3 Drag me not away with wicked men, and with workers of iniquity, Speaking peace with their neighbours, And evil is in their hearts. 4 Give them according to their doings and according to the evil of their deeds; According to the work of their hands give them; Return their desert to them. 5 For they pay no heed to the doings of Jehovah Nor to the work of His hands; He shall cast them down, and not build them up. 6 Blessed be Jehovah For He has heard the voice of my supplications. 7 Jehovah is my fortress and my shield; In Him has my heart trusted, and I am helped; So my heart leaps [for joy], and by my song will I praise Him. 8 Jehovah is their strength (or the strength of His people), And a fortress of salvation for His anointed is He. 9 Save Thy people, and bless Thine inheritance And shepherd them, and carry them even for evermore. The unquestionable resemblances to Psalm xxvi. scarcely require that this should be considered its companion. The differences are as obvious as the likenesses. While the prayer "Draw me not away with the wicked" and the characterisation of these are alike in both, the further emphatic prayer for retribution here and the closing half of this psalm have nothing corresponding to them in the other. This psalm is built on the familiar plan of groups of two verses each, with the exception that the prayer, which is its centre, runs over into three. The course of thought is as familiar as the structure. Invocation is followed by petition, and that by exultant anticipation of the answer as already given; and all closes with wider petitions for the whole people. Vv. 1, 2, are a prelude to the prayer proper, bespeaking the Divine acceptance of it, on the double ground of the psalmist's helplessness apart from God's help and of his outstretched hands appealing to God enthroned above the mercy-seat. He is in such straits that, unless his prayer brings an answer in act, he must sink into the pit of Sheol, and be made like those that lie huddled there in its darkness. On the edge of the slippery slope, he stretches out his hands toward the innermost sanctuary (for so the word rendered, by a mistaken etymology, "oracle" means). He beseeches God to hear, and blends the two figures of deafness and silence as both meaning the withholding of help. Jehovah seems deaf when prayer is unanswered, and is silent when He does not speak in deliverance. This prelude of invocation throbs with earnestness, and sets the pattern for suppliants, teaching them how to quicken their own desires as well as how to appeal to God by breathing to Him their consciousness that only His hand can keep them from sliding down into death.