Charles Ellicott Commentary Psalms 141:2

"Let my prayer be set forth as incense before thee; The lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice." — Psalms 141:2 (ASV)

Set forth ... —See margin; but more literally, be erected, suggesting the pillar of smoke (compare Tennyson’s “Azure pillars of the hearth”) continually rising to heaven. Some think the incense refers to the morning sacrifice, so that the verse will mean, “let my prayer rise regularly as morning and evening sacrifice.” But this is hardly necessary.

Sacrifice — i.e., the offering of flour and oil, which followed the burnt offering both at morning and evening (Leviticus 2:1–11; in Authorized Version, “meat offering”), and here probably associated specially with evening, because the prayer was uttered at the close of the day. (See Note, Psalms 141:3.)

For the “lifted hands,” here, from the parallelism, evidently only a symbol of prayer, and not a term for oblation, see Psalms 28:2, Note.

“For what are men better than sheep or goats,
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer,
Both for themselves, and those that call them friend.”

TENNYSON: Morte d’Arthur,