Psalms 141

6. I said unto the Lord, Thou art my God. Here was David’s stay and hope. He was assured that Jehovah was his God, he expressed that assurance, and he expressed it before Jehovah Himself. Often the less we say to our foes and the more we say to our best Friend the better it will fare with us; if we say anything, let it be said unto the Lord. S.

7,8. From first to last, David leaves his cause in God’s hands; it is not “my sword and my bow that shall help me;” he counted them vain things to help a man; and therefore, as he had so often said in other Psalms, “The Lord was his shield and his defence,” and as God had already shielded his head in the day of battle, so he prays for the same protection against his enemies now. Bouchier.

9. The head of those surrounding me, the mischief of their lips shall cover them. While my head is covered by the Divine protection, the head of those by whom I am beset shall be covered with the consequences or the punishment of the mischief occasioned by their calumnies and insults. Or the trouble, which their lips have caused to others, shall return upon themselves. A.—The LXX., Jerome, and the majority of modern commentators give the future, “Though they that compass me may lift up the head, the mischief of their own lips shall cover them; hot burning coals shall fall upon them,” etc. P.

9-11. Their lips, which uttered mischief against others, shall be the means of covering themselves with confusion, when out of their own mouths they shall be judged. Evil speakers and false accusers shall gain no lasting establishment, but punishment shall hunt sin through all its doubles and seize it at last. G. Horne.

11. Evil shall hunt the violent man to overthrow him. ‘Tis an allusion to hounds that are of a quick scent, and pursue the game with pleasure; they do not see the deer or the hare, yet they follow upon the scent; and though they have sometimes a very cold and dead scent, yet they will follow and work it out. Thus “evil shall hunt the violent man to overthrow him;” and though sometimes he hath, as it were, got out of the view or sight of evil, and thinks himself under covert, yet these evils, like a company of greedy hounds, will pursue till they have overtaken and overthrown him. Caryl.—He hunted the good, and now his own evil shall hunt him. Sin is its own punishment; a violent man will need not direr doom than to reap what he has sown. It is horrible for a huntsman to be devoured by his own hounds; yet this is the sure fate of the persecutor. S.

1. LORD, I have called upon thee; make haste unto me: Give ear unto my voice, when I call unto thee. 2 Let my prayer be set forth as incense before thee; The lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice. 3 Set a watch, O LORD, before my mouth; Keep the door of my lips. 4 Incline not my heart to any evil thing,

To be occupied in deeds of wickedness With men that work iniquity: And let me not eat of their dainties.

5. Let the righteous smite me, it shall be a kindness; And let him reprove me, it shall be as oil upon the head; Let not my head refuse it: For even in their wickedness shall my prayer continue.

6. Their judges are thrown down by the sides of the rock;

And they shall hear my words: for they are sweet.

7. As when one ploweth and cleaveth the earth, Our bones are scattered at the grave’s mouth.

8. For mine eyes are unto thee, O GOD the Lord:

In thee do I put my trust; leave not my soul destitute.

9. Keep me from the snare which they have laid for me,

And from the gins of the workers of iniquity.

10. Let the wicked fall into their own nets, Whilst that I withal escape.

THIS Psalm presents some peculiar difficulties of interpretation, which, however, are due neither to the words employed nor to the grammatical construction, but to the extreme abruptness with which in vs. 5-7 the thoughts follow one another, and the extreme obscurity which hangs over the allusions. To translate each sentence by itself is no difficult matter, but it is almost hopeless either to link the sentences plausibly together, or to discover in them any tangible clew to the circumstances in which the Psalmist was placed. As all the ancient versions must have had substantially the same text, the deviations in any of them being very slight, it is hardly probable that, as Olshausen and Hupfeld maintain, the text is corrupt; it is more likely that our entire ignorance of the circumstances under which the Psalm was written prevents our piercing the obscurity of the writer’s words.

It has been usual to accept the inscription which assigns the Psalm to David, and to assign it to the time of his persecution by Saul. Delitzsch, with more probability, refers the Psalm to the time of Absalom’s rebellion. P.—David was banished from Jerusalem and, therefore, cut off from the sacrificial worship of God on Zion; the Psalm before us is an evening hymn on one of those troublous days. The ancient Church has chosen it for its evening hymn, just as it has chosen Psalm 63 for its morning hymn. Chrysostom describes it as being known by almost every one, and as being sung all one’s days. D.

This Psalm, like the one before it, is distinguished by a pregnant brevity and the use of rare expressions, while at the same time it is full of verbal and real coincidences with the Psalms of David. These indications are so clear and undeniable, that a sceptical critic of great eminence (De Wette) pronounces it one of the oldest Psalms in the collection. A.

