בָּרוּךְ שֶׁאָמַר Blessed is He: An introductory blessing to the Pesukei DeZimra, in two parts. The first is a ten-part litany of praise to God as creator, each phrase introduced with the word “Blessed” (the second phrase, “Blessed is He,” is not a separate verse but originally a congregational response). The number ten corresponds to the ten times the word VaYomer, “And He said,” appears in the story of creation in Genesis 1. Hence the rabbinic saying that “With ten utterances the world was created” (Avot 5:1). Blessed are You: The second half of the blessing is a prelude to the biblical verses that follow, mainly from the Psalms (“With the Psalms of your servant David we will exalt you”) but also from the books of Chronicles and Nehemiah (“extolled by the mouth of His people”). To emphasize the significance of this declaration, we recite it standing and, at the end, kiss the two front fringes of the tallit.

הוֹדוּ Thank the LORD: The Bible gives us a vivid account (I Chr. 15–16) of the moment when this passage was first recited: when King David brought the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem, newly established as the capital of the Jewish state. The Ark, which had been captured by the Philistines, was brought back by David to a temporary resting place. Later it was carried into Jerusalem to scenes of great jubilation. As on other momentous occasions in the life of biblical Israel, the leader (here David) reminds the people of the history of the nation, and its dependence on divine providence. The passage ends with the response of the people: “And all the people said ‘Amen’ and ‘Praise the LORD.’” According to Seder Olam (chapter 14), this passage was recited daily (in two halves: one in the morning, the other in the afternoon) as an accompaniment to the sacrifices, from that day until the inauguration of the Temple in the time of Solomon.

רוֹמְמוּ Exalt the LORD our God: A selection of verses from the book of Psalms, expressing hope and trust in God. The voice in these verses modulates from singular to plural, individual to nation. This frequent shift from public to private and back again is a distinctive feature of Jewish sensibility. We speak to God as individuals, from the depths of our being, yet we are also members of an extended family, a people, a nation, whose fate and destiny we share and on whose behalf we pray.

EXTRA PSALMS FOR SHABBAT AND YOM TOV In the earliest siddurim, we already find the well-established custom of saying extra psalms on Shabbat and Yom Tov. This is because, work being forbidden, we have more time to pray, and also because on Shabbat we reflect on God’s creation, a theme of many of the psalms. The Ashkenazi custom is to say nine. Together with the six weekday psalms, they make fifteen, the number associated with the fifteen Songs of Ascents (Psalms 120–134), and the fifteen steps in the Temple on which the Levites stood and sang their songs. There is a striking feature to this sequence of additional psalms. According to one interpretation (Meiri) the phrase “a song of ascents” means one begun softly and continued with ever-increasing volume. The extra psalms begin in Psalm 19 with the universe singing a silent song (“their voice is not heard”) and end in Psalm 93 with a magnificent crescendo (“Mightier than the noise of many waters”).

לַמְנַצֵּֽחַ Psalm 19. The heavens declare the glory of God: A hymn of glory to the universe as God’s work and the Torah as God’s word. In the first half of the poem, the Psalmist speaks metaphorically of creation singing a song of praise to its Creator, a silent song yet one that can be heard by those whose ears are attuned to wonder. But God’s word not only gives life to the natural universe: it instructs the human universe, the world we make by our actions and reactions. The Psalmist pours out his praise of God’s creation of the world-that-is, and His revelation of the world-that-ought-to-be. קַוָּם Yet their music: literally “their line,” perhaps the reverberating string of a musical instrument. Alternatively, it may mean the line marking a boundary – a reference to the order and “fearful symmetry” of the universe.

לְדָוִד Psalm 34: During the period that David was fleeing from King Saul, he took refuge in the Philistine city of Gath. There, however, he was recognized and his life was again in danger. Feigning insanity in order to appear harmless, he was dismissed by the king and was able to escape (I Sam. 21:11–16). The psalm of thanksgiving that follows is constructed as an alphabetical acrostic. An extra verse has been added at the end to avoid closing on a negative note. גַּדְּלוּ לַיהוה אִתִּי Magnify the LORD with me: this verse is taken by the sages as the source of the institution of summoning to prayer, as in the Grace after Meals. It is also said on taking the Torah scroll out of the Ark. טַעֲמוּ וּרְאוּ Taste and see: religious experience precedes religious understanding. God’s goodness has to be felt before it can be thought. נְצֹר לְשׁוֹנְךָ מֵרָע Then guard your tongue from evil: the sages said about lashon hara, evil speech, that it harms the one who says it, the one it is said about, and the one who gives credence to it. בַּקֵּשׁ שָׁלוֹם וְרָדְפֵֽהוּ Seek peace and pursue it: “Seek peace where you are, and pursue it elsewhere” (Yerushalmi, Pe’ah 1:1).

