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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 16:9 - 16:9
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Thus then, as this concluding strophe, as it were like seven rays of light, affirms, he has the most blessed prospect before him, without any need to fear death. Because Jahve is thus near at hand to help him, his heart becomes joyful (שָׂמח) and his glory, i.e., his soul (vid., on Psa 7:6) rejoices, the joy breaking forth in rejoicing, as the fut. consec. affirms. There is no passage of Scripture that so closely resembles this as 1Th 5:23. לֵב is πνεῦμα (νοῦς), כָבֹוד, ψυχή (vid., Psychol. S. 98; tr. p. 119), בָּשָׂר (according to its primary meaning, attrectabile, that which is frail), σῶμα. The ἀμέμπτως τηρηθῆναι which the apostle in the above passage desires for his readers in respect of all three parts of their being, David here expresses as a confident expectation; for אַף implies that he also hopes for his body that which he hopes for his spirit-life centred in the heart, and for his soul raised to dignity both by the work of creation and of grace. He looks death calmly and triumphantly in the face, even his flesh shall dwell or lie securely, viz., without being seized with trembling at its approaching corruption. David's hope rests on this conclusion: it is impossible for the man, who, in appropriating faith and actual experience, calls God his own, to fall into the hands of death. For Psa 16:10 shows, that what is here thought of in connection with שָׁכַן לָבֶטַח, dwelling in safety under the divine protection (Deu 33:12, Deu 33:28, cf. Pro 3:24), is preservation from death. שַׁחַת is rendered by the lxx διαφθορά, as though it came from שָׁחַת διαφθείρειν, as perhaps it may do in Job 17:14. But in Psa 7:16 the lxx has βόθρος, which is the more correct: prop. a sinking in, from שׁוּחַ to sink, to be sunk, like נַחַת from נוּחַ, רַחַת from רוּחַ. To leave to the unseen world (עָזַב prop. to loosen, let go) is equivalent to abandoning one to it, so that he becomes its prey. Psa 16:10 - where to see the grave (Psa 49:10), equivalent to, to succumb to the state of the grave, i.e., death (Psa 89:49; Luk 2:26; Joh 8:51) is the opposite of “seeing life,” i.e., experiencing and enjoying it (Ecc 9:9, Joh 3:36), the sense of sight being used as the noblest of the senses to denote the sensus communis, i.e., the common sense lying at the basis of all feeling and perception, and figuratively of all active and passive experience (Psychol. S. 234; tr. p. 276) - shows, that what is said here is not intended of an abandonment by which, having once come under the power of death, there is no coming forth again (Böttcher). It is therefore the hope of not dying, that is expressed by David in Psa 16:10. for by חֲסִידְךָ David means himself. According to Norzi, the Spanish MSS have חָסִידְיךָ with the Masoretic note יתיר יוד, and the lxx, Targ., and Syriac translate, and the Talmud and Midrash interpret it, in accordance with this Kerî. There is no ground for the reading חֲסִידֶיךָ, and it is also opposed by the personal form of expression surrounding it.
(Note: Most MSS and the best, which have no distinction of Kerî and Chethîb here, read חֲסִידֶךָ, as also the Biblia Ven. 1521, the Spanish Polyglott and other older printed copies. Those MSS which give חֲסִידֶיךָ (without any Kerî), on the other hand, scarcely come under consideration.)
The positive expression of hope in Psa 16:11 comes as a companion to the negative just expressed: Thou wilt grant me to experience (הֹודִיעַ, is used, as usual, of the presentation of a knowledge, which concerns the whole man and not his understanding merely) אֹרַח חַיִּים, the path of life, i.e., the path to life (cf. Pro 5:6; Pro 2:19 with ib. Psa 10:17; Mat 7:14); but not so that it is conceived of as at the final goal, but as leading slowly and gradually onwards to life; חַיִּים in the most manifold sense, as, e.g., in Psa 36:10; Deu 30:15 : life from God, with God, and in God, the living God; the opposite of death, as the manifestation of God's wrath and banishment from Him. That his body shall not die is only the external and visible phase of that which David hopes for himself; on its inward, unseen side it is a living, inwrought of God in the whole man, which in its continuance is a walking in the divine life. The second part of Psa 16:11, which consists of two members, describes this life with which he solaces himself. According to the accentuation, - which marks חיים with Olewejored not with Rebia magnum or Pazer, - שְׂבַע שְׂמָחֹות is not a second object dependent upon תֹּודִיעֵנִי, but the subject of a substantival clause: a satisfying fulness of joy is אֶת־פָּנֶיךָ, with Thy countenance, i.e., connected with and naturally produced by beholding Thy face (אֵת preposition of fellowship, as in Psa 21:7; 140:14); for joy is light, and God's countenance, or doxa, is the light of lights. And every kind of pleasurable things, נְעִמֹות, He holds in His right hand, extending them to His saints - a gift which lasts for ever; נֶצַח equivalent to לָנֶצַח. נֵצַח, from the primary notion of conspicuous brightness, is duration extending beyond all else - an expression for לְעֹולָם, which David has probably coined, for it appears for the first time in the Davidic Psalms. Pleasures are in Thy right hand continually - God's right hand is never empty, His fulness is inexhaustible.
The apostolic application of this Psalm (Act 2:29-32; Act 13:35-37) is based on the considerations that David's hope of not coming under the power of death was not realised in David himself, as is at once clear, to the unlimited extent in which it is expressed in the Psalm; but that it is fulfilled in Jesus, who has not been left to Hades and whose flesh did not see corruption; and that consequently the words of the Psalm are a prophecy of David concerning Jesus, the Christ, who was promised as the heir to his throne, and whom, by reason of the promise, he had prophetically before his mind. If we look into the Psalm, we see that David, in his mode of expression, bases that hope simply upon his relation to Jahve, the ever-living One. That it has been granted to him in particular, to express this hope which is based upon the mystic relation of the חסיד to Jahve in such language, - a hope which the issue of Jesus' life has sealed by an historical fulfilment, - is to be explained from the relation, according to the promise, in which David stands to his seed, the Christ and Holy One of God, who appeared in the person of Jesus. David, the anointed of God, looking upon himself as in Jahve, the God who has given the promise, becomes the prophet of Christ; but this is only indirectly, for he speaks of himself, and what he says has also been fulfilled in his own person. But this fulfilment is not limited to the condition, that he did not succumb to any peril that threatened his life so long as the kingship would have perished with him, and that, when he died, the kingship nevertheless remained (Hofmann); nor, that he was secured against all danger of death until he had accomplished his life's mission, until he had fulfilled the vocation assigned to him in the history of the plan of redemption (Kurtz) - the hope which he cherishes for himself personally has found a fulfilment which far exceeds this. After his hope has found in Christ its full realisation in accordance with the history of the plan of redemption, it receives through Christ its personal realisation for himself also. For what he says, extends on the one hand far beyond himself, and therefore refers prophetically to Christ: in decachordo Psalterio - as Jerome boldly expresses it - ab inferis suscitat resurgentem. But on the other hand that which is predicted comes back upon himself, to raise him also from death and Hades to the beholding of God. Verus justitiae sol - says Sontag in his Tituli Psalmorum, 1687 - e sepulcro resurrexit, στήλη seu lapis sepulcralis a monumento devolutus, arcus triumphalis erectus, victoria ab hominibus reportata. En vobis Michtam! En Evangelium! -