--- title: "The Songbook" category: "other" description: "A body of psalms, hymns and spiritual songs to remember: the songs of Scripture, the songs Jesus sang and quoted, and the earliest Christian songs, with who first sang each and when to sing it." tags: ["psalms", "worship", "memorisation"] draft: false primary_passage: "Colossians 3:16" bible_references: ["Colossians 3:16", "Ephesians 5:19", "Deuteronomy 31:21", "James 5:13"] date_created: 2026-10-25 date_modified: 2026-10-26 ai_provider_models: - anthropic/claude-opus-5.5 --- # The Songbook **In one sentence:** the songs God's people have sung from the Red Sea to the throne of the Lamb, kept in one place so you can learn them, sing them and find the right one when you need it. > ✝️ Colossians 3:16 (ESV) > > 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, > singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. God gave Israel a song so that it would "live unforgotten in the mouths of their offspring" (Deuteronomy 31:21, ESV). A song carries the word of Christ into memory, and from there into the hard day when it is needed. The study [Psalms, Hymns and Spiritual Songs](https://the-way.lewy.au/christian-life/psalms-hymns-and-spiritual-songs/) explains what Paul's three words mean and where these songs come from. This page keeps the songs. Each song gives where it is, its opening words, who first sang it and why, and when to sing it now. Every reference opens the full passage when you tap it. Opening lines are from the World English Bible (public domain) unless marked. ## Sing it when… James gives the rule: "Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise" (James 5:13, ESV). Scripture's songs were each sung at a particular moment, and the same moments still come. ## The songs Jesus knew Jesus grew up singing Israel's songs. The Gospels record Him singing once, and quoting the psalms at the turning points of His ministry. How sure each link is goes with it. ## Songs of Israel The songs outside the Psalter, from Moses to the prophets. The early church kept many of these in a book of *Odes* bound after the Psalms. ## From the Psalter Israel's songbook: 150 psalms in five books. A selection, with the collections Jesus sang at the feasts. ## Songs of the first church The songs Luke records at the birth of Jesus, and the passages in Paul's letters that have the shape of hymns. Which of those Paul wrote and which he quoted is debated, and each card says so. ## Songs of heaven The songs John heard around the throne in Revelation, sung to the One who sits on the throne and to the Lamb. ## Songs the early church wrote Christians wrote new songs about Jesus from the beginning. Around AD 112 Pliny reported that they sang "a song unto Christ as God" before daylight (Pliny, *Letters* 10.96). Early in the third century a writer quoted by Eusebius pointed to the "psalms and hymns, written by the faithful brethren from the beginning," that "celebrate Christ the Word of God, speaking of him as Divine" (Eusebius, *Church History* 5.28.5, NPNF2 1). Only songs whose text survives in a source this site holds are listed. ## How they were sung The tunes are lost. No melody from Scripture survives in a form anyone can sing, so every card here gives the words. Scripture does keep some of the instructions that went with them. Several psalm titles name a tune or a setting, the way a hymn book prints a tune's name above the words. Psalm 22 is "set to 'The Doe of the Morning'", Psalm 8 is "on an instrument of Gath", and Psalm 46 is "according to Alamoth" (WEB). Their cards say what each term may mean and how sure that is. Some of those terms had passed out of use before Jesus was born. The Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Psalms, probably made in the second century BC, renders the same titles "for the help of the morning", "for the winepresses" and "concerning hidden things". Its translators read the Hebrew letters as ordinary words, because the musical sense was no longer known. Others were the temple musicians' own terms. When David brought the ark to Jerusalem, Levites played "stringed instruments set to Alamoth" and "harps tuned to the eight-stringed lyre" (1 Chronicles 15:20-21, WEB). The Hebrew Bible also carries marks for chanting. The Masoretes, the scribes who copied it from about the seventh to the tenth century AD, added an accent to each word telling a reader how to chant it, with a system of its own for Psalms, Job and Proverbs. The accents record how the synagogue chanted the text in their day. Attempts to rebuild David's melodies from them are disputed. ## Adding a song The songs live in `docs/data/songbook.toml`, one entry per song; the file's header lists the fields. A study links to a song as `../resources/songbook.md#song-`.