Don't Drag Me Down: A Prayer Against the Silent God
Introduction: The Antithesis in Prayer
We live in an age that wants a God who is a cosmic affirmation machine. The modern man, and sadly the modern evangelical, wants a deity who is always supportive, never judgmental, and above all, quiet when it comes to the nasty business of sin and justice. He wants a God who functions like a celestial therapist, nodding along to our chosen lifestyles. But the God of the Bible, the God of David, is not a tame God. He is a rock, a fortress, and a consuming fire. And His silence is not a sign of approval; it is a terror. His silence is the prelude to the pit.
This psalm, like many others, is a piece of rugged, masculine spirituality that our effeminate age finds deeply embarrassing. It is a prayer that draws a hard line in the sand. It acknowledges the great antithesis that runs through all of human history: the stark division between the righteous and the wicked, between those who call on the name of the Lord and those who ignore Him. David is not praying a fuzzy, generic prayer for everyone to just get along. He is praying a prayer of covenantal identity. He is saying, in effect, "I am on Your side, Lord. Do not treat me like I am on their side."
This psalm teaches us that true prayer is not about blurring distinctions; it is about sharpening them. It is about knowing who you are, knowing who God is, and knowing who the enemy is. It is a prayer that calls for justice, a prayer that is not afraid to ask God to act in accordance with His own stated character. We have been taught to be ashamed of such prayers, to label them as vindictive or sub-Christian. But this is to be ashamed of the justice of God Himself. David here models for us a wartime piety, a faith that understands that we are in a real spiritual conflict, and in a war, neutrality is not an option.
The Text
To You, O Yahweh, I call; My rock, do not be silent to me, Lest if You are hesitant toward me, I will become like those who go down to the pit. Hear the voice of my supplications when I cry to You for help, When I lift up my hands toward Your holy sanctuary. Do not drag me away with the wicked And with workers of iniquity, Who speak peace with their neighbors, While evil is in their hearts. Give to them according to their work and according to the evil of their actions; Give to them according to the deeds of their hands; Return their dealings upon them. Because they do not regard the works of Yahweh Nor the deeds of His hands, He will tear them down and not build them up.
(Psalm 28:1-5 LSB)
The Cry to the Unsilent Rock (v. 1)
The psalm opens with a desperate, urgent cry.
"To You, O Yahweh, I call; My rock, do not be silent to me, Lest if You are hesitant toward me, I will become like those who go down to the pit." (Psalm 28:1)
David addresses Yahweh as "My rock." This is not sentimental poetry. A rock is a place of stability in a world of chaos, a fortress in a time of war. David is in an unstable situation, and he cries out to the only stable thing in the universe. But his great fear is not the enemy outside; his great fear is silence from his Rock. He is terrified that God might go mute on him.
Why? Because for God to be silent toward His own is to treat them as He treats the wicked. "Lest... I will become like those who go down to the pit." The pit is Sheol, the grave, the realm of the dead. It is the place of ultimate silence and separation from the land of the living. For David, a world where God is silent is a dead world. An unanswered prayer is a taste of hell. This is not a crisis of intellectual doubt; David knows God is there. This is a crisis of communion. He is a son who is terrified that his Father has stopped speaking to him.
The Posture of Covenant Prayer (v. 2)
David's prayer is not a disembodied, abstract thought. It has a voice, a posture, and a direction.
"Hear the voice of my supplications when I cry to You for help, When I lift up my hands toward Your holy sanctuary." (Psalm 28:2)
Notice the physicality of it. He cries with his "voice." He lifts up his "hands." This is embodied piety. The lifting of the hands is a universal sign of surrender, of dependence, of reaching for aid. But it is also directed. He lifts his hands "toward Your holy sanctuary." This is not generic, sky-god worship. This is covenantal prayer. The sanctuary, the Holy of Holies, was the place on earth where God had promised to meet with His people, the place of the mercy seat and atonement. David is aiming his prayer at the very heart of the covenant relationship.
