Psalms 141
Psalm 141 is headed A Psalm of David, and it reads like an evening prayer - the kind of thing a man says at the close of a hard day, when the threats of it are still near and sleep has not yet come. It opens with no warm-up, only urgency: LORD, I cry unto thee: make haste unto me; give ear unto my voice, when I cry unto thee (v. 1). What makes the psalm remarkable is what David asks for first. With enemies pressing in, the most natural prayer would be “get me out” - and that prayer does come, at the end. But before it, David asks for something harder and rarer: that his prayer would rise rightly, and that his own mouth and heart would be kept.3
The hinge of the whole psalm is its second verse: Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense; and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice (v. 2). David reaches for the imagery of the sanctuary. Twice a day in Israel's worship a lamb was offered and incense was burned; as evening came on, the smoke of the altar rose into the darkening sky, visible, fragrant, going up. David has no altar with him - he is praying alone - and so he asks that the words from his own mouth and the hands he lifts would be that offering: a prayer that ascends and is received, the evening sacrifice of a man with nothing in his hands but his voice. Out of that single image the rest of the prayer unfolds. If his words are to rise as incense, then the mouth those words come from had better be guarded - Set a watch, O LORD, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips (v. 3) - and the heart behind the mouth kept from evil: Incline not my heart to any evil thing (v. 4).
The psalm never pretends the danger is small. Our bones are scattered at the grave's mouth (v. 7) is as stark an image of mortal peril as the Psalter offers, and the closing verses speak plainly of snares and gins - traps - laid by the workers of iniquity (v. 9). But against all of it David sets one steady line: But mine eyes are unto thee, O GOD the Lord: in thee is my trust; leave not my soul destitute (v. 8). Notice the shape of his courage. It is not that he denies the threat or talks himself into feeling brave; it is that he keeps his eyes pointed in one direction while the threat does its worst. And along the way he says one of the bravest things a person can say - that he would rather be wounded by the righteous than flattered by the wicked: Let the righteous smite me; it shall be a kindness… it shall be an excellent oil (v. 5). A short evening prayer, then, that asks for the right things in the right order: that worship would rise, that the self would be kept, and that the eyes would not look away.2
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Psalm 141:1-5 · A Psalm of DavidLet My Prayer Be Set Forth as Incense
1LORD, I cry unto thee: make haste unto me; give ear unto my voice, when I cry unto thee. 2Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense; and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice. 3Set a watch, O LORD, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips. 4Incline not my heart to any evil thing, to practise wicked works with men that work iniquity: and let me not eat of their dainties. 5Let the righteous smite me; it shall be a kindness: and let him reprove me; it shall be an excellent oil, which shall not break my head: for yet my prayer also shall be in their calamities.
The prayer opens at a run: LORD, I cry unto thee: make haste unto me; give ear unto my voice, when I cry unto thee (v. 1). There is no preamble, no setting of the scene - only a cry and a request that it be heard quickly. The urgency is not a doubt about whether God can hear; it is the honest sound of need. And then comes the line the whole psalm is built around: Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense; and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice (v. 2). David is praying with no altar and no priest beside him, and so he asks that the prayer itself become the offering. Picture what he has in mind. In the sanctuary, morning and evening, incense was burned and a lamb was offered; the smoke climbed visibly into the air and the fragrance spread, a daily sign that the worship of God's people was rising and being received. David takes that picture and lays it over his own private words: let this - my voice, my lifted hands - go up like that. It is a profound thing to ask. He is not merely hoping his prayer reaches God; he is asking that it be received the way an accepted sacrifice is received, as something pleasing, fragrant, welcome. The lifting of the hands is the body's own posture of offering - nothing held back, palms open and upward, the whole self lifted toward God in place of a slain lamb.
