Psalms 28:3–5

Psalms 28:3 — "Do not draw me away with the wicked"

The Hebrew verb māšak ("draw away") evokes the image of being dragged along by force, swept into a current one did not choose. David's fear is not simply that he might suffer punishment, but that he might be classified with the wicked — that God would treat him as one of them. This is a prayer for the integrity of his identity before God. The phrase is sharpened by the following parallel: "those who speak peace with their neighbors while evil is in their hearts." The wicked here are not simply violent people; they are hypocrites whose outward speech conceals inward malice. David implicitly protests that he is not such a person — his prayer itself is proof of his transparency before God. The contrast with verse 1, where David cries openly to Yahweh without deception, is pointed: the wicked speak falsely to their neighbors; David speaks truthfully to his God.

Psalms 28:4 — "Give them according to their work, and according to the wickedness of their doings"

This verse is an imprecatory petition — a prayer that God render to the wicked what their deeds deserve. The double parallel ("their work… their doings") intensifies the demand and draws on a foundational biblical principle of lex talionis at the cosmic level: that God's justice is precisely calibrated to human action. The phrase "the work of their hands" echoes throughout the Psalter and the Prophets as a shorthand for the totality of human moral agency. David is not calling for private revenge; he is calling on God as the cosmic Judge to exercise His proper office. Critically, he does not ask to punish them himself — this restraint is theologically significant. The Psalmist entrusts judgment entirely to Yahweh.

Psalms 28:5 — "Because they do not regard the works of the LORD"

Here David provides the theological root of the wickedness he has described. The wicked are not wicked primarily because of what they do but because of what they fail to see. "The works of Yahweh" (ma'aśê YHWH) refers to God's mighty deeds in creation and salvation history — the Exodus, the covenant, the ordering of the cosmos. To fail to "regard" them is the Hebrew yābîn, meaning to perceive with understanding, to attend carefully. The wicked are willfully blind. They live in God's world, among God's people, witnessing God's acts, and choose not to see. The verse therefore presents a deeply Catholic epistemology: moral disorder flows from disordered perception — from the refusal to contemplate reality as it truly is, created and governed by God. The consequence implied at the end of the verse — that God will tear them down and not rebuild them — is the logical outcome: those who do not acknowledge God's building will themselves be left in ruins.

Catholic tradition reads this passage through several interlocking lenses.

On the imprecatory dimension: St. Augustine, in his Enarrationes in Psalmos, was careful to insist that the Psalmist's imprecations are not expressions of personal hatred but prophetic declarations of God's justice and, in a deeper sense, prayers that the works of the wicked — not necessarily the wicked themselves — be destroyed. Augustine sees Christ speaking these words in His Mystical Body: the Church, afflicted by evildoers, calls upon the Father to vindicate justice. This prevents a simplistic moralistic reading and opens the passage to its christological depth.

On blindness to God's works: The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that "man's faculties make him capable of knowing the existence of a personal God" (CCC §33) and that the refusal to acknowledge God constitutes a moral failure as much as an intellectual one. The wicked of Psalm 28:5 exemplify what CCC §2125 calls "practical atheism" — not the denial of God in the abstract, but the functional exclusion of God from the ordering of one's life and perception.

On divine retributive justice: Catholic moral theology, drawing from St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae I-II, Q. 87), affirms that sin carries within it its own punishment — that the disordering of the soul through moral evil is itself a form of divine justice being worked out. David's prayer is not for God to impose an arbitrary penalty but to allow the internal logic of evil to reach its conclusion.

On separation from the wicked: The prayer "do not drag me away with them" anticipates the great eschatological separation of sheep and goats (Matthew 25), and the Catholic teaching on the particular judgment (CCC §1021–1022), where each soul is judged individually according to its works and faith.

Contemporary Catholics live surrounded by what might be called a culture of functional godlessness — not always explicit atheism, but the pervasive habit of making decisions, forming relationships, and building institutions as if God's works and ordering of reality simply do not matter. Psalm 28:3–5 offers a bracing examination of conscience: Am I, in any dimension of my life, speaking peace outwardly while harboring hidden agendas? Am I failing to regard the works of God — in nature, in the sacraments, in the events of my life — because I am too distracted or too proud to contemplate them?

Practically, this passage invites Catholics to a daily practice of theoria — contemplative attention to God's activity in the world. This might mean pausing before a meal not merely to recite a grace formula, but to genuinely see the food as a work of Providence. It means training oneself, in the manner of St. Ignatius's Examen, to notice where God has been present and active throughout the day. The alternative — the spiritual blindness of verse 5 — is not reserved for dramatic sinners. It is available to anyone who stops looking.