Psalm 49:5

Psalm 49 belongs to the psalms of the sons of Korah (Psalms 42 to 49), and it is a wisdom psalm, written to teach. It opens by calling the whole world to listen, rich and poor together, and promises to open a dark saying, a riddle (Psalm 49:1–4). The riddle is one that Psalm 37 and Psalm 73 also take up: the wicked prosper and gain influence while the righteous meet hardship and oppression.

In that day wealth was commonly read as a sign of God’s favour and suffering as a sign of his displeasure, so a rich oppressor could look both powerful and blessed. These eight verses take that view apart by following wealth to the edge of the grave, where its power ends.

The psalmist’s question carries its own answer: seen with the wisdom God gives, the evil day has lost its power to terrify him. He puts it as a question so that we will reach the conclusion with him, and the rest of the psalm supplies the reasons.

The verb yârêʼ covers the whole range of fear, from unease to dread, and it is also the word for reverence. “The days of evil” are times of trouble and distress, when wrong is strong and the wicked prosper. In such days he is surrounded, for çâbab means to go around a thing and enclose it on every side, as a besieging army does. What surrounds him is ʻâvôn, a word for perversity and moral evil that can also mean the guilt of a fault and the punishment it brings.

Verse 6 describes the people the psalm has in view by two things they do. They trust, and bâṭach means to rely on something and feel confident and secure because of it. Scripture keeps that kind of reliance for God, so wealth trusted in this way has become an idol, a created thing set in the Creator’s place.

The word for wealth, chayil, means strength and ability as well as riches, and it is also a word for an army. That range explains the pull of money, which feels like strength to the one who holds it. They also boast. Hâlal at root means to shine, and so to make a show, and here the action is turned back on the doer: they “boast themselves”. The two halves of the verse belong together, trust being the inward confidence and boasting its outward display, and “the multitude of their riches” shows that the sheer amount is what persuades them they are safe.

The psalms set a better trust beside this one: “Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God” (Psalm 20:7). Proverbs gives the outcome of each: “He that trusteth in his riches shall fall: but the righteous shall flourish as a branch” (Proverbs 11:28). Jesus warns, “Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth” (Luke 12:15), and Paul tells Timothy to charge the rich “that they be not highminded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy” (1 Timothy 6:17).

Verses 7 to 9 are the centre of the passage, and they explain why trusting in riches is folly. “None of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him.”

“None of them” translates ʼîysh, the ordinary word for a man, used here of each one in turn, so that every single man among the rich fails at this point. To redeem, pâdâh, means to sever, and so to ransom or rescue, to set someone free at a price. The Hebrew doubles the verb, “redeeming he shall redeem”, which the KJV carries over as “by any means”, and the doubling makes the failure complete. The one to be redeemed is “his brother”, his nearest kin, the person he would give most to save.

A kôpher is a ransom, the price paid for a life. Israel knew such payments from its own law, where a man whose life was forfeit could in certain cases have a sum laid on him as the ransom of his life (Exodus 21:30). Here the payment would go to God himself, and every human fortune falls short of it.

Verse 8 gives the reason: “For the redemption of their soul is precious, and it ceaseth for ever.” Pidyôwm is a ransom price. Redemption (pidyon) was a familiar thing in Israel, a payment that freed a person from slavery, from debt or from a sentence of death, and the psalm lifts the idea to its highest use, the buying back of a soul from death. That price is “precious”, and yâqar describes what is costly, rare and weighty. A human soul outweighs every fortune on earth, and its price lies out of reach of the richest man alive. “It ceaseth for ever” joins châdal, to cease or leave off, to lʻôwlâm, for ever. Every human attempt to pay has to be given up for good.

The KJV sets verse 8 in brackets, and verse 9 completes the sentence begun in verse 7. The ransom would have bought this: “That he should still live for ever, and not see corruption.” The word for “for ever” here is netsach, which speaks of long, unbroken duration, a life that simply goes on. To “see” (râʼâh) is the Hebrew way of saying to experience. Shachath means the pit, destruction and corruption, and here it is the decay of the body in the grave.

The wisdom books say the same thing plainly. Riches are of no profit in the day of wrath (Proverbs 11:4), man born of woman is of few days (Job 14:1–2), and the wise man dies just as the fool does (Ecclesiastes 2:16). Paul traces the cause to its root, for death entered the world through sin and passed to all men (Romans 5:12), which is why the debt lies outside the reach of money.

Verse 10 appeals to what anyone can see, and the verb is râʼâh again. The man who will “see corruption” already sees death all around him.

Three kinds of people are named. The wise man is the châkâm, the person of discernment and practical understanding. The fool is the kᵉçîyl, the wisdom books’ usual word for the stupid and silly person who will take no instruction. The “brutish person” is baʻar, someone senseless and dull, who lives without thought of God as an animal might. All three meet the same end. The wise “die”, and the others “perish”, where ʼâbad properly means to wander away and be lost, and so to perish.

Wisdom keeps its full worth in Scripture, for “the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10). What the verse marks is its limit: the keenest human understanding still arrives at the grave.

