Psalm 141:8

Psalm 141 is a prayer of David from a time of danger (Psalm 141). He begins by asking God to hear him quickly and to receive his prayer as incense and the lifting up of his hands as the evening sacrifice (Psalm 141:1–2). He asks the LORD to guard his mouth and to keep his heart from being drawn into the deeds and luxuries of the wicked (Psalm 141:3–4). He would welcome a righteous man’s rebuke over the flattery of evildoers, and he looks ahead to the fall of their leaders (Psalm 141:5–7).

Verse 8 opens with “But”, and with it David turns from the danger around him to the God he trusts. That declaration is the anchor of the whole psalm, and the two requests that close it rest on it. The psalm stands between Psalm 140, another plea for rescue from evil men, and Psalm 142, headed “Maschil of David; A Prayer when he was in the cave.”

The psalm leaves its occasion unnamed. Its dangers fit the years when Saul hunted David (1 Samuel 23) and the rebellion of Absalom (2 Samuel 15), when a king anointed by God faced plots, betrayal and armed enemies. The wicked of the psalm may be particular enemies, treacherous advisers, or the ungodly in general who wanted him brought down.

“But mine eyes are unto thee, O GOD the Lord.” The word ʻayin is the ordinary word for the eye, and it is also used for sight and for presence. To have your eyes on someone in Scripture is to look to him for help and to wait for him to act. A servant watches the hand of his master in the same way, as Psalm 123:2 says of our eyes and the LORD, and in Psalm 121:1–2 the psalmist lifts up his eyes and confesses that his help comes from the LORD, the maker of heaven and earth. The enemies are near and the traps are set, and David keeps looking at God.

Another psalm of David joins the same look to the same kind of danger: “Mine eyes are ever toward the LORD; for he shall pluck my feet out of the net” (Psalm 25:15).

The soul, nephesh, is the whole person: his life, his inner self, all that he is. The verb behind “destitute”, ʻârâh, means to make bare or to empty, and it can also mean to pour out or to tear down. David asks God to keep his life from being stripped and emptied and left exposed to his enemies with no one to help him.

The plea grows out of the trust before it. Because his refuge is God, the thing he dreads most is to be left by God, the fear that sounds in “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1). God answers that fear with a promise his people hold to this day: “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee” (Hebrews 13:5). Asking God to stay near is itself an act of faith, because it confesses how small we are and how great and faithful he is.

“Keep me from the snares which they have laid for me.” The verb shâmar is properly to hedge about, as with thorns, and so to guard, protect and watch over. David asks God to stand guard around him and keep his feet away from the place where the trap lies.

Two hunting words describe the danger. A snare, pach, comes from pâchach, and the noun can mean a thin sheet of metal as well as a spring net spread out to catch a bird, a hidden trap that closes suddenly. A gin, môwqêsh, is a trap or noose for catching animals, and in its figurative use it means whatever brings a person to ruin. In a land of farmers and shepherds, where hunting was common, everyone knew these tools and how they lay hidden until the moment they sprang.

“Which they have laid for me” shows that these traps were set on purpose, and set for him. Many of his enemies’ plans were out of his sight, and so he asks the God who sees them all. The same cry comes in Psalm 31:4, “Pull me out of the net that they have laid privily for me”, and Psalm 91:3 gives the promise, “Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler.”

Paul uses the same picture for the devil’s work when he speaks of those who “recover themselves out of the snare of the devil” (2 Timothy 2:26). Believers today meet traps of that kind as well: temptations to sin, deceptive ideas that lead into bondage, and people who set themselves against God’s kingdom. God gives his people his armour to stand against the wiles of the devil, in a fight that is with spiritual powers (Ephesians 6:11–12).

“Let the wicked fall into their own nets.” The wicked, râshâʻ, are those who are morally wrong and guilty, people actively given to evil. Fall, nâphal, is a common verb with a wide range: to fall down, to be cast down, to be overthrown, to perish. The nets, makmâr, are a hunter’s nets, and the word is traced to a root about blackening, a net kept dark and out of sight. David prays that the very nets these men spread for him become the trap that holds them.

Scripture says this again and again about the schemes of the wicked. “Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein: and he that rolleth a stone, it will return upon him” (Proverbs 26:27). Of the wicked man David writes, “He made a pit, and digged it, and is fallen into the ditch which he made” (Psalm 7:15), and in another psalm he prays, “let his net that he hath hid catch himself” (Psalm 35:8). Proverbs adds that in the transgression of an evil man there is a snare (Proverbs 29:6). Evil may prosper for a while, and God, the righteous judge, turns its own devices into its undoing.

“Whilst that I withal escape.” “Withal” stands for yachad, together or at the same time, so the fall of the wicked and the rescue of David come together. To escape, ʻâbar, is to cross over or pass by, and the picture is of David walking safely past the place where the trap has closed. His escape is the work of God’s protecting hand. The psalm ends here, with David still among his enemies and already sure of the way through.

The New Testament calls us to keep our eyes where David kept his: “Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2). Jesus lived out the trust of verse 8 perfectly, all the way to the cross he endured.

Jesus himself was caught by the plots of wicked men. He was condemned unjustly and handed over to be crucified (Matthew 27:1–26). Then he rose, passing out of the bonds of death, and the cross his enemies meant for his defeat became the place of theirs. There he spoiled principalities and powers and triumphed over them (Colossians 2:15). Through death he destroyed the one who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and set free those who were held in fear of death (Hebrews 2:14–15), for the Son of God was manifested “that he might destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8).

He prays for his people the prayer of verse 9: “I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil” (John 17:15). And he answers the plea of verse 8. He became poor for our sakes, so that we through his poverty might be rich (2 Corinthians 8:9), and as the Good Shepherd he says that no man is able to pluck his sheep out of his hand or his Father’s hand (John 10:28–29). Those who trust in him are to be “filled with all the fulness of God” (Ephesians 3:19) and are kept for an inheritance that is incorruptible and undefiled, reserved in heaven (1 Peter 1:4).

These verses give us a prayer for the day the traps are set. David knows how little he can do against hidden plots, so he looks to the LORD, runs to him for shelter, and asks him to stay near. God is the one who sees every snare before it springs, who guards those who look to him, and who turns the schemes of the wicked back on their own heads. The prayer that began with hands lifted up like the evening sacrifice ends with David passing safely by, and the same God hears those who pray it now in the name of Christ, who has already passed through the worst net of all and holds his people in his hand.