1,2. Mercy to accept what we do well, and grace to keep us from doing ill, are the two things which we are here taught by David’s example to pray to God for. He loved prayer, and he begs of God that his prayers might be heard and answered. His crying denotes fervency in prayer, he prayed as one in earnest; his crying to God denotes faith and fixedness in prayer. H.

2. Let my prayer continue (as) incense before Thee, the offering of my hands (as) the evening oblation. Continue, literally, be established. He prays not only for acceptance, but for constant or perpetual acceptance, as the offerings referred to were the stated daily services of the Mosaic ritual. Incense is in Scripture the symbol of prayer. In the later books it is commonly mentioned as an evening oblation, perhaps because in the evening it was reckoned the main offering, whereas in the morning it was merely an appendage to the animal sacrifice. A.

Before Thee as incense, literally, let my prayer, incense, be set in order before Thee, implying that prayer was in the reality what incense was in the symbol. Passing to New Testament Scripture, though still only to that portion which refers to Old Testament times, we are told of the people without being engaged in prayer while Zacharias was offering incense within the sanctuary; they were in spirit going along with the priestly service. And in the Book of Revelation the prayers of saints are once and again identified with the offering of incense on the golden altar before the throne (Rev. 5: 8; 8: 3, 4). P. Fairbairn.

There was a fitness in the nature of things in incense being regarded as an embodied prayer. Perfume is the breath of flowers, the sweetest expression of their inmost being, an exhalation of their very life. It is a sign of perfect purity, health, and vigor; it is a symptom of full and joyous existence; for disease, and decay, and death yield not pleasant but revolting odors. And, as such, fragrance is in nature what prayer is in the human world. Prayer is the breath of life, the expression of the soul’s best, holiest, and the heavenliest aspirations; the symptom and token of its spiritual health, and right and happy relations with God. The natural counterparts of the prayers that rise from the closet and the sanctuary are to be found in the delicious breathings, sweetening all the air, from gardens of flowers, from clover crofts or thymy hill-sides, or dim pine woods, and which seem to be grateful, unconscious acknowledgments from the heart of nature for the timely blessings of the great world-covenant; dew to refresh and sunshine to quicken. Macmillan.

It is not the composure of prayer or the eloquence of expression that is the sweetness of it in God’s account, and makes it a sacrifice of a pleasing smell or sweet odor to Him; but the breathing forth the desire of the heart that makes it a spiritual sacrifice. L.—The lifting up of his hands in prayer denotes both the elevation and enlargement of his desire, and the outgoings of his hope and expectation; the lifting up of the hand signifying the lifting up of the heart, and being used instead of lifting up the sacrifices which were heaved and waved before the Lord. Prayer is a spiritual sacrifice, it is the offering up of the soul and its best affections to God; now he prays that this may be set forth and directed before God, as the incense which was daily burned upon the golden altar. H.

Evening sacrifice. The sacrifice here meant is strictly the offering consisting of fine flour with oil and frankincense, or of unleavened cakes mingled with oil, which was burned upon the altar (see Lev. 2: 1-11). This, however, like the “incense,” was only added to the burnt-offering, the lamb which was offered every morning and evening. It would seem, therefore, that these two, “the incense” and “the offering of fine flour,” etc., stand for the morning and evening sacrifices; and the sense is, “Let my daily prayer be acceptable to Thee as are the daily sacrifices of Thine own appointment.” The incense may be mentioned because, as ascending in a fragrant cloud, it was symbolical of prayer; and the same would hold also of the “meat-offering,” of which it is said that the priest was to burn a part as “a memorial,” “a sweet savor under Jehovah” (Lev. 2: 9). P.

The altar of incense stood in the closest connection with the altar of burnt-offerings. The blood of the sin-offering was sprinkled on the horns of both on the great day of annual atonement. Morning and evening, as soon as the sacrifice was offered, the censer poured forth its fragrant contents, so that the perpetual incense within ascended simultaneously with the perpetual burnt-offering outside. Without the live coals from off the sacrificial altar, the sacred incense could not be kindled; and without the incense previously filling the holy place, the blood of atonement from the altar of burnt-offering could not be sprinkled on the mercy-seat. Beautiful and expressive type of the perfect sacrifice and the all-prevailing intercession of Jesus—of intercession founded upon atonement, of atonement preceded and followed by intercession! Beautiful and expressive type, too, of the prayers of believers kindled by the altar-fire of Christ’s sacrifice, and perfumed by His merits! Macmillan.

There is a general kind of devotion that goes through the renewed heart and life of a Christian, which we may term habitual and virtual; and there is a special and fixed exercise of devotion, which we may name actual. The soul that is rightly affected to God is never void of a holy devotion; wherever it is, whatever it does, it is still lifted up to God, and fastened upon Him, and converses with Him. Bishop H.

