Psalm 16:10

Psalm 16 is headed “Michtam of David”. The word is often understood to mean a “golden psalm”, a composition of lasting worth, and others take it as an “inscription”, a “psalm of choice” or an epigram, a short saying worth keeping. David opens with a plea, “Preserve me, O God: for in thee do I put my trust” (Psalm 16:1). He delights in God’s people (Psalm 16:3–4) and turns away from every other god, for “Their sorrows shall be multiplied that hasten after another god” (16:4).

The LORD is “the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup” (Psalm 16:5), and David’s lines have fallen to him in pleasant places (Psalm 16:5–6). Those words recall the shares of land given to Israel’s tribes in the Promised Land, and David applies them to God himself as his inheritance, a possession that is secure for ever. He blesses the LORD who has given him counsel (Psalm 16:7), and God’s counsel and God’s constant presence belong together (Psalm 16:7–8).

Verse 8 begins the part of the psalm that Peter quoted on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:25–28). Everything in these four verses grows out of the trust David has already declared, and it carries that trust right through death.

“I have set the LORD always before me” describes a settled choice. The verb, shâvâh, means to set or place, and David uses it of deliberately putting the LORD, Yᵉhôvâh, in front of him, where he fills David’s view, his plans and his thoughts. The word “always”, tâmîyd, means continually, so this is the steady habit of a lifetime, a life lived in God’s sight with humility and reverence. Proverbs describes the same habit: “In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths” (Proverbs 3:5–6).

The reason comes next: “because he is at my right hand”. The word yâmîyn means the right hand or right side, and by extension the south, which lies on the right of someone facing east. In Israel the right hand was the side of strength and honour, and a person standing at your right hand was an ally ready to help and defend you. “The LORD is thy keeper: the LORD is thy shade upon thy right hand” (Psalm 121:5). David’s steadiness comes from that nearness. God is close at hand, and he upholds David where and when he needs it.

“I shall not be moved” uses môwṭ, to totter, shake or slip. The same confidence rings out in another psalm: “He only is my rock and my salvation: he is my defence; I shall not be moved” (Psalm 62:6). The letter to the Hebrews gives it to every believer: “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. So that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me” (Hebrews 13:5–6). Paul adds that as we bring everything to God in prayer, “the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6–7).

“Therefore” ties verse 9 to verse 8. Because the LORD is before David and beside him, joy follows. The heart, lêb, is the centre of a person’s feelings, will and understanding, and it is glad.

“My glory rejoiceth” uses kâbôwd, a word for glory, honour and splendour. Here “my glory” means the most honourable part of David, his soul or inner self, so his whole inner being joins the heart in rejoicing. Some ancient readers, the Greek Septuagint and some early Christian writers among them, took “glory” here to mean the tongue, the instrument a person praises with. The more widely held reading takes it as the soul, which fits the way heart, glory and flesh together make up the whole person.

“My flesh also shall rest in hope” carries the joy into the body, bâsâr, the part of a person that is frail and certain to die. The verb for rest, shâkan, means to settle down, stay or dwell. The word for hope, beṭach, means safety or security, both the fact of being safe and the feeling of trust, and it is often used to mean “safely”. So David’s body will settle down in safety, and he says this with death in view. His body may lie in the grave, and it lies there in God’s keeping, with a future.

The verse rises from heart to soul to body, and the last step is the boldest. The nations around Israel often saw death as final, with little expectation that the dead would be restored. Israel’s covenant with the living God, who rules over life and death, gave ground for far greater hope. Job could say, “For I know that my redeemer liveth” (Job 19:25–27), and Isaiah heard, “Thy dead men shall live” (Isaiah 26:19). David’s confidence belongs with theirs, and the New Testament shows where it leads.

Verse 10 gives the ground for that hope, and it opens with “For”. In “Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell”, the soul, nephesh, can mean the whole person, the life or the self. “Hell” translates shᵉʼôwl, Sheol, the world of the dead, which the KJV also renders “grave” and “pit”. To leave a soul there is to abandon it, so the promise concerns how long death keeps its hold. David expects to die, and he trusts God to bring him out of death’s power.

