Psalms 28 1
My Notes Authors Matthew Henry - Commentary on the Whole Bible In these verses David is very earnest in prayer. I. He prays that God would graciously hear and answer him, now that, in his distress, he called upon him, v. 1, 2. Observe his faith in prayer: O Lord, my rock, denoting his belief of God’s power (he is a rock) and his dependence upon that power—“He is my rock, on whom I build my hope.” Observe his fervency in prayer: “To thee will I cry, as one in earnest, being ready to sink, unless thou come in with seasonable succour.” And observe how solicitous he is to obtain an answer: “Be not silent to me, as one angry at my prayers, Ps. lxxx. 4. Lord, speak to me, answer me with good words and comfortable words (Zech. i. 13); though the thing I pray for has not been given me, yet let God speak to me joy and gladness, and make me to hear them. Lord, speak for me, in answer to my prayers, plead my cause, command deliverances for me, and thus hear and answer the voice of my supplications.” Two things he pleads:—1. The sad despair he should be in if God slighted him: “If thou be silent to me, and I have not the tokens of thy favour, I am like those that go down into the pit (that is, I am a dead man, lost and undone); if God be not my friend, appear not to me and appear not for me, my hope and my help will have perished.” Nothing can be so cutting, so killing, to a gracious soul, as the want of God’s favour and the sense of his displeasure. I shall be like those that go down to hell (so some understand it); for what is the misery of the damned but this, that God is ever silent to them and deaf to their cry? Those are in some measure qualified for God’s favour, and may expect it, who are thus possessed with a dread of his wrath, and to whom his frowns are worse than death. 2. The good hopes he had that God would favour him: I lift up my hands towards thy holy oracle, which denotes, not only an earnest desire, but an earnest expectation, thence to receive an answer of peace. The most holy place within the veil is here, as elsewhere, called the oracle; there the ark and the mercy-seat were, there God was said to dwell between the cherubim, and thence he spoke to his people, Num. vii. 89. That was a type of Christ, and it is to him that we must lift up our eyes and hands, for through him all good comes from God to us. It was also a figure of heaven (Heb. ix. 24); and from God as our Father in heaven we are taught to expect an answer to our prayers. The scriptures are called the oracles of God, and to them we must have an eye in our prayers and expectations. There is the word on which God hath caused and encouraged us to hope.