Psalm 28:2

David begins with a resolve: “Unto thee will I cry, O LORD my rock”. The verb qârâʼ means to call out to someone, to address him by name or to proclaim, and the rest of the verse shows how urgent this call is. He turns to the LORD alone, using God’s covenant name, Yᵉhôvâh, and he calls him “my rock”. The word tsûwr means a rock or a cliff, and Scripture uses it as a title for God. It speaks of strength that stays in place, a sure footing and a refuge when everything else gives way. David says the same of God in Psalm 62:7, where the LORD is his rock and his salvation. The little word “my” makes it personal, because this is the God David himself relies on.

Then comes the plea, “be not silent to me”. Here chârash means to be silent, to keep silent. A verb spelled the same way means to engrave or to devise, and the lexicons list the two as separate verbs. For God to keep silent would leave David’s prayer unanswered and leave David alone with his trouble, his enemies and death. “Silent to me” comes twice in this verse, because the whole prayer turns on it: if the LORD is silent, David is lost.

David can call God his rock and in the same breath confess that he fears God’s silence. Both belong to faith. He brings his fear straight to the one he trusts, and Scripture gives us that honesty as a pattern for prayer. The same plea fills other psalms. David makes it again in Psalm 35:22, he begs the LORD to keep his face turned toward him in Psalm 27:9, and another psalmist cries, “Hear my prayer, O LORD” (Psalm 102:1–2). Psalm 13 asks the LORD how long the waiting will last, and Psalm 22 carries the same lament through to trust.

Verse 2 repeats the plea in fuller words: “Hear the voice of my supplications”. To hear, shâmaʻ, is to listen with attention, in a way that leads to a response, so David is asking God to take up his prayer and act on it. His supplications, tachănûwn, are pleas for grace. The word comes from a root meaning to be gracious or to show favour, and David comes humbly, appealing to God’s kindness and asking for mercy. Philippians 4:6 still tells God’s people to bring their requests to him with supplication and thanksgiving.

The cry of this verse is shâvaʻ, a call for help in distress. It shares the English word “cry” with verse 1, where the Hebrew is qârâʼ. Psalm 3:4 tells how such a cry ends: David called on the LORD with his voice, and the LORD heard him.

Then David describes himself at prayer: “when I lift up my hands toward thy holy oracle”. Lifting the hands was an old and common gesture of prayer and worship in Israel. It shows reverence and surrender, an earnest appeal and the expectation of receiving from God. Solomon prayed with his hands spread up to heaven (1 Kings 8:54), David speaks of lifting up his hands in God’s name (Psalm 63:4) and asks that the lifting up of his hands be as the evening sacrifice (Psalm 141:2), and Paul wants men everywhere to pray “lifting up holy hands” (1 Timothy 2:8).

The holy oracle, dᵉbîyr, is the innermost room of the sanctuary, the Holy of Holies behind the veil, where the ark of the covenant stood. Strong’s derives the word from dâbar, “to speak”, in the sense of an oracle, and the lexicons define it as the hindmost or innermost room of the temple (1 Kings 6:5). God had told Moses that he would meet with him there and speak with him from above the mercy seat (Exodus 25:22). When David turns his hands toward it, he directs his prayer to the place where God had promised to make his presence known among his people. He knows as well that God fills far more than one room, for the LORD says that heaven is his throne and the earth his footstool (Isaiah 66:1).

“Draw me not away with the wicked”. The verb mâshak means to draw, pull or drag, and David asks God to keep him from being dragged off with the wicked, sharing their company now and their judgment at the end. In verse 1 he feared becoming like those who go down to the pit, and here he asks to stand apart from those whose way leads there. Psalm 1 sets the same two ways side by side.

The wicked, râshâʻ, are those who are morally wrong, guilty and ungodly, people whose whole bent runs against righteousness. “The workers of iniquity” (po’alei aven) practise wrong as a way of life.

Their mark is a lie told with a greeting. They “speak peace to their neighbours”, wishing them shalom, the ordinary greeting of goodwill in Israel and a wish for a person’s well-being, “but mischief is in their hearts”. The mischief is raʻ, evil or harm, and the heart (lev) is the seat of a person’s mind, will and feelings, the centre of who they are. So the friendly word hides the plan to hurt. Israel saw this when Joab took Amasa by the beard to kiss him and smote him in the fifth rib. Proverbs sets burning lips beside a wicked heart (Proverbs 26:23), and Jesus warns of false prophets who come in sheep’s clothing while inwardly they are ravening wolves (Matthew 7:15).

Such people are hard to see through, because their words are kind, and that is why David brings them to God. The LORD looks on the heart (1 Samuel 16:7). The heart is deceitful, and the LORD searches it and tries it (Jeremiah 17:9–10). Jesus taught that evil comes out of the heart (Matthew 15:18–19), he exposed those who look righteous outwardly and are full of hypocrisy within (Matthew 23:27–28), and he knew what was in man (John 2:24–25). God sees past the greeting to the intent, and he judges both rightly.

