Thijs Booij, «Psalm 141: a Prayer for Discipline and Protection», Vol. 86 (2005) 97-106

Psalm 141 has national distress as its background. The speaker of this text prays for discipline, not to be enticed by the ‘delicacies’ of profiteers, ‘workers of mischief’, and thus become involved in their intrigues. Discipline, such as a righteous person may teach him, will enable him to seek justice for these people when the present regime is overthrown. At the end of the psalm the speaker asks his God that he himself be guarded from evil which the ‘workers of mischief’ may plot against him. In vv. 4-6 all 3rd person plural suffixes refer to those called Nw)-yl(p; they are also the subject of w(m#$w (v. 6b). In v. 4 twll( means ‘fabrications’. In v. 5 w dw( can be understood as ‘in the end’, and tw(r as ‘troubles’.

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