The Incense of Prayer
Psalm 141:2
Let my prayer be set forth before you as incense; and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.


: — Doubtless the Jews felt, when they saw the soft white clouds of fragrant smoke rising slowly from the altar of incense, as if the voice of the priest were silently but eloquently pleading in that expressive emblem on their behalf. The association of sound was lost on that of smell, and the two senses were blended in one. And this symbolical mode of supplication, as Dr. George Wilson has remarked, has this one advantage over spoken or written prayer, that it appealed to those who were both blind and deaf, a class that are usually shut out from social worship by their affliction. Those who could not hear the prayers of the priest could join in devotional exercises symbolized by incense through the medium of their sense of smell; and the hallowed impressions shut out by one avenue were admitted to the mind and heart by another.



Parallel Verses
KJV: Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense; and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.

WEB: Let my prayer be set before you like incense; the lifting up of my hands like the evening sacrifice.




The Incense of Prayer
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