The line above the psalm

Most of the Psalms come with a line above them, printed in small type, that a great many readers skip on their way to verse one.

Those lines are part of the Hebrew text. In the Hebrew Bible they are often numbered as the first verse.

And some of them are extraordinary.

The heading above that psalm reads: For the choirmaster. A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came to him after David had gone in to Bathsheba.

A man dates his most searching confession to the worst week of his life, names the sin, names the prophet who exposed it, and hands the result to the choir director.

Read the last three words again. For the choirmaster.

This was not a private journal entry recovered by an editor. It was written to be sung, by the assembly, out loud, with the occasion printed at the top so nobody could mistake what it was about.

Thirteen psalms carry historical superscriptions of this kind, and they are a running commentary on where the songs came from. A psalm of David when he fled from his son Absalom. When he pretended to be insane before Abimelech and was driven away. When he was in the cave. When the Ziphites went and told Saul.

That is a body of worship material with the biography attached — and the biography is mostly disaster.

And one heading names no author at all, which is more useful than a name.

The line above it reads: A prayer of one afflicted, when he is faint and pours out his lament before the LORD.

No name, no date, no occasion. A blank left deliberately, for whoever is next.

So this slot adds a form the earlier weeks did not have. The prophets said thus says the LORD. The apostles wrote letters and signed them. The chronicler cited archives. And the psalmists put a line above the song saying who wrote it, and when, and what had happened.

And the headings do something for a reader that no commentary can. They locate the emotion. A psalm read cold is a set of sentences about distress; the same psalm read with when he fled from Absalom his son above it is a father in the hills, betrayed by his own boy, writing at night. The line above the psalm is the difference between poetry and testimony.

It is the humblest kind of authorial note, and it does something none of the others do: it tells you the state a man was in when the words came out of him.

The superscriptions are present in the Hebrew manuscript tradition and in the Greek Old Testament, which adds several more. Whether they are original to the psalms or early editorial additions is discussed at length; they are ancient in either case, and the New Testament treats them as evidence — Peter and Paul both argue from Davidic authorship of particular psalms.

Thirteen psalms carry historical notes tied to events in David’s life: Psalms 3, 7, 18, 34, 51, 52, 54, 56, 57, 59, 60, 63 and 142. Reading each alongside its narrative in Samuel is one of the most rewarding exercises available to an ordinary reader with a Bible.

The headings also carry musical and technical terms whose meanings are uncertain — maskil, miktam, selah, according to the Gittith, do not destroy. Honest translations transliterate rather than guess, and the footnotes usually say so.

Psalm 102 is one of the seven traditionally called penitential psalms, and its heading is the only one in the Psalter framed as a description of a condition rather than a person. Whoever is afflicted and faint is the named author.

Psalm 51’s heading is the most exposed of them all. The narrative in 2 Samuel 11–12 is preserved in one book and the confession in another, and both were kept in the national Scriptures of the king’s own dynasty. A regime that controlled its own records did not remove either.

Look it upH4210 מִזמוֹר mizmor, psalm, song with accompaniment · H5329 נָצַח natsach, to oversee, direct (choirmaster) · H4899 מָשִׁיח mashiach, anointed one · H8605 תְּפִלָּה tephillah, prayer

Where this touchesPsalm 51; 3; 34; 57; 102; 142 · 2 Samuel 11–12 · 1 Samuel 21:10–15 · Acts 2:25–31 · Romans 4:6–8. Jeremiah, Luke, John, Revelation, Peter, Moses, Paul, the prophets, the Proverbs collectors, Peter on Paul, the chronicler, the Song of Moses and the Jerusalem council gave the earlier accounts.