For us, under the New Covenant, we do the same. We lift our hands and voices toward the true sanctuary, the heavenly reality to which the earthly temple pointed. We pray toward Jesus Christ, our great High Priest, who is the mercy seat. Our prayers are not scattered into the cosmos; they are directed, through the Son, to the Father, in the power of the Spirit.
The Great Divide (v. 3)
Here David makes his central plea, which is a plea for distinction.
"Do not drag me away with the wicked And with workers of iniquity, Who speak peace with their neighbors, While evil is in their hearts." (Psalm 28:3)
This is the great antithesis. David is not claiming to be sinless. He knows he is a sinner saved by grace. But he is claiming allegiance. He is on Team Yahweh. His plea is that God, the righteous judge, would recognize this distinction in the final accounting. "Do not lump me in with them. Do not drag me away to the same fate."
And how does he define the wicked? By their hypocrisy. They are those "who speak peace with their neighbors, while evil is in their hearts." Their defining characteristic is duplicity. They are masters of the forked tongue. They use the language of peace, civility, and tolerance as a smokescreen for their godless agenda. They smile to your face while plotting mischief in their hearts. This is a perfect description of the serpent's seed, from the garden to our modern political discourse. They talk of unity while sowing division, they speak of love while promoting wickedness.
A Prayer for Righteous Payback (v. 4-5)
Now we come to the part that makes modern Christians squirm. David prays for imprecation, for God to render just judgment.
"Give to them according to their work and according to the evil of their actions; Give to them according to the deeds of their hands; Return their dealings upon them." (Psalm 28:4)
This is not a sinful cry for personal revenge. This is a righteous prayer for God to uphold His own moral order. David is praying for the law of consequences, the law of the harvest, to be enforced. This is a prayer for the lex talionis, the principle of "an eye for an eye." He is asking God to give the wicked exactly what they have earned. "Return their dealings upon them." Let the consequences of their actions boomerang back and hit them squarely.
To be embarrassed by this prayer is to be embarrassed by the very concept of justice. If we truly believe that God is just, then we must desire to see His justice executed. To pray "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven" is to pray for this very thing. It is to pray for righteousness to be rewarded and for wickedness to be judged. These are not vindictive prayers; they are kingdom prayers.
And why do they deserve this judgment? Verse 5 gives the reason.
"Because they do not regard the works of Yahweh Nor the deeds of His hands, He will tear them down and not build them up." (Psalm 28:5)
The root of their wickedness is theological. It is a willful, deliberate ignorance. They live in God's world, breathe God's air, and benefit from His common grace, and yet they refuse to acknowledge Him. They look at the majesty of creation, the intricate providence of history, the clear testimony of conscience, "the deeds of His hands," and they shrug. They give Him no regard. This is cosmic treason.
And the result is de-creation. The punishment fits the crime. Because they will not regard the God who builds up, He will tear them down. You cannot build a lasting society, a lasting institution, or a lasting life on a foundation of ignoring the Builder of the universe. All such projects are slated for demolition. God will tear them down, and He will not build them up again.
Conclusion
This psalm is a bracing corrective to a weak-kneed faith. It calls us to a robust confidence in the God who is our Rock. We are to cry out to Him, knowing that His silence is a dread and His voice is our life. We are to pray with our whole beings, directing our pleas to Christ our sanctuary. We must embrace the great antithesis, refusing to be identified with the workers of iniquity and their two-faced treachery.
And we must not be ashamed to pray for justice. We pray for God to give the wicked their due, not out of personal malice, but out of a deep love for God's righteousness and a desire to see His kingdom advance. We pray this knowing that the ultimate reason we are not "dragged away with the wicked" is because our Rock, the Lord Jesus Christ, was dragged away for us. He went down into the pit of God's silence on the cross, crying "My God, why have you forsaken me?" so that we would never have to. He received the ultimate imprecation, the full curse of the law, so that we might receive the blessing.
Therefore, we can pray with David's confidence. We can ask God to distinguish between us and His enemies, and we can trust that He who is our strength and our shield will hear our voice, and He will tear down the kingdoms of men and build up the kingdom of His Son forever.