Straight after asking that his prayer rise like incense, David asks for something that might seem unrelated until you see the logic: Set a watch, O LORD, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips (v. 3). The two requests belong together. If the words of his mouth are to ascend as a sweet offering, then the mouth they come from has to be guarded - because the same mouth that prays can also wound, deceive, boast, and curse. The images are vivid. A watch is a sentry posted at a gate; the door of my lips turns the mouth into a doorway that can swing open too easily. And notice who David asks to do the guarding. He does not say, “I will watch my mouth” - he has tried that, and so have we, and we know how it goes. He asks God to post the guard: set a watch… keep the door. This is the prayer of a man who has felt how fast a careless or angry word escapes, and who has learned that the gap between the impulse and the spoken word is exactly where he most needs help that is not his own. The most damaging things many of us ever do leave through that door. David asks for a sentry on it.
The prayer now reaches past the mouth to the heart behind it: Incline not my heart to any evil thing, to practise wicked works with men that work iniquity: and let me not eat of their dainties (v. 4). David understands that guarded speech is not enough if the heart is already leaning the wrong way; the watch on the lips is only the last line of defence, and the real battle is further in. So he prays about the heart's inclination - its lean, the direction it tilts before any word is spoken. And he is specific about the danger: the pull of bad company and its rewards. To practise wicked works with men that work iniquity - the temptation is not abstract evil but the concrete pressure of doing what the wrong crowd does, in order to belong with them. Let me not eat of their dainties sharpens it further: dainties are delicacies, the choice food at the table of the wicked, the perks and pleasures that come with throwing in your lot with them. David knows how those rewards work on a heart - how a seat at that table slowly inclines you toward that table's ways. So he asks God to keep his heart from leaning there in the first place. It is a prayer about desire, not just deed: keep me from even wanting what that company offers.
Then comes one of the bravest sentences in the Psalter: Let the righteous smite me; it shall be a kindness: and let him reprove me; it shall be an excellent oil, which shall not break my head (v. 5). Set it beside the verse before. David has just prayed to be kept from the flattering table of the wicked - and now he asks for the opposite treatment from the righteous. He would rather be struck by a good man than fed by a bad one. To be reproved by someone who walks rightly, he says, is a kindness - and more, it is an excellent oil, the fragrant oil poured on the head of an honoured guest, a thing that heals and gladdens rather than harms (which shall not break my head). This runs dead against the grain of how most of us feel about correction. A hard true word from a friend who loves us lands as an insult; the soft false word from someone who wants something from us feels like warmth. David has it the other way around, and he is right. The blow from the righteous is medicine; the dainties of the wicked are bait. The verse's closing clause is tender, too - for yet my prayer also shall be in their calamities - David means that even toward those who oppose him, his answer when trouble finds them will be to pray. He welcomes the wound of a friend and returns prayer for the misfortune of an enemy. That is a heart already being kept.
Psalm 141:6-10Mine Eyes Are unto Thee
6When their judges are overthrown in stony places, they shall hear my words; for they are sweet. 7Our bones are scattered at the grave's mouth, as when one cutteth and cleaveth wood upon the earth. 8But mine eyes are unto thee, O GOD the Lord: in thee is my trust; leave not my soul destitute. 9Keep me from the snares which they have laid for me, and the gins of the workers of iniquity. 10Let the wicked fall into their own nets, whilst that I withal escape.
Verse 6 is one of the hardest in the psalm to render, and the King James translators have given us a line that rewards slow reading: When their judges are overthrown in stony places, they shall hear my words; for they are sweet. The likeliest sense is a turning of the tables. The judges here are the leaders of the wicked company David has been describing - the men whose dainties he refused. A day is coming, he expects, when those leaders will be overthrown, thrown down from the heights they trusted in. And in that day, the very people who once followed them and dismissed David's words will hear those words differently - they shall hear my words; for they are sweet. What sounded like a hard, unwelcome message while the wicked were riding high will sound sweet once their false security has collapsed. There is a quiet patience in this. David does not need to force his vindication or shout down his opponents now. He trusts that truth has a way of sounding sweet at last, even to those who once refused it - once the props are knocked out from under the lie. He can keep speaking sweetly and wait.
