Psalms 28:1 “Unto 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.”
The word for pit is bore in Hebrew which could mean a well, a prison, or a crypt. A prison is that day was often a pit that someone was thrown into and you could not get out of it without someone sending down a rope. It would be the same case if you fell in a well. In fact old abandoned wells were often used as a prison. A crypt was pretty much the same thing, it is a place you go into and you usually do not come out.
It is a little hard to say that if God remains silent David will either die or enter a place where he will not be able to return. Although I believe most of us at one time or another have felt like we entered a dark place from which we would never come out, if we did not get some direction from God.
What is it that David wants from God here? What does it mean when David says that he calls on God and God is silent? Does it simply mean that when he offers his request to God, God does not answer his prayer? With a testimony like that, I doubt any pastor would give David the pulpit to testify.
The word silent is karash. It is closely related to the word karas which means to be rough. I think I can relate to that: “God why are you being so rough with me?” Karash is not only used for silence, but in it primitive form it is referring to a plow or till which makes an engraving into the ground. In a noun form it is describing a cutting instrument. The word karas spelled with a Sade at the end and means to lacerate, or wound. Karash is also used for an enchanter, magician, or to be artificial. Silence from God is like the cutting of a deep wound.
The context would indicate that David is experiencing deep emotional distress from people who are saying things about him that are not true. David’s cry to God is not so much for a deliverance from his problem. The following verses seem to indicate confidence that God has taken care of that, but it is this present emotional stress that he is seeking deliverance from. This would be the worry, the fear, and the deep hurt. Do you ever feel this sense of overwhelming oppression? There is no reason for it, after all God is in control, He has never failed. Yet, you are so filled with a sense of fear and dread that you just can not enjoy life itself. You really just wish God would take you home and away from it all. I think that is what David is feeling. He just wants to go out and get drunk, but in this case to get drunk in the Spirit.
Something a little more difficult to explain is the use of the preposition from rather than to. The word silent itself is used as a participle. Hence David is literally saying: “I cry, O Lord my rock and you are being silent from me.” To build on that word silence, it would seem that David is wanting more than deliverance, he just wants to feel the presence of God. Note in the next verse he speaks of his supplications (Heb. canan). He is doing this with uplifted hands. Supplication here or canan is to show favor. David is saying that he is showing favor to God. When you go to God with a need, who do you want to favor, God or yourself. In verse 5 David is asking that he not be drawn away from God by the intentions of the wicked.
To David the pressures of his job, his relationships, or health, were not that important to him. The fact is that David did suffer a loss of his job under a broken relationship with his beloved son Absalom. He also suffered a loss of his health. The problem David faced in this verse was not these losses but how these losses affected his relationship with God.
To sum up David’s prayer as I see it here in Psalms 98:1, David is praying: “Lord, you are my rock. My rock is not my job, not my relationship, not my health. I may lose my job, my relationships, or my health, and I can handle that, I will go on living, but Lord, if I lose you, I can’t handle that, I will go into a dark pit and just die. O my God, don’t leave me.”
In the words of Bill Cosby’s old routine about Noah, “Ok, God you and me, right?”
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