NOTES for Psa 28

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¹Unto thee will I cry, O LORD my rock; be not silent to me: lest, if thou be silent to me, I become like them that go down into the pit.

²Hear the voice of my supplications, when I cry unto thee, when I lift up my hands toward thy holy oracle.

³Draw me not away with the wicked, and with the workers of iniquity, which speak peace to their neighbours, but mischief is in their hearts.

⁴Give them according to their deeds, and according to the wickedness of their endeavours: give them after the work of their hands; render to them their desert.

⁵Because they regard not the works of the LORD, nor the operation of his hands, he shall destroy them, and not build them up.

⁶Blessed be the LORD, because he hath heard the voice of my supplications.

⁷The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in him, and I am helped: therefore my heart greatly rejoiceth; and with my song will I praise him.

⁸The LORD is their strength, and he is the saving strength of his anointed.

⁹Save thy people, and bless thine inheritance: feed them also, and lift them up for ever.

How often it seems to us that the Lord does not hear us and does not answer our prayers! At such moments, we may succumb to temptation and cease standing before Him in prayer, or we may intensify our prayer, continuing to believe that it will not go unheard.

Perhaps this psalm arose at one such moment: it is a plea that the Lord not remain silent. Yet even without hearing an answer, the psalmist believes that the Lord still heeds his supplications. He is grateful for this and certain that the Lord will not abandon him, and this gives him the strength to stand in prayer again and again.

Two words that are key to the psalm's final verse sound alike in the Russian translation: spasi, “save,” and pasi, “shepherd.” The plea for salvation, which the Lord alone can give, is joined to a plea for His guidance amid the hardships and trials of this world.

Other notes

For Psa 28:4

⁴Give them according to their deeds, and according to the wickedness of their endeavours: give them after the work of their hands; render to them their desert.

The psalmist, why not King David, thanks God for delivering him from mortal danger accompanied by spiritual decline and perhaps depression... Read more

The psalmist thanks God for delivering him from mortal danger accompanied by spiritual decline and perhaps depression. Is this not a very real situation for us in our own days too? We also tend to call our experiences of troubles hell and to compare coming out of them with returning to life.

But a psalm is not simply poetry, an imaginative expression of one's feelings. It is prayer, and such prayer that many generations of believers learned to pray from it. And true prayer is not self-expression but communion, dialogue with God. It remains dialogue even when only the human person speaks the words. The apostle Paul says of such prayer that it is the Holy Spirit praying in us with "inexpressible groanings," and the Holy Spirit guides us into all truth. So here too, in the prayer spoken by the psalmist, a truth opens that surpasses his understanding: God will truly bring souls out of hell, He will really accomplish the resurrection of the dead. And we know that the fulfillment of this prophecy has already begun.

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