Psalms 141

Psalms 141:1-10

Separation from the workers of iniquity. A psalm of David. The second psalm of the series shows us, as already said, the separation of the righteous from the wicked; which is first the act of the righteous himself, and then carried out by the judgment of God. These are, in fact, the two divisions of the psalm. As to the interpretation there are some peculiar difficulties which all expositors have recognized, even the text of the old versions having been apparently affected by them. But the clearness of the general purport is scarcely touched by this.

1. The heart of the solitary, amid the pressure of evil round him, cries out for God. His plea is the very prayer which he is making, which cannot but find response from the prayer-hearing One. May it go up to Him; he asks, as incense, and the lifting up his palms be as an evening-offering. Then the consciousness of the holiness of the Presence he is seeking makes him think of the mouth with which he is addressing God, and of his own infirmity; and he prays Jehovah to set a guard before it, and to keep the door of his lips, that nothing unseemly may come forth. From outside also may no evil thing be permitted to allure him to evil practices with workers of vanity, nor to partake of their dainties -the “pleasant things” which can still appeal, alas, to the old nature, even of the child of God. He prefers the very smitings of the righteous, and accepts it as kindness; and their reproof shall be as oil to gladden him (Psalms 45:1-17 : The rest of the verse is not so easy to connect with this, while it may be rendered in two different ways. If we render “for still also my prayer shall be in their calamities,” this can hardly refer to the (hypothetical) righteous ones just spoken of. It would seem but a small thing to say that he would not cease to pray for those whom he counts as doing him but a kindness, and who as righteous would be supposed to have meant it to be such. If we refer it to the calamities of the evil-doers, this seems difficult to connect, and scarcely in the spirit of a psalm like this, which calls rather for judgment. It seems, therefore, as if we should rather render, as I have done, “against their evil-doings.” In this case, also, we must go back to the preceding verse to find the reference. He must be speaking of the wicked, to whose wickedness he opposes his prayer; and that is the very thing which, as far as he is concerned, instead of practising them, he has been doing.

He simply says now that this will be also his course in future; and this is in full harmony with the acceptance of the reproof of the righteous,which he has just professed. All this shows an exercised heart before God, and completes the picture of the faithful man in his separation of himself from the workers of iniquity, which the first section of the psalm presents. 2. We have now the divine separation between the two, and that by judgment. “Their judges shall be hurled against the sides of the cliff; and they shall hear my words that they are sweet.” There is again an abruptness which produces difficulty; but one would naturally say that here God’s act was separating between two classes of the evil-doers themselves, their judges being the leaders who were perverting the people, and whose destruction would lead the rest, or many of them; to listen to the testimony of those, from whom they had previously turned away. This would be in keeping with the character of the psalm. But an abrupt change is found again in the next verse,where, as it stands in the Hebrew, the condition of the nation or of the persecuted remnant must be referred to. It is no wonder that some of the ancient versions should have “their bones are scattered at the mouth of Sheol,” but it would not be safe to follow a correction so easily inferred and so slenderly supported. We must take it then as a figure, such as in Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones, a picture of life apparently gone, and hope with life, save as faith could count upon the God of resurrection.

And so the soul of the righteous turns to Jehovah as its refuge in this extremity, and prays for deliverance from the snare of the wicked. While righteous retribution takes its course with these, may he pass by uninjured.