Give to them according to their work and according to the evil of their deeds; give to them according to the work of their hands; render them their due reward.
David's opening cry declares what most troubled men never do: he betakes himself to God alone, not wandering here and there for help. He names God his strength precisely because he trusted Him not in peace but in the severest temptations, when all other hope had failed.
AI summary
Commenting on Psalm 28:1-9
When we view the wicked simply as such, and not as our fellow men, our indignation against sin leads us entirely to coincide with the acts of divine justice which punish evil, and to wish that justice might use her power to restrain by her terrors the cruel and unjust; but still the desires of the present verse, as our version renders it, are not...
David's faith rests on God as his rock, his power and his refuge. What cuts deepest into a gracious soul is not the absence of what he prays for, but God's silence and the sense of His displeasure: nothing can be so killing as the want of His favor, for to be without it is to be like the dead descending to the pit.
AI summary
Commenting on Psalm 28:1-5