A psalm of sorrow asks, “For in death there is no remembrance of thee: in the grave who shall give thee thanks?” (Psalm 6:5). Against that silence this verse says that God brings his own back. Another psalm says it as well: “But God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave: for he shall receive me” (Psalm 49:15).

“Thine Holy One” translates châçîyd, a word related to chesed, God’s loyal love and kindness. It means one who is kind, pious and godly, a saint, and a chasid is someone devoted to God and faithful to his covenant. The word can describe any godly person. Here it stands in the singular, joined to a promise that this one will be kept from corruption, and that points to one person in particular.

“Corruption” translates shachath, a pit, and figuratively destruction, a word the KJV also renders “ditch”, “grave” and “pit”. To “see” it is to undergo it. The apostles read the phrase as the decay of the body in the grave. The second line sharpens the first, so that after the promise about the soul and Sheol comes a promise about the body itself.

On the day of Pentecost Peter quoted all four of these verses (Acts 2:25–28) in the sermon that proclaimed Jesus risen (Acts 2:25–36). He quoted verse 10 itself (Acts 2:27) and then explained it (Acts 2:25–31): David “seeing this before spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in hell, neither his flesh did see corruption” (Acts 2:31). Then he added, “This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses” (Acts 2:31–32).

Paul made the same argument in his sermon at Antioch. He spoke of Jesus as raised “now no more to return to corruption” (Acts 13:34), and he quoted this verse: “Thou shalt not suffer thine Holy One to see corruption” (Acts 13:35). Then he drew the contrast, that David “fell on sleep, and was laid unto his fathers, and saw corruption: But he, whom God raised again, saw no corruption” (Acts 13:35–37).

Jesus truly died and went among the dead. On the third day, before his body could begin to decay, God raised him. The angel at the tomb said, “He is not here: for he is risen, as he said” (Matthew 28:6). By that resurrection he was “declared to be the Son of God with power” (Romans 1:4). He is the true chasid, sinless and perfectly faithful, the one David’s words describe. His rising is the first of the harvest (1 Corinthians 15:20), and on the last day the saying will come true for all his people: “Death is swallowed up in victory” (1 Corinthians 15:54).

“Thou wilt shew me the path of life.” The verb yâdaʻ is the common word for knowing, and here God makes the way known, showing and teaching it by his guidance. The path, ‘ôrach, is a well-trodden road, a course or way of life. Life, chay (in the phrase ‘ôrach chayyim), is life in its full sense, vitality and well-being. The path of life leads away from the ways of wickedness that end in destruction, and coming straight after verse 10, it also leads up out of death.

“In thy presence is fulness of joy.” Presence, pânîym, literally means face. The word is plural in form and always used as a singular, and its senses of front, surface and presence all grow out of the face itself. To be in God’s presence is to be before his face, in his favour and fellowship. Israel knew God’s presence at the tabernacle, when “the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle” (Exodus 40:34–38), and David speaks of that nearness as something personal. “But it is good for me to draw near to God,” says another psalm (Psalm 73:28), and of the king, “thou hast made him exceeding glad with thy countenance” (Psalm 21:6).

The word for fulness, sôbaʻ, means satisfaction and plenty, and the joy, simchâh, is joy and gladness. It is full because its source is God himself, and the psalmist’s hope elsewhere is the same: “I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness” (Psalm 17:15).

“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.” The right hand, yâmîyn once more, is the place of honour and favour, the place to which the LORD calls the king: “Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool” (Psalm 110:1). The passage began with the LORD at David’s right hand, and it ends at God’s right hand. The pleasures, nâʻîym (here the plural ne’îmôth), are things pleasant and sweet, the delights of God’s fellowship. “For evermore” is netsach, a word of long duration, usually meaning “continually”, which also carries the sense of eminence and is rendered “strength” and “victory” elsewhere in the KJV. These pleasures last for ever. Revelation shows that day: “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death” (Revelation 21:4).

The habit David describes is open to every believer. We set the LORD before us when we begin the day with him in prayer and in his word, bring our plans and decisions to him, thank him in our joys and turn to him in our troubles. He is at our right hand, so we can stand firm in whatever comes.

And because Christ has walked the path of life ahead of us, our bodies too can rest in hope. When a believer is laid in the grave, that rest is in God’s keeping, and the end of the path is fulness of joy in his presence, with pleasures at his right hand for evermore.