Contemplative Bible Reading

Psalm 141 (New International Version)

¹ O LORD, I call to you; come quickly to me.
Hear my voice when I call to you.

² May my prayer be set before you like incense;
may the lifting up of my hands be like the evening sacrifice.

³ Set a guard over my mouth, O LORD;
keep watch over the door of my lips.

⁴ Let not my heart be drawn to what is evil,
to take part in wicked deeds
with men who are evildoers;
let me not eat of their delicacies.

⁵ Let a righteous man strike me—it is a kindness;
let him rebuke me—it is oil on my head.
My head will not refuse it.
Yet my prayer is ever against the deeds of evildoers;

⁶ their rulers will be thrown down from the cliffs,
and the wicked will learn that my words were well spoken.

⁷ They will say, “As one plows and breaks up the earth,
so our bones have been scattered at the mouth of the grave.  ”

⁸ But my eyes are fixed on you, O Sovereign LORD;
in you I take refuge—do not give me over to death.

⁹ Keep me from the snares they have laid for me,
from the traps set by evildoers.

¹⁰ Let the wicked fall into their own nets,
while I pass by in safety.

Another contemplation from this Psalm – this time from verse 4:

…let me not eat of their delicacies.

David is talking about evil, wicked deeds, and men who are evildoers (what a great word – evildoers). These are awful things and awful people, but David concludes with of all things “delicacies.”  What? Surely David would end with something like troubles or offensives or rudeness. Instead, we have delicacies right in there with wicked and evil.

Sometimes when I read passages like this I wonder if David just plain got it wrong. Remember that David had his bad days when he committed terrible sins. Maybe he wrote this on one of those days and he was confused and had his heart in the wrong place.

Perhaps not. Perhaps David has it just right. Look at the thesaurus for synonyms of delicacy. There are the first things that came to my mind: ambrosia, delight, desert, feast, goody. Then there are some other synonyms that I had not considered: fragility, frailness, frailty, infirmity, weakness.

Delicacies can be good and tasty. They are also on the edge of breaking. That is the way of the evildoer. The  evildoer is doing these things that seem to be fun, but he is walking on the top strand of a barbed wire fence. One little loss of balance and… Well, have you ever fallen through a barbed wire fence? It isn’t pretty.

God, keep me from the delicacies of evil deeds and evildoers. Let me not be tempted by their delights.