If you would have fire for your evening sacrifice, do not expect a new flame to be dropped from heaven, but keep what is already on thy altar from going out, which thou canst not better do than by feeding it with the fuel of ejaculatory prayer all the day. Gurnall.—Prayer at stated seasons is good and necessary; but a man aiming at sanctity in ever so low a degree will find it impossible to confine his prayers to stated seasons. He will soon discover that prayer is literally, and not merely in a figure, “the Christian’s breath of life;” and that to attempt to carry on the spiritual life without more prayer than the recital of a form on rising, and retiring to rest, is about the same absurdity as it would be for a man to open his casement morning and evening, and inhale the fresh air for a few minutes, and then say to himself on closing it, that that amount of breathing must suffice him for the rest of the day. Under this view of it, ejaculatory prayer is seen to be even a more essential thing than stated prayer. Both are necessary to the well-being of Christian life; but the momentary lifting the heart to God, the momentary realization of His presence amid business or under temptation, is necessary to its very being. The life is no more when the work is suspended. Goulburn.

3. Set a watch.** The prayer is apparently directed against the temptation to indulge in rash and foolish words, such as wicked men would indulge in (see next verse). P.—Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth, and nature having made my lips to be a door to my words, let grace keep that door, that no word may be suffered to go out, which may any way tend to the dishonor of God or the hurt of others. Good men know the evil of tongue sins, and how prone they are to them; when enemies are provoking, we are in danger of speaking unadvisedly, as Moses did, though the meekest of men; and therefore they are earnest with God to prevent their speaking amiss, as knowing that no watchfulness or resolution of their own is sufficient for the governing of their tongues, much less of their hearts, without the special grace of God. H.

Everything is transacted by speech, in natural, civil, and religious concerns; how much, therefore, depends on the good or evil management of the tongue! What an ardor of holy love and friendship, or of anger and malice, may a few words fan into a flame! The tongue is the principal instrument in the cause of God; and it is the chief engine of the devil. The use, the influence of it, therefore, is inexpressible; and words are never to be considered only as effects, but as causes, the operation of which can never be fully imagined. We are in danger from the frequency of speech. “In the multitude of words there wanteth not sin.” We must of necessity speak often; but we often speak without necessity. Duty calls us to intermingle much with our fellow-creatures; but we are too little in the closet, and too much in the crowd, and when we are in company we forget the admonition, “Let every man be swift to hear, and slow to speak.” W. Jay.

It is a fault to speak evil one of another, but the essence of the fault lies in the want of that charity which thinketh no evil. Had the heart been filled with this principle, no such bad thing as slander would have come out of it. T. C.—For of all the disorders of the tongue, the remedy must begin at the heart, purge the fountain, and then the streams will be clean; keep thy heart, and then it will be easy to keep thy tongue. It is a great help in the quality of speech to abate in the quantity; not to speak rashly, but to ponder what we are going to say. Set a watch before the door of thy lips. He bids us not build it up like a stone wall, that nothing go in or come out; but he speaks of a door which may be sometimes open, oft-times shut, but withal to have a watch standing before it continually. A Christian must labor to have his speech as contracted as can be in the things of this earth; and even in Divine things our words should be few and wary. In speaking of the greatest things, it is a great point of wisdom not to speak much. Leighton.

Not only must we carefully silence all expressions savoring of falsehood, irreverence or malice; not only must we be content to part with a character for wit and ability, rather than gain it by words more entertaining than innocent; but we must learn to speak considerately and discreetly, checking all idle conversation, which is folly and tends to sin, and even in mirth remembering whose we are and whom we serve. So, too, by our words we should do good, as well as abstain from evil. To conciliate the affections, to increase the knowledge, to correct the faults, to encourage the virtues, to alleviate the sorrows, or even to amuse the cares of our fellow-creatures, are worthy employments of the faculty of speech; but still more so, to spread the knowledge of religion, to honor God and benefit men. Bishop Jackson.

The Master keeps the lips of His servants by so filling their hearts with His love that the outflow cannot be unloving, by so filling their thoughts that the utterance cannot be un-Christ-like. There must be filling before there can be pouring out; and if there is filling, there must be pouring out, for He hath said, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.” F. R. Havergal.

4. “Incline not my heart to any evil thing,” like the prayer, “Lead us not into temptation,” must not be construed as assuming any danger or even moral possibility that God may tempt men to sin. It is rather a brief way of saying, Protect me by Thy providence, guard me by Thy Spirit, from being led into any evil thing. “Let me not eat the dainties of the wicked” in its moral application covers not merely delicacies of food, tempting, poisonous; but all enticing seductions toward any sinful self-indulgence—temptation to any sin. C.—We are ready to do as others do, and to think that if we received injuries we may return them; and therefore we have need to pray that we may never be left to ourselves to practise any wicked work, either in confederacy with or in opposition to the men that work iniquity. While we live in such an evil world and carry about with us such evil hearts we have need to pray that we may neither be drawn in by any allurement nor driven on by any provocation to do any sinful thing. H.

