Psalms & Proverbs trivia, the verse open beside you.

Which psalm begins, "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want"?

1. Psalm 1
2. Psalm 23
3. Psalm 51
4. Psalm 91

"The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want."Psalm 23:1

Likely the best-known psalm in any language. Attributed to David, six verses long, quoted at funerals, hospital bedsides, and Sunday services across two millennia. The shepherd-king image is a play on David's own past as a shepherd before he was anointed king.

According to Proverbs 1:7, what is "the beginning of knowledge"?

1. Wisdom from the elders
2. A teachable heart
3. The fear of the LORD
4. Diligent study

"The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction."Proverbs 1:7

This is the thesis sentence of the entire book of Proverbs — and arguably of Old Testament wisdom literature. The "fear of the LORD" is not terror but reverent submission to God's authority over reality. Proverbs argues that wisdom is not first an intellectual achievement but a moral and spiritual posture; learning begins where pride ends.

Which king of Israel is traditionally credited as the principal author of Proverbs?

1. David
2. Solomon
3. Hezekiah
4. Josiah

"The proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel."Proverbs 1:1

Solomon's name heads the book, and 1 Kings 4:32 says he composed three thousand proverbs. The book also includes "the words of Agur" (ch. 30), "the words of King Lemuel" (ch. 31), and "proverbs of Solomon copied by the men of Hezekiah" (ch. 25). It is an anthology of Israelite wisdom collected over centuries, with Solomon as its founding figure.

"Blessed is the man" describes the one who delights in what, according to Psalm 1?

1. The temple
2. The law of the LORD
3. His own counsel
4. The land

"His delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night."Psalm 1:2

Psalm 1 is the gateway to the entire Psalter — placed deliberately as a preface. It contrasts two ways: the righteous, planted like a tree by streams of water, and the wicked, blown away like chaff. The blessedness of the righteous comes not from achievement but from sustained delight in God's word.

Psalm 51, traditionally read as David's prayer of repentance, follows which incident?

1. The death of Saul
2. The numbering of the people
3. His sin with Bathsheba
4. The rebellion of Absalom

"Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me."Psalm 51:10

The superscription of Psalm 51 names Nathan's confrontation with David after Bathsheba (2 Samuel 12). It is the most extended Old Testament example of penitential prayer — and the source of phrases woven into Christian liturgy for centuries: "wash me thoroughly," "create in me a clean heart," "the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit." Confession, not sacrifice, is the heart of restoration.

How many books are the Psalms traditionally divided into?

1. Three
2. Four
3. Five
4. Seven

"Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting! Amen and Amen."Psalm 41:13

The Psalter is divided into five books — Psalms 1–41, 42–72, 73–89, 90–106, 107–150 — each closing with a doxology. The five-book structure is traditionally read as deliberately echoing the five books of the Torah, presenting the Psalms as Israel's prayer-response to God's law. The final five psalms (146–150) all begin with "Hallelujah" and form a closing crescendo.

Which psalm opens with "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" — quoted by Jesus on the cross?

1. Psalm 16
2. Psalm 22
3. Psalm 88
4. Psalm 130

"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"Psalm 22:1

Psalm 22 is a Davidic lament that reads like prophecy — pierced hands and feet (v. 16), garments divided by lot (v. 18), bones not broken. Jesus' citation from the cross (Matthew 27:46) was not despair alone but invocation: a Jewish hearer would have known the psalm ends in vindication and praise. The cry and the eventual triumph are both in the same song.

What literary device structures Psalm 119, the longest psalm, into 22 sections?

1. A historical narrative arc
2. An acrostic on the Hebrew alphabet
3. A call-and-response between voices
4. A musical refrain at each section

"Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path."Psalm 119:105

Psalm 119 is an elaborate acrostic: each of its 22 stanzas begins with successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet (aleph, beth, gimel ...), and each stanza contains eight verses all beginning with that same letter. The 176-verse meditation on God's word is held together by this formal architecture — the whole alphabet pressed into service to praise the Torah.

In Proverbs 8, who or what is personified as having been "brought forth" before the mountains were settled?

1. The Spirit of God
2. The angels
3. Wisdom
4. The covenant

"The LORD possessed me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth."Proverbs 8:22-23

Wisdom in Proverbs 8 speaks in the first person as a primordial reality present at creation. Christian theology has long read this passage in light of John 1 and Colossians 1, seeing in personified Wisdom a pointer to Christ as the eternal Logos through whom all things were made. The text was central to early Trinitarian debates with the Arians.

Psalm 110 — "The LORD says to my Lord, 'Sit at my right hand'" — is quoted in the New Testament more than any other psalm. Which order of priesthood does it announce?

1. The Levitical priesthood
2. The priesthood of Aaron
3. The priesthood of Zadok
4. The priesthood of Melchizedek

"The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind, 'You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.'"Psalm 110:4

Psalm 110 is cited or alluded to over twenty times in the New Testament, more than any other Old Testament passage. Hebrews builds an extended argument on its Melchizedek line: a priesthood older than Aaron's, not based on tribal descent but on God's oath. Jesus is presented as the fulfillment — a priest-king joining the two offices that the Old Testament kept rigidly separate.