(9) From the snare.--The original idiom is far more forcible: "from the hands (or, 'clutches') of the snare." (See above, Psalm 141:6, "in the hands of the cliff.")

Verse 9. - Keep me from the snares which they have laid for me, and the gins of the workers of iniquity (comp. Psalm 40:4, 5).

141:5-10 We should be ready to welcome the rebuke of our heavenly Father, and also the reproof of our brethren. It shall not break my head, if it may but help to break my heart: we must show that we take it kindly. Those who slighted the word of God before, will be glad of it when in affliction, for that opens the ear to instruction. When the world is bitter, the word is sweet. Let us lift our prayer unto God. Let us entreat him to rescue us from the snares of Satan, and of all the workers of iniquity. In language like this psalm, O Lord, would we entreat that our poor prayers should set forth our only hope, our only dependence on thee. Grant us thy grace, that we may be prepared for this employment, being clothed with thy righteousness, and having all the gifts of thy Spirit planted in our hearts.Keep me from the snare which they have laid for me,.... Either Saul, who gave him a wife to be a snare to him, and set men to watch his house and take him; or the Ziphites, who proposed to Saul to deliver him into his hands; see 1 Samuel 18:21.

and the gins of the workers of iniquity; the transgressions of wicked men are snares to others, by way of example; and so are the doctrines of false teachers, and the temptations of Satan, from all which good men desire to be kept, Proverbs 29:6; and it is the Lord alone that keeps and preserves from them, or breaks the snare and delivers them, Psalm 124:7.