A Manual of the Book of Psalms is the English title under which Luther's brief summaries of the entire Psalter have circulated. The German original, Summarien über die Psalmen und Ursachen des Dolmetschens, appeared in 1533, after Luther and his Wittenberg colleagues had completed a thorough revision of his German Psalter. The summaries were written to accompany that revised translation: a short notice for each of the hundred and fifty psalms, stating what kind of psalm it is and what it is about, so that an ordinary reader could open the book and know at once what he was praying. Attached to them was Luther's defense of the liberties he had taken in rendering Hebrew poetry into German, answering critics who charged him with paraphrasing rather than translating.
The method is plain and deliberately unlearned. Luther sorts the psalms into five kinds: those that prophesy of Christ and his kingdom, those that teach, those that comfort, those that pray, and those that give thanks. Each summary names the kind, identifies the psalm's occasion where Scripture supplies one, and then says in a sentence or two what the psalm does for the person who takes it on his lips. Luther's governing conviction, stated in his earlier preface to the Psalter, is that the Psalms show the saints not in their deeds but in their hearts, speaking to God in the extremity of fear, hope, grief, and joy; the summaries are an attempt to let a reader find the psalm that matches the state of his own heart. Christ is read throughout, not as an occasional allegorical intrusion but as the one in whom the Psalter's prophecies, laments, and praises come to rest, and the enemies of the psalmist are routinely understood as false teachers and persecutors of the Word. The defense of translation that follows is a compact argument that the sense of Hebrew must be carried into living German even where this requires departing from the word order and idiom of the original.
The work has lasted because it is Luther at his most pastoral and most portable. It contains no sustained exegesis and makes no claim to scholarly completeness; what it offers is a reformer's settled judgment about how the Psalms are to be used, formed over decades of lecturing and praying them. Readers of the longer Psalm commentaries will recognize the same themes compressed to their essentials.
Who should read this: those who pray the Psalms regularly and want a short, confident companion that tells them what each psalm is for, and students of Luther interested in his practice of Christological reading and his theory of translation. It is not for anyone seeking historical-critical analysis, detailed verse-by-verse commentary, or an approach that leaves the Christian reading of the Psalter an open question.
A Manual of the Book of Psalms
by Martin Luther
For For anyone praying through the Psalter: each psalm, then a page on what it is about and how to pray it, with Luther's own Preface to the Psalms first. A companion to keep beside the Psalms.
Should I read this?
Each psalm with a short commentary on what it is about and how to pray it, prefaced by Luther's own praise of the Psalter as the whole Bible in miniature.
How it proceeds
Independent intensities, 0–5 — what the work is made of, not how good it is.
A Manual of the Book of Psalms is the English title under which Luther's brief summaries of the entire Psalter have circulated. The German original, Summarien über die Psalmen und Ursachen des Dolmetschens, appeared in 1533, after Luther and his Wittenberg colleagues had completed a thorough revision of his German Psalter. The summaries were written to accompany that revised translation: a short notice for each of the hundred and fifty psalms, stating what kind of psalm it is and what it is about, so that an ordinary reader could open the book and know at once what he was praying. Attached to them was Luther's defense of the liberties he had taken in rendering Hebrew poetry into German, answering critics who charged him with paraphrasing rather than translating.
The method is plain and deliberately unlearned. Luther sorts the psalms into five kinds: those that prophesy of Christ and his kingdom, those that teach, those that comfort, those that pray, and those that give thanks. Each summary names the kind, identifies the psalm's occasion where Scripture supplies one, and then says in a sentence or two what the psalm does for the person who takes it on his lips. Luther's governing conviction, stated in his earlier preface to the Psalter, is that the Psalms show the saints not in their deeds but in their hearts, speaking to God in the extremity of fear, hope, grief, and joy; the summaries are an attempt to let a reader find the psalm that matches the state of his own heart. Christ is read throughout, not as an occasional allegorical intrusion but as the one in whom the Psalter's prophecies, laments, and praises come to rest, and the enemies of the psalmist are routinely understood as false teachers and persecutors of the Word. The defense of translation that follows is a compact argument that the sense of Hebrew must be carried into living German even where this requires departing from the word order and idiom of the original.
The work has lasted because it is Luther at his most pastoral and most portable. It contains no sustained exegesis and makes no claim to scholarly completeness; what it offers is a reformer's settled judgment about how the Psalms are to be used, formed over decades of lecturing and praying them. Readers of the longer Psalm commentaries will recognize the same themes compressed to their essentials.
Who should read this: those who pray the Psalms regularly and want a short, confident companion that tells them what each psalm is for, and students of Luther interested in his practice of Christological reading and his theory of translation. It is not for anyone seeking historical-critical analysis, detailed verse-by-verse commentary, or an approach that leaves the Christian reading of the Psalter an open question.
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