthodox Psalters. It’s not an error. It’s a different textual tradition, and ours is the one the New Testament writers quoted.
The psalms aren’t just poetry. We read them as prophecy about Christ. When David writes about Israel’s deliverance from Egypt, we hear Christ’s redemption of humanity. When he describes battles against enemies, we understand the victory over Satan and death. The laments of the suffering righteous become the voice of Christ in His Passion, and our voice when we suffer. This is how the Fathers taught us to pray the Psalter, Christologically, seeing Jesus on every page.
You’ll find different editions. The Holy Transfiguration Monastery Psalter is common in Antiochian parishes. Some use the Coverdale translation, which formed the basis for the King James Version. What matters isn’t which translation sits on your shelf but whether you’re actually praying it. And here’s the thing: the Psalter gives you permission to bring everything to God. Anger, fear, joy, desperation, gratitude. David wasn’t polite. He complained. He celebrated. He begged for vindication against his enemies. He praised God for creation. All of human experience is in these prayers.
When someone dies, we read the Psalter over them. It’s an act of love, interceding for the departed through the same prayers that have accompanied Christians through death for two thousand years. Some Psalters include special prayers for the dead between the kathismata for exactly this purpose.
If you’re new to Orthodoxy and wondering where to start with personal prayer beyond the morning and evening prayers, the Psalter is your next step. You don’t have to read a kathisma every day (though some do). Start with one psalm. Psalm 50 is the great penitential psalm we pray constantly. Psalm 90 is part of evening prayers. Psalm 140 opens Vespers. Let them become familiar, and you’ll find yourself praying them from memory when you’re stuck in traffic on I-10 or waiting out a storm.
The Psalter isn’t a book you master. It’s a book that forms you. Monks have prayed through it weekly for fifteen centuries and still find new depths. You’re joining that same stream of prayer when you open it, adding your voice to everyone who’s ever called on God in these words.