Verse 4 turns to judgment: “Give them according to their deeds”. David piles up phrases to make one point, that what they receive should match what they have done. Their deeds, pôʻal, are their acts and works, and the same word can mean what work earns, its wages. “The wickedness of their endeavours” adds rôaʻ, a badness that spoils what it touches, to their endeavours, their doings, so the evil inside their actions is weighed along with the actions. “The work of their hands” is what they have made of their plans. “Render to them their desert” closes the verse. To render is to return or give back, and their desert, gᵉmûwl, is treatment or requital, a return for good or for ill. Here the return is for evil.

Scripture states this principle again and again: God repays each one according to his works (Proverbs 24:12). Paul writes that God “will render to every man according to his deeds” (Romans 2:6), and that it is a righteous thing for God to repay trouble to those who trouble his people (2 Thessalonians 1:6).

As king, David faced enemies inside Israel and beyond it, and the men behind this psalm may have been traitors in his own court, such as Ahithophel, though the psalm leaves the occasion unnamed. Kings were expected to uphold justice, and when wrongdoers went unpunished David took his case to the LORD, the righteous Judge, as he does in Psalm 7.

Verse 5 gives the reason: “Because they regard not the works of the LORD, nor the operation of his hands”. To regard, bîyn, is to understand, discern or consider, and the wicked look straight past what God has done. His works, pᵉʻullâh, are his labour and what it produces, and the operation of his hands, maʻăseh, is his deed, work and workmanship. Israel saw those works in creation, in the Exodus, in the giving of the law and the covenant, and in God’s daily care of his people. Paul says that God’s eternal power and Godhead are clearly seen from the things that are made, so that those who ignore them are “without excuse” (Romans 1:20). The wilderness generation saw his works and still rebelled (Numbers 14), and Wisdom warns that those who refuse her call will eat the fruit of their own way (Proverbs 1:24–33).

The same word ties verses 4 and 5 together. David asked God to repay “the work of their hands”, and the Hebrew there is maʻăseh, the word translated “operation” in “the operation of his hands”. The wicked are busy with the work of their own hands and blind to the work of God’s hands.

“He shall destroy them, and not build them up.” The verb hâraç means to tear down, throw down, overthrow or break through. Its opposite here is bânâh, to build, establish, repair or set up. Together they draw a picture of a building pulled down and left in ruins. God is the builder and restorer of his people, who promises to build them up (Jeremiah 24:6), and those who set themselves against him he tears down and leaves unbuilt. The request of verse 4 has become a settled statement in verse 5: “he shall”.

People ask whether God destroys the wicked himself or whether ruin simply follows from what they do. The verse gives both. “He shall destroy them” makes the overthrow God’s own act, and “because” makes it his just answer to the path they chose. Paul puts it as sowing and reaping, for whoever sows to the flesh reaps corruption (Galatians 6:7–8).

This prayer points ahead to Jesus Christ. David feared God’s silence and the pit. On the cross Jesus cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46), bearing the weight of our sin, and he went down into death for us. God answered by raising him up, because it was impossible for death to hold him (Acts 2:24). He lives to intercede for his people (Hebrews 7:25), and those united to him are kept from the pit of everlasting separation from God. He is the rock as well, the chief cornerstone on whom all who believe are built (1 Peter 2:6).

David asked to be kept apart from the wicked. Christ, pure in heart and word, was “numbered with the transgressors” (Isaiah 53:12) and bore the sin of the world, so that sinners could be drawn out of their condemnation and made new creatures in him (2 Corinthians 5:17). He also exposed the scribes and Pharisees, whose outward righteousness covered hearts full of evil (Matthew 23).

Verse 5 points to him too. He is God’s work in the fullest sense, the image of the invisible God by whom all things were made (Colossians 1:15–17), and he asked people to believe him for the sake of the works he did (John 14:11). He wept over Jerusalem because it “knewest not the time of thy visitation”, and he foretold its fall (Luke 19:41–44). Those who receive him are built up as living stones into a spiritual house (1 Peter 2:4–5), on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ as the chief cornerstone (Ephesians 2:20–22).

These five verses give God’s people words for the hour when heaven is quiet. David shows that we may bring our fear of God’s silence to God himself, and call him our rock while we say it. The LORD is a rock that holds, a God who hears the voice of supplication, and in Christ the way into his presence stands open.

The psalm also shows who God is toward evil. He sees what lies behind a kind greeting, he weighs deeds and the intent behind them, and he will repay, so the one who is wronged can leave judgment with him. The same verses search us as well, because the peace we speak to our neighbours belongs in our hearts too. And David’s last word here is about God as builder. He tears down those who ignore his works, and he builds up his people, which is why the prayer that began in fear of silence moves on to praise in the verses that follow.