תְּפִלָּה לְמֹשֶׁה Psalm 90: A moving meditation on the eternity of God and the shortness of our lives. זְרַמְתָּם You sweep men away: a succession of poetic images conveying the brevity of human life: it flows as fast as a swollen river; as quickly as a sleep or a dream; it is like grass in a parched land that withers by the end of the day; it is like a sigh, a mere breath, like a bird that briefly lands then flies away. The speed with which these metaphors succeed one another mirrors the rapidity with which the days and years pass. לִמְנוֹת יָמֵֽינוּ כֵּן הוֹדַע Teach us rightly to number our days: the moral at the heart of the psalm: Teach us to remember how short life is, that we may spend our time on the things that endure. וִיהִי נֹֽעַם אֲדֹנָי אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ עָלֵֽינוּ May the pleasantness of the Lord our God be upon us: according to the sages, this is the blessing Moses gave the Israelites when they finished constructing the Tabernacle, adding, “May the Divine Presence rest in the work of your hands” (Bemidbar Raba 12:9; quoted by Rashi on Exodus 39:43).

יֹשֵׁב בְּסֵֽתֶר Psalm 91: A prayer for protection from danger and harm. The psalm uses many images for God’s protection. To those who trust in Him, He is shelter, shadow, refuge, stronghold. He protects us beneath His wings, and encircles us like a shield. When we are in distress, He is with us. When we are in danger, we are not alone. Trust defeats terror, and faith conquers fear. The first speaker in the psalm is human; the second, God Himself (Sanhedrin 103a).

הַלְלוּיָהּ Psalms 135–136: Two psalms forming a single composite unit, simi-lar in tone, vocabulary and literary structure to the group of Psalms 113–118 known as Hallel. Some sages (Pesaḥim 118a) called these two psalms “The Great Hallel ” to distinguish them from Psalms 113–118 which they called “The Egyptian Hallel ” since it contains a reference to the exodus from Egypt (others confined the description to Psalm 136 alone). It is likely that both were written for public worship in the Temple, and both are litanies: a series of invocations said by a leader of prayer, together with congregational responses. Psalm 136, with its refrain “His loving-kindness is for ever,” is the only psalm in which the congregational responses are set out in full, line by line. In Psalm 135 the responses are likely to have been, for the first section, “Halleluya” (Praise God), and for the last, “Bless the LORD” (Pesaḥim 118a). Psalm 135 is structured in three parts: the first and last speak about the truth of God and the falsity of idols, and the second about God’s power over nature and history. The first part is five verses long; the second, seven; the third, nine. שֶׁהִכָּה בְּכוֹרֵי מִצְרָֽיִם He struck down the firstborn of Egypt: these lines are paralleled in the next psalm. עֲצַבֵּי הַגּוֹיִם כֶּֽסֶף וְזָהָב The idols of the nations are silver and gold…You who fear the Lord, bless the Lord: almost exactly paralleled in Hallel (Psalm 115:4–11).

הוֹדוּ Psalm 136: Originally in the Temple, the leader of prayer said the first half of each verse, to which the congregation responded with the second half. As in several other psalms, the poem opens with cosmology and ends with history; it begins with God as Creator, and continues with God as Redeemer. The sages related the twenty-six verses of the psalm to the twenty-six generations between Adam and the Giving of the Torah – from creation to revelation. Because of its summary of the events of the exodus, it forms part of the Haggada on Pesaḥ.

יְהִי כְבוֹד May the LORD’s glory: An anthology of verses, mainly from Psalms, but also from Chronicles and Proverbs. One verse, “The LORD is King, the LORD was King, the LORD will be King for ever and all time,” does not appear in this form in the Bible: it is a combination of three biblical phrases, two from Psalms, one from Exodus (at the end of the Song at the Sea). The verses take us through the following sequence of thought: God created the universe, therefore God is Sovereign over the universe. In the short term it may seem that human beings determine their own fate even against the will of heaven. However, it is not so: “The LORD’s plan prevails.” God has chosen a particular people (Zion, Jacob) to exemplify this truth, for Israel is the only nation whose very existence is dependent on its covenant with God. Because Israel recognizes no ultimate king other than God, it turns to Him in prayer.

