About this print

King David, Psalm 150:6

Before the crown, there was the music: young David alone on a hillside at sundown, bent over his lyre, under the last line of the Book of Psalms.

The shepherd musician

The David painted here has no crown yet. He is a teenager with a mop of brown curls held back by a thin cord, sitting on a sun-warmed boulder with his sandaled feet on the dusty ground. He wears a cream tunic under a blue wrap and a long rust mantle, and he is bent over a small wooden lyre with a curled frame, eyes lowered, plucking the strings with his right hand.

Behind him the land falls away to violet hills and the glint of water, with a few cypresses standing dark against it. The sun is just touching the horizon and the sky glows in peach and rose. Above: “Let every thing that hath breath praise the LORD”, then Psalm 150:6.

How does the Book of Psalms end?

Psalm 150 is the grand finale of the Psalter, and it ends on this line. In the King James Version the complete verse reads: “Let every thing that hath breath praise the LORD. Praise ye the LORD.” “Praise ye the LORD” translates the Hebrew hallelu-Yah, the word we know as hallelujah. The whole psalm is a call to worship with every instrument available: trumpet, psaltery and harp, timbrel and dance, strings, pipes and two kinds of cymbals.

Then the list stops, and the last verse widens the orchestra to everything alive. Breath is the first gift in the Bible, breathed into Adam in Genesis 2, and here it is returned to the one who gave it. After 150 psalms of lament, confession, anger and hope, the final word is praise.

Psalm 150 itself carries no author's name, but David is remembered as the sweet psalmist of Israel. The First Book of Samuel describes how, as a young shepherd from Bethlehem, he was brought to King Saul's court and played the harp to calm the troubled king. The instrument in Hebrew is the kinnor, a portable lyre much like the one in the painting.

For worship leaders and musicians

This print is often chosen as a thank-you for a worship leader, choir director, organist or church pianist, or as an encouragement for a child starting music lessons. It suits a practice room, a church music office or the wall above a family piano, and the sunset tones warm up a pastor's study.

Read Psalm 150 and what it means