Scripture Daily

Context No. 535 of 4322 · Psalms

Context · Reflection

Psalms 141:1-10: in context

1LORD, I have called on you. Come to me quickly! Listen to my voice when I call to you. 2Let my prayer be set before you like incense; the lifting up of my hands like the evening sacrifice. 3Set a watch, LORD, before my mouth. Keep the door of my lips. 4Don’t incline my heart to any evil thing, to practice deeds of wickedness with men who work iniquity. Don’t let me eat of their delicacies. 5Let the righteous strike me, it is kindness; let him reprove me, it is like oil on the head; don’t let my head refuse it; Yet my prayer is always against evil deeds. 6Their judges are thrown down by the sides of the rock. They will hear my words, for they are well spoken. 7“As when one plows and breaks up the earth, our bones are scattered at the mouth of Sheol.” 8For my eyes are on you, LORD, the Lord. I take refuge in you. Don’t leave my soul destitute. 9Keep me from the snare which they have laid for me, from the traps of the workers of iniquity. 10Let the wicked fall together into their own nets while I pass by.

This is an evening prayer, and it asks for two things most of us would not think to pray for. David begins conventionally enough, asking God to hear him quickly and to let his prayer rise like incense, his lifted hands like the evening sacrifice. But then his requests take an unusual turn. Set a watch, LORD, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips. And: do not incline my heart to any evil thing. He is not mainly asking God to protect him from his enemies out there; he is asking God to guard him from himself, from his own mouth and his own heart, which he clearly does not entirely trust. He wants a sentry posted at his own lips.

And then an even harder request. Let the righteous strike me, David says; it is a kindness. Let him rebuke me; it is oil on my head, and let my head not refuse it. Read that slowly. He is asking to be corrected, and calling the correction a kindness, a soothing oil, something not to be turned away. Most of us receive rebuke as an attack to be defended against; David asks for it as a gift and prays in advance that when it comes he will not refuse it. He would rather be wounded by a friend who tells him the truth than flattered into ruin. He wants his mouth guarded and his faults named, because he takes the danger inside himself more seriously than the danger from his enemies.

Both prayers expose how differently I usually pray. My prayers tend to be about the threats outside me, and I rarely think to ask God to guard me from my own tongue and heart, or to send me correction and help me receive it. David assumed his own mouth needed a watchman and his own faults needed an honest friend, and he asked God for both. When someone rebukes me, do I treat it as an attack to fend off, or, as David prayed to, as oil on my head, a kindness, and do I ever ask God to guard me from myself the way David did?

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