אַשְׁרֵי Happy are those: Psalm 145 is the single most important passage in the Verses of Praise. The sages saw it as the paradigm of praise, firstly because it is constructed as an alphabetic acrostic (with the exception of the letter nun), thus praising God with all the letters of the alphabet; second, because it contains the verse “You open Your hand, and satisfy every living thing with favor,” encapsulating the idea that God did not merely create the universe in the beginning, but also sustains it and the life it contains daily. The sages ruled (Berakhot 4b) that it be said three times each day (twice in the morning service, once in the afternoon). There are other reasons for its prominence. It is the only one of the 150 Psalms to be called Tehilla leDavid, “A Song of Praise by David.” It contains the phrase, “Every day I will bless You,” suggesting that it be said daily. Its 21 lines are constructed in three groups of seven verses: 1–7 are about God’s praise throughout the generations; 8–14 depict God’s kingship and compassion; and 15–21 are about how God heeds prayer. The psalm is built on numerical structures (3, 7, 10) that closely resemble the creation narrative in Genesis 1:1–2:3. Added to Psalm 145 are verses from other psalms: two at the beginning, which include the word Ashrei (happy) three times; and one at the end, which ends with Halleluya. It thus epitomizes the book of Psalms as a whole, which begins with the word Ashrei and ends with the word Halleluya.

הַלְלוּיָהּ Psalm 146: The contrast between human and divine rule. Human beings are mortal. They come from dust and return to dust. God is eternal, as are the values by which He governs the affairs of humankind. He brings justice to the oppressed, food to the hungry, freedom to captives, and hope to those at the margins of society. These principles of justice and compassion run through Jewish history as the governing ideals of a society under the sovereignty of God.

הַלְלוּיָהּ Psalm 147: A magnificent weaving together of the themes of nature, God’s role in Israel’s history, and the paradox of divine distance and close-ness. God counts the stars: He rules the cosmos. At the same time, He also “heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds”: He cares for each of us. What matters ultimately is not power but humility in the face of God. He has chosen Israel uniquely to embody this truth in their constitution as a nation. Therefore He, not a human legislature, is the source of their laws.

הַלְלוּיָהּ Psalm 148: A creation psalm. The entire universe sings a song of praise to God. The first half of the psalm is about the heavens, the second about the earth. Each is a voice in the choral symphony of creation, in which all that exists testifies to its Maker.

הַלְלוּיָהּ Psalm 149: A psalm of thanksgiving for God’s role in Israel’s history, granting them victory in war and ensuring the ultimate victory of justice over cruelty and aggression. The “two-edged sword” may be a reference to the dual nature of history: on the one hand the house of Israel must fight its own battles, on the other it must always be conscious of the providential pattern of history, the role of God in its survival and success.

הַלְלוּיָהּ Psalm 150: The book of Psalms here reaches its crescendo in a magnificent song whose key word is praise (hallel), which appears in one or an other form thirteen times in a single short paragraph. In ancient times it was recited by pilgrims bringing first fruits to Jerusalem, when they reached the Temple Mount (Maimonides, Bikkurim 4:17). The repetition of the last verse is a convention signaling the end of a book or passage.

בָּרוּךְ ה' Blessed be the LORD: A passage marking the closure of the Verses of Praise. It is constructed out of three verses from the book of Psalms, chosen because they open with the word “Blessed.”

וַיְבָֽרֶךְ דָּוִיד David blessed: The first of three passages marking historic transi-tions in the history of Israel: (1) King David’s prayer for the building of the Temple; (2) the prayer said at the gathering convened by Ezra after the return from the Babylonian exile; and (3) the song Moses and the Israelites sang at the Sea of Reeds, after the waters had miraculously divided, allowing them to cross to safety. One reason for their presence here is that thus far we have prayed as in-dividuals. Communal prayer is about to begin. The three historic passages are about the constitution of a community of prayer. In the first, David had made Jerusalem the capital of the nation and brought the Ark to it. Now at the end of his life he assembled the people and charged them with the sacred task of building the Temple. In the second, after the Babylonian exile, Ezra and Nehemiah summoned the people to reaffirm their historic covenant with God. The third, after the Israelites had crossed the Sea of Reeds, was the moment when they left the land over which Pharaoh ruled. They were now God’s people, under His sole domain. Common to all three passages is that they were said at historic moments when the people pledged themselves to be defined as a nation bound together by a sacred task. Instead of simply moving from individual to communal worship, the siddur takes us through three transformative moments in Jewish history when the people constituted themselves as a nation dedicated to the service of God. They were no longer mere individuals (returning exiles, escaping slaves) but a group, a nation, a community of faith.