Psalm 141 is about prayer. In fact, it is a psalm in which every word and sentence is a prayer. It has been called an evening psalm or a psalm to be sung before retiring because of verse 2, where David prays, “May my prayer be set before you like incense; may the lifting up of my hands be like the evening sacrifice.” There are other psalms like this, particularly toward the beginning of the Psalter. Psalm 4 and Psalm 63 have been called evening psalms. Psalm 5 is a morning psalm. In the liturgical tradition of the church Psalm 141 has been used for vespers. 

So what do we do when we are surrounded by “people of the lie," above all when we find so much of their terrible evil in ourselves? The answer is to do what David did. We turn to God as the only one who can deliver us both from others and ourselves; we place our needs before him and then praise him for the deliverance he gives. 

The first two stanzas of this psalm (vv. 1-3 and vv. 4, 5) are nearly perfect parallels, and what they are describing is those who love evil. Such people “devise evil plans," “stir up war," "plan to trip my feet,” “spread out the cords of their net” and “set traps...along my path.” David has written about people who were his enemies before. What is unique about these verses is their portrait of people who love evil for evil's sake. 

In the course of this study we have been looking at God's omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence—that God knows everything, is everywhere, and is all-powerful. But we have also seen that the overriding theme, the one for which the others are mentioned, is omniscience. Is knowledge of the perfect knowledge of God important? Is it practical? If we have understood the psalm thus far, we cannot doubt it. Here is what appreciation of the omniscience of God should do for every Christian. 

What is it that David is pointing to in the perceptive wording of this psalm? He is speaking of his unique individuality from the first moments of his existence in the womb. From that very first moment, God knew him and had ordained what his life was to be: “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be” (v. 16). If that is how God views the unborn child, dare we call it only tissue and destroy the unborn, as we are doing in this country at the rate of more than a million and a half babies each year?