Psalms 141:5 - Meaning and Application

Here David wants to be corrected when he is wrong. His enemies accused him falsely, and he rightly complained about that. Yet he also wanted his friends to point out what was truly wrong in him, especially if anything in his life had given even the smallest opening to those accusations (Psalm 141:5). When he says, “Let the righteous strike me, it shall be a kindness,” he means he would welcome honest rebuke from righteous people, or, as some understand it, from the righteous God through the troubles of providence.

This fits those who are truly righteous, because they are the ones best able to correct others fairly. And if a rebuke is true, we should profit from it even when the person giving it is not good. We should want correction for anything wrong in us, or done wrongly by us. If our own conscience does not convict us as it should, we should be thankful when a friend does it, and never come to the terrible point of being left alone in our sin.

David also teaches us to receive such rebukes as a kindness. We should not only put up with them, but count them as loving help. Wise correction leads to life (Proverbs 6:23), because it turns us from sin and keeps us from falling back into it. It may hurt for the moment, but it hurts in order to heal. That is better than the flattering kisses of an enemy (Proverbs 27:6) or the foolish comfort that does no good (Ecclesiastes 7:5). David even blessed God for Abigail’s timely warning (1 Samuel 25:32).

He also says that reproof should be received as healing, like excellent oil poured on a wound. It softens and closes what has been injured. It will not break his head, as some people imagine, because they would rather suffer pain than be told their faults. David says he is not like that. Sin has already broken his head and bones, as he says elsewhere (Psalm 51:8). So the rebuke is like healing oil for the wounds sin has made. It should not break his head, if it helps to break his heart.

Finally, David shows how to return kindness to those who correct us faithfully. We should at least pray for them in their troubles, and in that way show that we take their correction well. Dr. Hammond gives another sense to the verse: reproach may bruise the righteous, but the harmful oil of wicked reproach will not destroy him, because his prayer will be against their harm, asking God to preserve him, and that prayer will not fail.

David then hopes that his persecutors will one day be willing to hear correction too, as he was willing to hear it (Psalm 141:6). When their judges, Saul and his officers, are overthrown in rocky places among the wilderness cliffs, then they will hear his words, because they are pleasant. Some think this points to moments when Saul was softened and spoke to David with tears, saying, “Is this your voice, my son David?” (1 Samuel 24:16; 1 Samuel 26:21). More generally, even powerful judges can be brought down. People who once ignored God’s word may value it when trouble comes, because affliction opens the ear to instruction. When life is bitter, the word often seems sweet. Those who would not listen while they lived in comfort may become more compassionate when they themselves are overthrown.

David then describes how desperate things had become for him and his friends (Psalm 141:7). Their bones were scattered at the mouth of the grave, as if they had already been thrown out after death, or were about to be thrown in because they were so near to the pit. They were treated as little more than chips left in a pile by woodcutters, or, as some translate it, as soil torn up by the plowman, like the picture in Psalm 129:3. The scene is one of extreme ruin, as if dry bones could live again.

Even so, David turns his eyes to God and depends on him for help (Psalm 141:8). However hopeless things look, God can put every wrong right. David expects relief from him, and in him he trusts. Those who keep looking to God may keep hoping in him, even in the worst trouble.

He then prays for the help he needs. First, he asks God not to leave his soul empty and helpless, but to keep showing him where his help comes from. Second, he asks God to keep him from being caught in the trap his enemies have set for him (Psalm 141:9). No snare is too hidden for God to see and keep his people from. Third, he asks God, in justice, to turn the wicked’s own plans back on themselves, while in mercy delivering him from ruin through their schemes (Psalm 141:10). Let the wicked fall into their own net, the net they meant for him but, in the end, prepared for themselves. There is no fairer judgment than for those who build destruction to perish by their own devices. Those who are bound for God’s justice are already held in the cords of their own sin. Yet David asks to be set free at the same time, for the trapping of the wicked often becomes the escape of the righteous.