Psalm Chapter 28 - A Psalm of David

Psalm 28: When Silence Would Be Death

There is a terror worse than any enemy, and David names it in the very first line: the silence of God. "Be not silent to me: lest, if thou be silent to me, I become like them that go down into the pit." This is not theology; it is a man on the edge of a cliff. To be ignored by God — not punished, not rebuked, but simply met with silence — would be indistinguishable from death. And so David cries, and lifts his hands toward the holy oracle, and waits. What follows is one of those sudden turns that make the Psalms feel so human: the cry becomes a blessing. "Blessed be the Lord, because he hath heard the voice of my supplications." Something happened between verse two and verse six. We are not told what. Perhaps that is the point — that the moment God breaks his silence is always, for the one who has been listening, too private and too enormous to describe. The psalm ends not with David alone but with all God’s people: "Save thy people, and bless thine inheritance: feed them also, and lift them up for ever."

00:00 Unto Thee Will I Cry, O My Rock
00:15 Hear the Voice of My Supplications
00:30 Draw Me Not Away with the Wicked
00:45 They Regard Not the Works of the Lord
01:00 Blessed Be the Lord
01:15 Save Thy People