WORD STUDY – INTO THE PIT
‫יורדי בור‬
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.”
Like them that go down into the pit. Many commentators feel
that this is just a poetic expression for death. In fact some
translations just say that if God remains silent to him he
would die.
Yet, there are some translators who have a
different idea.
The word for pit is bore which could mean a well, a prison, or
a crypt. A prison in those days was often a pit that someone
was just thrown into and you were left there to rot. The only
way out would be if someone would throw you 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.
Sometimes when a well
would dry up it would be abandoned. It was not a well like you
see in those phony pictures, a nice brick structure with a
crane to lower a bucket. Wells were mainly just holes in the
ground. Many times people would dig a well and after going
down ten or fifteen feet with no water they will abandon it.
Someone not paying attention could fall into the well and if
no one comes around to hear your cries for help you are left
without hope and become desperate. There are commentators who
believe this is the intent of the passage and I agree. David
is not saying that if God is silent he will die, but that he
will lose all hope and become desperate. A crypt was pretty
much the same thing, it is a place you go into and you usually
do not come out.
Do you ever feel like David, you have entered a dark place and
you just seem separated from God. If you have enjoyed a close
walk with God, falling into a spiritual bore or well could
prove very terrifying.
and he is silent?
But what does that mean to call on God
The word silent is karash.
It is closely related to the word
karas which means to be rough. Maybe it is not so much that
God is silent but that David feels God may really being rough
with him. In fact taking karash (silent) to its Semitic root
we find that is it a word referring to a plow or till which
makes an engraving into the ground. In a noun form it is
describing a cutting instrument. Rabbi Hirsch indicates that
it is related to a similar word with a Sade at the end and
means to lacerate, or wound. Karash is also used for an
enchanter, magician, or to be artificial. When a husband gets
the silent treatment from his wife, he often feels like she is
giving him a deep cutting wound. Even though he knows the
silence is really artificial, she will eventually talk with
him, she is using silence like a magician to get a desired
result to convey to him that he has wounded her heart.
Silence from God may just be artificial, but like the wife
giving her husband the silent treatment she is conveying a
message that he has wounded her heart and that knowledge is
like the cutting of a deep wound to him if he loves his wife.
Silence from God can be a deep cutting wound to us if we love
Him and realize we have wounded His heart.
The context would indicate that David is experiencing deep
emotional distress from people who are saying things about him
that are not true. David is crying to God not so much to be
delivered from the 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, 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. Think about it, 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. In fact is did suffer
a loss of his job under a broken relationship with his beloved
son Absalom.
He did suffer a loss of his health.
The
problem David faced in this verse was not the loss but how
that loss affected his relationship with God.
To sum up David’s prayer as I see it here in 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 lose you, I can’t handle that, I will
go into a dark pit of hopeless and despair.
leave me.”
O my God, don’t