Then the psalm turns dark and physical: Our bones are scattered at the grave's mouth, as when one cutteth and cleaveth wood upon the earth (v. 7). The image is brutal in its plainness. A woodcutter splits a log and the chips fly and scatter across the ground; so, David says, our very bones lie strewn at the grave's mouth - at the open jaws of the pit, the very threshold of death. Whether he means a present devastation or the nearness of it, the point is the same: this is no small trouble. The danger has come close enough that he can speak of bones at the edge of the grave. It matters that the psalm lets this stand without softening it. David does not rush past the horror to a happy ending; he names the worst of it plainly - and then, in the very next breath, turns. The whole weight of the psalm hangs on the single word that opens verse 8: But. Bones may be scattered at the grave's mouth - but his eyes are still fixed where they have been fixed all along. The darkness of verse 7 is exactly what makes the turn of verse 8 so strong.
The prayer closes by naming the threat exactly and handing it to God: Keep me from the snares which they have laid for me, and the gins of the workers of iniquity. Let the wicked fall into their own nets, whilst that I withal escape (vv. 9-10). The language is the language of trapping. A snare is a hidden noose; a gin is an old word for a trap that springs shut; a net is spread to catch the unwary. David sees that his enemies are not merely violent but cunning - they have laid traps, set them deliberately and concealed them in his path. And his response is twofold. First, a plea: keep me from them - he does not trust his own footwork to avoid every hidden trap, so he asks God to keep him clear. Second, a confidence about how such schemes tend to end: let the wicked fall into their own nets, whilst that I withal escape. This is not vindictive gloating; it is the deep biblical pattern that the trap a person sets in secret has a way of catching its own maker - the pit dug for another becomes the digger's grave. David asks only to be kept from the snare and to walk free, and leaves the rest to the God whose justice has its own quiet symmetry. The prayer that began at a run - make haste unto me - ends in settled trust: kept from the trap, eyes still lifted, the evening prayer offered up like incense and received.
Further study
- The Hebrew text of Psalm 141 with Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and other classical commentators side by side - useful for qetoreth (v. 2, the “incense” of the sanctuary), for minchat-erev (v. 2, the “evening sacrifice”), and for the famously difficult Hebrew of verses 5-7.
- Psalm 141 ↔ Exodus 30 · Ephesians 5 · Revelation 5 & 8Intertextual BibleTraces the threads tying Psalm 141 to the rest of Scripture - the altar of incense and the evening sacrifice it draws on (Exod. 30:7-8), the offering for a sweetsmelling savour it anticipates (Eph. 5:2), and the prayers that rise as incense before the throne in the Revelation (Rev. 5:8; 8:3-4).
- Psalm 141 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Psalm 141 - the sense of set forth (literally “directed,” v. 2), the meaning of the watch on the lips (v. 3), and the notoriously broken Hebrew of verses 5-7 where the text turns hardest.
Where this echoes in Scripture
Let My Prayer Be Set Forth as Incense
- Revelation 5:8golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints.The prayer asked to rise “as incense” in verse 2, shown rising before the throne as the prayers of the saints.
- Exodus 30:7-8he shall burn incense... a perpetual incense before the LORD throughout your generations.The morning-and-evening incense of the altar that verse 2 draws its picture from.
- Ephesians 5:2an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour.The “evening sacrifice” of verse 2 given its substance in the offering of Christ.
- Proverbs 27:6Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.The same wisdom as verse 5 - the righteous one’s reproof a kindness, the flatterer’s sweetness a trap.
- James 3:5-6the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things... it defileth the whole body.Why David asks God to keep the door of his lips (v. 3) - the danger of the unguarded mouth.
Mine Eyes Are unto Thee
- Hebrews 12:1-2looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith.The fixed gaze of verse 8 - eyes lifted off the threat and held on God - given its New Testament focus.
- 2 Chronicles 20:12neither know we what to do: but our eyes are upon thee.The same posture as verse 8 - eyes lifted to God when there is no other help and no plan.
- Psalm 25:15Mine eyes are ever toward the LORD; for he shall pluck my feet out of the net.The same posture as verse 8, and the same hope of being kept from the snare (v. 9).
- Psalm 7:15-16He made a pit... and is fallen into the ditch which he made.The justice behind verse 10 - the trap closing on the one who set it.
- Proverbs 26:27Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein: and he that rolleth a stone, it will return upon him.The quiet symmetry David trusts in verse 10 - the wicked caught in their own nets.