The way the heart inclines the life soon tends; evil things desired bring forth wicked things practised. Unless the fountain of life is kept pure the streams of life will soon be polluted. S.—There is strife for the heart. “Give it me,” saith the Lord; “give it me,” saith the tempter; “give it me,” saith riches; “give it me,” saith pleasure; as though thou must needs give it to some one. Now here is the choice, whether thou wilt give it to God or the devil; God’s heart or the devil’s heart; whose wilt thou be? Henry Smith.

5-7. Up to this point the Psalm is comparatively easy, but now it becomes exceedingly difficult. David, well aware of his sins against God and of his imperfection as a ruler, says in opposition to the abuse which he is now suffering, that he would willingly submit to any friendly correction. Well-meaning reproof shall be acceptable and spiritually profitable to him—that is the meaning of the figure, as Paul Gerhard paraphrases it: “He who knows how to smite me in lovingkindness is as he who in days of joy pours copiously upon my head the balsam that flows by the Jordan.” There now follows the reason, enigmatical both in meaning and expression. We explain it, for the case still stands thus that my prayer is against their wickedness, i.e., to these I oppose no weapon save that of prayer, and am therefore in the spiritual mood susceptible to well-meaning reproof. Mendelssohn renders it similarly: I still pray, while they practise infamy. He who in v. 3 has prayed God to set a watch before his mouth is now dumb over against the present possessors of authority, and seeks to keep himself clean from their sinful ongoings, whereas he willingly allows himself to be chastised by the righteous; and the more silent he is toward the world, he is all the more constant in his intercourse with God. But there will come a time when those who now bear themselves as lords will fall a prey to the vengeance of the people misled by them, and when, on the other hand, the confession of the salvation and of the way of the salvation of God, that has hitherto had to be silent, may again make itself freely heard and will find a ready hearing. As v. 6 says, the new rulers fall a prey to the fury of the people and are hurled down the steep rocks, while the people that has again come to its right mind attends to David’s word and finds it pleasant and beneficent. D.

5. According to the rendering of this verse, the sense will be, “I will gladly welcome even the reproofs of the good, and I will avail myself of prayer as the best defence against the wickedness of my persecutors.” The last member of the verse may be rendered, “For even in their wickedness (while it continues and while I suffer from it) shall my prayer continue.” In v. 4 he had prayed that he might not be led astray by the evil he saw around him, nor allured by the blandishments and luxurious prosperity of the wicked. Now he says, on the contrary, “let me ever be ready to welcome even reproof from the righteous,” which, howhowever harsh, is salutary. The wounds of a friend are faithful. P.

Let the righteous smite me. If a righteous or a right-wise man smite and reprove, he will do it without gall, without bitterness, without publishing, divulging, or telling it to the world, without disgrace—to reform his friend, not to disgrace him—without flattery; not without God. J. Gore.—Very blunt people do little good to others, and get little love to themselves. The Scriptures recommend gentleness and kindness. The “oil” insinuates itself; the stone wounds and then rebounds. The great thing is to show the person that you really love him; and if you manifest this in the sight of God, He will bless your efforts. Christian Treasury.—Grace will teach a Christian to take those potions which are wholesome, though they be not toothsome. Faithful reproof is a token of love, and therefore may well be esteemed a kindness. Such wounding of a friend is healing, and so David might well call it “an excellent oil.” And he did not only say so, which is easy and ordinary, but acted accordingly. Swinnock.

What a test and trial of character there is in all reproof! How it searches and probes the heart, and proves what manner of spirit we are of! Meekly taken when deserved, it makes us humble ourselves for our faults; it fits us by our humility for grace and pardon. When undeserved, it is especially thankworthy, and exalts us to the likeness of Him who, when He was reviled, reviled not again. Taken in a rebellious spirit, it encourages us in sin; it makes us look on our reprover as the cause of our guilt. It is the meek and humble spirit which is most watchful against constant daily imperfections, which takes reproof, if ever it should meet with it, in the only true and Christian way. Watchful obedience trains us to lowliness and meekness, while careless and indifferent living is the surest mode of reaching undutifulness and rebellion of spirit. But in the one is peace, in the other turbulence and sorrow; the one is well pleasing to God, the other most offensive to Him. G. Moberly.

6. This verse, difficult in itself, is still more difficult, because it has no very obvious connection either with what precedes or with what follows. The allusions are so obscure that it is impossible to do more than guess at the meaning. Their judges must be in a general sense the “rulers” or “princes” of “the wicked;” for the pronoun must refer to them. The verse apparently describes a punishment which has been or will be inflicted upon them.