Psalms Trivia
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100 free Psalms trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Book of Psalms is 150 songs long, runs from the shortest chapter in the Bible to the longest, and has been sung in temples, synagogues and churches for well over two thousand years. This quiz covers the famous ones — Psalm 23, Psalm 51, Psalm 91, Psalm 119, Psalm 137 — plus the structure of the book, who it is attributed to, the mysterious word Selah, and the composers from Allegri to Bernstein who set the psalms to music. Great for Bible study groups, Sunday school, youth nights or anyone who wants to know the Psalter a little better. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In the King James Version of Psalm 23, what "runneth over"?
My cup
My cup: the verse seats the singer at a table laid in front of his enemies, head anointed with oil, and the overflowing cup went on to become an English saying in its own right.
Q 02Like the Psalms, which part of the Bible has five books?
The Torah
The Torah: an old rabbinic saying has Moses giving Israel five books of law and the Psalter answering them with five books of its own.
Q 03Which famous line opens Psalm 23 in the King James Version?
The Lord is my shepherd
The Lord is my shepherd: the old Catholic Douay-Rheims Bible, translated from Latin, has no shepherd in the line at all and opens "The Lord ruleth me".
Q 04Which psalm, at 176 verses, is the longest chapter in the entire Bible?
119
119: it is an alphabet poem, giving each of the 22 Hebrew letters a stanza whose every verse begins with that letter, which is how it stretches to 176 verses.
Q 05Which two-verse psalm is the shortest chapter in the Bible?
117
117: St Benedict's Rule found it too brief to fill a slot at Vespers, so monks sing it joined on to the psalm before it.
Q 06What does Tehillim, the Hebrew title of the Book of Psalms, mean?
Praises
Praises: the English name took a different road, from the Greek psalmos, a song performed to plucked strings.
Q 07Which figure is named in the superscriptions of the most psalms, 73 in all?
David
David: some of those headings pin a psalm to a scene from his life, such as fleeing his own son Absalom or hiding from Saul in a cave.
Q 08Which psalm is the only one attributed to Moses in its heading?
90
90: Isaac Watts turned its opening verses, where a thousand years pass like yesterday, into the hymn "O God, Our Help in Ages Past".
Q 09Psalm 51, headed as a confession after the Bathsheba affair, is known by which Latin name?
Miserere
Miserere: its first verse was England's "neck verse", because a defendant who could read it aloud might claim benefit of clergy and escape the hangman.
Q 10What mysterious Hebrew word appears 71 times in the Psalms, possibly marking a pause?
Selah
Selah: nobody knows what it means, and even the ancient Greek translators were guessing, swapping in "diapsalma", a word just as obscure.
Q 11Which psalm opens with the cry "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me"?
22
22: Matthew and Mark have Jesus cry out its first line from the cross, and a later verse about parting garments and casting lots is quoted in the same crucifixion scene.
Q 12In the King James Version of Psalm 137, the weeping exiles hang which instruments on the willows?
Harps
Harps: their captors demand one of the songs of Zion, the exiles refuse to sing in a strange land, and the psalm ends on a notoriously violent curse.
Q 13Which psalm does the devil quote to Jesus during the temptation in the wilderness?
91
91: he cites its promise that angels will bear you up lest you dash your foot against a stone, daring Jesus to throw himself from the top of the Temple.
Q 21Whose setting of Psalm 51 is a teenage Mozart said to have written out from memory?
Allegri
Allegri: legend says the Vatican guarded the score, but copies had already left Rome, and the tale of the boy's feat rests on one letter from his father.
Q 22Which group had a 1978 hit with "Rivers of Babylon", adapted from Psalm 137?
Boney M.
Boney M.: their disco smash began as a Rastafarian anthem by Jamaica's Melodians, for whom Babylon meant the Western society that held Africa's exiles.
Q 23Psalm 137 inspired "Va, pensiero", the slaves' chorus from which Verdi opera?
Nabucco
Nabucco: a month after Verdi died, a young Toscanini led a choir of 820 in the chorus as the composer was reburied in Milan.
Q 14Martin Luther's hymn "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" is based on which psalm?
46
46: it opens "God is our refuge and strength", and Luther's hymn is often called the battle hymn of the Reformation; Bach built a cantata on it and Mendelssohn a symphony finale.
Q 15How does the final psalm in the Book of Psalms urge the congregation to praise God?
With music and dancing
With music and dancing: it calls for trumpet blasts, tambourines and strings, then closes by ordering everything that has breath to join in.
Q 16Which psalm begins "Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands"?
100
100: William Kethe's rhymed version, "All People That on Earth Do Dwell", became so standard that the melody it is sung to is still called the Old 100th.
Q 17Psalm 1 opens with which words in the King James Version?
Blessed is the man
Blessed is the man: in Latin that is Beatus vir, and medieval scribes turned its opening B into a painted initial that could fill a whole page of a psalter.
Q 18Psalm 104 says God made which sea monster simply to play in the ocean?
Leviathan
Leviathan: another psalm has God smashing the monster's heads in battle, but here it is just one more creature, made to frolic in the sea while ships sail past.
Q 19Which British politician's diary records him reciting the Bible's longest psalm on a walk through London?
William Wilberforce
William Wilberforce: in 1819, in the middle of a political crisis, the anti-slavery campaigner noted that he walked from Hyde Park Corner repeating the psalm "in great comfort".
Q 20The sons of which rebel, swallowed by the earth in the Book of Numbers, are credited with eleven psalms?
Korah
Korah: he led a revolt against Moses and the ground opened under him, yet Numbers adds that his children did not die, and their descendants became Temple singers.
Q 24Why do Catholic and Protestant Bibles often number the same psalm one apart?
Greek and Hebrew texts split psalms differently
Greek and Hebrew texts split psalms differently: the Septuagint, followed by the Latin Vulgate, runs Hebrew Psalms 9 and 10 together as one poem, so most later numbers sit one behind.
Q 25Which extra psalm from the Septuagint also turned up in Hebrew among the Dead Sea Scrolls?
151
151: its heading in the Septuagint calls it 'outside the number' and sets it after the fight with Goliath; scholars assumed it began life in Greek until a Hebrew version surfaced at Qumran.
Q 26Which German scholar's form criticism sorted the psalms into types such as hymns and royal psalms?
Hermann Gunkel
Hermann Gunkel: he ignored where a psalm sat in the book and asked what occasion in Israel's worship each type was sung at, its 'setting in life'.
Q 27Scholars who sort the psalms by type find which kind to be by far the most common?
Individual laments
Individual laments: each calls on God and pours out one person's complaint, yet most turn around and end on a note of confidence.
Q 28Psalms 120 to 134 form a group of fifteen known by what name?
Songs of Ascents
Songs of Ascents: one tradition has Levites singing one on each of the fifteen steps up to the Temple's inner court; another has pilgrims singing them on the climb to Jerusalem.
Q 29Psalm 130, "Out of the depths", is one of seven psalms given which label?
Penitential
Penitential: as he lay dying, Augustine had penitential psalms copied out and hung on the wall by his bed, and his biographer says he read them weeping.
Q 30Which psalm begins "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills"?
121
121: after two verses of 'my help' the voice switches to 'thy keeper', which is why it is read as a dialogue, the traveller's question answered perhaps by a priest.