Psalms 140
Psalms 140 — Commentary and Meaning
The short answer
Psalm 140 is a prayer for rescue, prayed by someone under real threat. The psalmist asks God to deliver him from "evil men" and "violent men" — people who sharpen their tongues "like a serpent" and hide traps and snares along his path. The danger here is not vague. It comes through speech (slander, scheming words) and through plots (nets, cords, pitfalls). If you have ever felt targeted by people determined to bring you down, this psalm gives you words.
The prayer moves in stages. First comes the cry for deliverance and a description of the attackers. Then the psalmist asks God to be his defense — "you have covered my head in the day of battle" — and pleads that the schemes of the wicked would not succeed. Next comes a hard-edged request that the evil his enemies planned would fall back on their own heads. Finally, the psalm settles into confidence: God will maintain the cause of the afflicted, and the upright will live in his presence.
Many readers know the psalm 140 KJV opening — "Deliver me, O LORD, from the evil man" — and that older phrasing captures the psalm's urgency well. But there is more here than a single cry for help. Psalm 140 is deliberately linked to the psalm that follows it. The two share an unusual amount of vocabulary — wicked, righteous, guard, lip, trap, snare — and together they trace a movement worth noticing. In Psalm 140, the danger is outside: malicious people with violent ways. In Psalm 141, the psalmist turns the same language on himself, asking God to keep his own heart from being drawn toward malicious things. The prayer against enemies becomes, one psalm later, a prayer against the enemy within.
What scholars say
Why do Psalms 140 and 141 sound so much alike? Nancy deClaissé-Walford catalogs no fewer than nine terms the two psalms share — and notes how the focus shifts from malicious people in Psalm 140 to the pull of malicious things within the psalmist's own heart in Psalm 141.
“The many verbal links between Psalms 140 and 141 (no less than nine) indicate their connectedness. "Wicked" (rāšāʿ) occurs in Pss. 140:4, 8 and 141:4, 10; "righteous" (ṣaḏîq) in 140:13 and 141:5; "guard, keep" (šāmar) in 140:4 and 141:3, 9; "lip" (śāp̱â) in 140:3, 9 and 141:3; "malicious" (raʿ) in 140:1, 2, 11 and 141:4; "Lord my Lord" (YHWH ʾaḏōnāy) in 140:7 and 141:8; "trap" (paḥ) in 140:5 and 141:9; "snare" (môqēš) in 140:5 and 141:9; and "lend an ear" (ʿāzan) in 140:6 and 141:1. In Psalm 140, the psalmist cries out to God for deliverance from "malicious people, persons of violent ways" (140:1). In Psalm 141, the psalmist asks God for help so that the psalmist's own heart will not be turned toward "malicious things," to deeds of wickedness (v. 4).”
What it means for you
Psalm 140 gives you permission to be honest with God about the people who have hurt you. You do not have to pretend the harm isn't real, and you do not have to take revenge — the psalmist hands the whole matter over to God and waits.
But let the pairing with Psalm 141 finish the prayer. The same words that describe your attackers — malicious, wicked, snare — can eventually describe temptations in your own heart. A healthy prayer life does both: it names the evil done to us, and then asks God to guard us from becoming what we've suffered.
Psalms 140 in context
Psalm 140 sits near the end of the Psalter, within the final group of psalms attributed to David (Psalms 138–145), just before the great closing songs of praise. Like several of its neighbors, it is a prayer of an individual in distress, focused on enemies whose chief weapons are words and hidden traps. It leads directly into Psalm 141, with which it shares a striking amount of vocabulary, and the two work together: one prays about danger from other people, the other about danger from one's own heart.