God’s Word for You
Psalm 141:1-2 Before you as incense
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Wednesday, August 6, 2025
The Psalm has since ancient times been used as the song of the evening prayer by the Christian church. Verses 1 and 2 in particular are used in Vespers services even today. Luther said, “Let the [Psalm] chants in the Sunday masses and Vespers be retained; they are quite good and are taken from Scripture.”
141:1 A Psalm of David
Five Psalms have this simple heading, “A Psalm of David,” with no other elaboration (15:1; 23:1; 29:1; 141:1; 143:1) and three have “Of David, a Psalm” (24:1; 101:1; 110:1). David is without a doubt the author. While it is possible that le-David (לְדָוִד, “Of David”) could stand for something other than authorship, in many of the Psalms there are also circumstances of David’s life (such as in Psalm 142:1) that don’t fit or make sense if the Psalm is simply “in the style of David” or “dedicated to David.” This and Psalm 143 are the last two Psalms that are called “psalms” (mizmor) in the heading. This kind of Psalm was meant to be accompanied by musical instruments, but there is no further explanation such as “flutes (Psalm 5:1) or “stringed instruments” (Psalm 4:1).
O LORD, I call to you; come to me quickly!
Hear my voice when I call to you!
2 Let my prayer be set before you like incense,
and the lifting up of my hands like the evening sacrifice!
David confesses that he has said a prayer asking for God’s help. Now he adds, with another prayer set to music, that he needs the Lord’s help fast. “Come to me quickly!” This was also his prayer in Psalm 22:20, 38:22 and other Psalms. When the Christian prays with faith and trust, there is no reason to doubt that the Lord will answer. When the need is especially urgent, there is no sin in adding, “Come to me quickly!” True, the verb in Hebrew is an imperative, but spoken in faith it remains an urgent request; we do not give orders to God, but what else do we mean when we pray the word “Help!”? “Let us approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” (Hebrews 4:16).
The phrase, “Let my prayer be set before you” is more familiar to many of us as “Let my prayer rise before you.” The word ticcun (תִּכּוֹן) is in a stem called the nifal, which has two usual forces: passive and reflexive. It usually means to “be firm” in some way, such as “Get (yourself) ready” (Ezekiel 38:7) or “Steady yourself to meet your God” (Amos 4:12). These are the reflexive uses of the word. In the passive, it might mean “be established” (Psalm 140:11), “be steadfast” (Psalm 112:7, 119:5), or “become firm” (Ezekiel 16:7). Here, more than “rise” (which we sing poetically), it means “to be set firmly.” Let my prayer come before you, not wafting like a puff of smoke, but smacked down like a rock on a tabletop. Clunk! Here is my prayer, solid, firm, spoken in faith, and placed before my Lord God to be heard.
Yet the imagery of the incense is there, too—not to diminish the firmness and solid certainty of the prayer, but because it is precisely what the ancient believer was seeing and smelling when he or she came to the tabernacle as they prayed. The fragrance and smoke of burning incense stands for prayers. “The (true) sacrifices of God are a broken spirit” (Psalm 51:17). And John says more bluntly: “Bowls full of incense are the prayers of the saints” (Revelation 5:8). Remember that “before Christ offered himself as a sacrifice on the altar of the cross, he first commended his disciples and all believers to his heavenly Father with very ardent prayers (John 17:2).” And of course, we remember that our prayers ascend to God only by the merits of Christ; they please God only when they proceed from faith, for God does not hear the prayers of unbelievers. “The ears of the Lord are attentive to the prayer of the righteous” (1 Peter 3:12), but “how can they call on the one they have not believed in?” (Romans 10:14).
The devil, along with the world and our sinful, fallen flesh, resists all our efforts to pray and to live a godly life. “Consequently,” the Catechism teaches, “nothing is so necessary as to call upon God incessantly and drum into his ears our prayer that he may give, preserve and increase in us faith and obedience to the Ten Commandments and remove all that stands in our way and hinders us from fulfilling them” (Large Catechism).
Therefore we pray, knowing that God hears our prayers, and knowing that God wants us to come to him in prayer. When we take on a posture of prayer, whether “lifting up my hands” like David was used to, or folding out hands quietly as we usually pray, we prepare our hearts and minds with the physical act of approaching God every bit as much as the priests did by slaughtering the daily evening sacrifice. But what is in our hearts is what matters, which is faith, and the matters we bring in prayer to our Lord in heaven. He promises to answer us, and to bless us.
My father-in-law wrote: “Our God promises us that his blessings will continue throughout our lives. And we can be sure of this promise, for the promises of God in Jesus are always ‘Yes’ (2 Corinthians 1:20). May all of you find this same assurance in the Lord’s promises to you.”
Let my prayer rise before you as incense,
The lifting up of my hand as the evening sacrifice.
O Lord I call to you, come to me quickly.
Hear my voice, when I cry to you.
Let my prayer rise before you as incense,
The lifting up of my hand as the evening sacrifice.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.