Psalm 141

The psalm dates itself by the temple clock. Twice a day, morning and at twilight, a lamb was offered and incense was burned on the small gold altar inside the holy place, so that smoke rose while the people outside prayed. The singer asks that his prayer be counted as the incense and his lifted hands as the evening offering.

Incense had a fixed recipe and could not be made for private use. Asking for a prayer to be received like incense is asking for it to be treated as the real thing, offered at the right hour by the right hands.

The requests are about self-control before they are about enemies: a guard set on the mouth, a watch at the door of the lips, and a heart that does not drift toward the delicacies at a wicked man's table. Sharing a meal in that culture meant sharing loyalty, so the food is not the point — the company is.

One line is easy to miss. Let a righteous man strike me, he says, and count it a kindness; let him correct me, and treat it as oil on the head. He is asking to be rebuked by good men rather than flattered by bad ones.

The picture of bones scattered at the mouth of the grave comes from clearing land. Wood split with an axe leaves chips flung everywhere across the ground, and that is the image for what has happened to his people.