Today’s Passage: Psalm 141
David calls out, and his first word is that God would come quickly. Yet the first thing he asks for is not protection from his enemies. It is a guard set over his own mouth. He asks that his prayer rise before God like qetoret, pronounced keh-TOH-ret. Strong's H7004, incense, fragrant smoke of an offering. The smoke of incense rose continually from the altar in the Holy Place, kept burning morning and evening as a fixed part of Israel’s worship (Exodus 30:7-8). David asks that his own prayer be set before God the same way, not as an isolated cry but as something rising steadily, welcomed the way that fragrance was welcomed. His lifted hands complete the image: standing in for the evening offering itself, so that his whole posture, not just his words, becomes an act of worship. The verse asks for prayer to be received as sacrifice, ordinary and continual, not something dramatic and occasional. , his lifted hands standing in for the evening offering. And then he asks for something rarer still, that a righteous man would strike him, and that the rebuke would fall like oil poured over his head.
As you read, hold this: Set a guard, O LORD, over my mouth. Let his rebuke be oil for my head.
Psalm 141:1-2 (BSB)
A Psalm of David. ¹ I call upon You, O LORD; come quickly to me. Hear my voice when I call to You. ² May my prayer be set before You like incense; my uplifted hands, like the evening offering.
Psalm 141:3-4 (BSB)
³ Set a guard, O LORD, over my mouth; keep watch at the door of my lips. ⁴ Do not let my heart be drawn to any evil thing or take part in works of wickedness with men who do iniquity; let me not feast on their delicacies.
He asks first for a guard, a watch kept at the very door of his lips, and only then does he turn to the heart and to the table of the wicked. He names his own speech first, before he says a word about any snare they have laid for him.
Psalm 141:5 (BSB)
⁵ Let the righteous man strike me; let his rebuke be an act of loving devotion. It is oil for my head; let me not refuse it. For my prayer is ever against the deeds of the wicked.
Context Oil, not a blow to refuse
A strike, a rebuke, and David calls it an act of loving devotion, oil poured over the head. He asks in advance that he would not refuse it. Most of us treat correction as an attack to be fended off, but David treats it as a gift he is determined to receive.
Psalm 141:6-7 (BSB)
⁶ When their rulers are thrown down from the cliffs, the people will listen to my words, for they are pleasant. ⁷ As when one plows and breaks up the soil, so our bones have been scattered at the mouth of Sheol.
Rulers are thrown down, and bones lie scattered like clods where the ground has been broken open. These are hard lines, and the picture of the plowed soil does not make them any softer. We are left to teach them as they stand, and to keep walking.
Psalm 141:8-10 (BSB)
⁸ But my eyes are fixed on You, O GOD the Lord. In You I seek refuge; do not leave my soul defenseless. ⁹ Keep me from the snares they have laid for me, and from the lures of evildoers. ¹⁰ Let the wicked fall into their own nets, while I pass by in safety.
Study notes Still incense
His eyes stay fixed on God, his refuge, while the snares are laid and the wicked fall into their own nets. The same mouth he asked God to guard is still the mouth that called out at the start. And long after David, John still sees that prayer rising.
"When He had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp, and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints." Revelation 5:8 (BSB)
Golden bowls, full of incense, and the incense is the prayers of the saints. It is the very thing David asked for his own cry, that it would be set before God like incense.
Set a guard, O LORD, over my mouth. Let his rebuke be oil for my head.