Then comes the line that undoes the boast of verse 6. They “leave their wealth to others.” The wealth is chayil again, the strength they trusted, and now they leave it (ʻâzab, to forsake or leave behind) to others (ʼachêr, another, someone else). Inheritance was the ordinary custom, and the psalm shows what it means for the dead man, who keeps none of it. The Preacher felt the same sting: he hated all his labour because he must leave it to the man who comes after him, and who knows whether that man will be wise or a fool (Ecclesiastes 2:18–19)? His verdict was “vanity of vanities; all is vanity” (Ecclesiastes 1:2). Jesus tells of a rich man who planned bigger barns and many easy years, and whose soul was required of him that very night (Luke 12:16–21).

Verse 11 goes behind the boasting to what these people believe. “Their inward thought” is qereb, the inward part, the centre of a person. This is the settled conviction they live by, deeper than anything they say aloud.

They think “that their houses shall continue for ever”. A house, bayith, is a building, and it is also a family, a line, a dynasty, so the hope covers the estate and the family name together. “For ever” is ʻôwlâm, time out of mind, the same word verse 8 used when it said that the hope of paying the ransom “ceaseth for ever”. They expect their houses to last as long as the ransom stays unpaid. “Their dwelling places”, mishkân, are the places where they live, and “to all generations” uses dôwr, a generation or age.

Then the inward thought comes out in an act: “they call their lands after their own names.” To call (qârâʼ) is to give a name. The land (ʼădâmâh) is the ground itself, the soil they own. A name (shêm) in Scripture carries a person’s honour and memory along with it. In Israel land meant standing and continuity as well as income, and kings, nobles and rich men commonly put their names on estates, cities and monuments so that they would be remembered.

The naming is a symptom, and the fault lies in the thought behind it, the belief that a name on a deed can outlast death. Jesus points to a safer place for treasure than the earth, “where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal” (Matthew 6:19–21).

Verse 12 is the passage’s verdict, and it comes just before the psalm turns to the hope of those who trust God. “Nevertheless man being in honour abideth not: he is like the beasts that perish.”

“Man” is ʼâdâm, the word for a human being and for mankind, so the saying covers everyone. “Honour” is yᵉqâr, value, splendour and esteem. It takes in wealth, rank, power and reputation, the very things the rich were trusting. “Abideth” is lûwn, to stop for the night, to lodge. The honoured man is a traveller who is gone by morning. They thought their houses would stand for ever, and they themselves were only lodging.

“Perish” is dâmâh, to be dumb or silent, and so to fail, to be cut off, to be brought to an end. It is a different word from the “perish” of verse 10. Ecclesiastes says the same of the body: man and beast have one breath, all go to one place, all are of the dust and turn to dust again (Ecclesiastes 3:19–20), and one event comes alike to the righteous and the wicked (Ecclesiastes 9:2).

The psalm says what every man is unable to do, and the gospel says that God has done it. Jesus told his disciples that the Son of man came “to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Paul writes of the one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, “who gave himself a ransom for all” (1 Timothy 2:5–6). He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). While we were still sinners he died for us (Romans 5:8), he died for our sins and rose again the third day (1 Corinthians 15:3–4), and he redeemed us from the curse of the law (Galatians 3:13).

Peter answers verse 8 almost word for word. We were redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, and silver and gold, which perish, had no part in the price (1 Peter 1:18–19). The redemption that was too precious for any fortune was paid with something more precious still. So we have redemption through his blood (Ephesians 1:7), and though all have sinned, we are justified freely by God’s grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus (Romans 3:23–24). The one who was rich became poor for our sakes, that we through his poverty might be rich (2 Corinthians 8:9).

Verse 9 finds its answer in him too. The same word for corruption stands in the promise, “neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption” (Psalm 16:10). Peter preached at Pentecost that this was spoken of Christ’s resurrection (Acts 2:27), and Paul said the same at Antioch: David died and saw corruption, and he whom God raised saw none (Acts 13:35–37). Jesus laid down his life of his own will and took it again (John 10:17–18). Through death he destroyed the one who had the power of death and freed those who all their lives were held in bondage by the fear of it (Hebrews 2:14–15), and he now holds the keys of hell and of death (Revelation 1:18). Everlasting life, which money fails to buy, is the gift of God to all who believe in his Son (John 3:16, Romans 6:23).

The other verses meet him as well. He is the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:24) and the heir of all things (Hebrews 1:2), and yet he died as the wise of verse 10 die, and he rose. In place of wealth left to strangers he gives an inheritance that is incorruptible and does not fade away, kept in heaven (1 Peter 1:3–4). In place of houses that pass to others we have “an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Corinthians 5:1). Men put their own names on their lands, and God has given the name above every name to the one who humbled himself to death on a cross (Philippians 2:8–11). Honour that lodges for a night gives way to “a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory” (2 Corinthians 4:17).

The psalmist began with a question about fear, and these verses give us his reason for peace. The people who look strongest in evil days are holding something that will be taken from them, and the God who redeems from the grave is ours for ever. In Christ the answer is complete. Death is swallowed up in victory (1 Corinthians 15:54–57), Jesus has overcome the world in which we have tribulation (John 16:33), and neither death nor life nor any other created thing is able to separate us from the love of God in him (Romans 8:38–39).

The passage also shows us our own hearts. The trust of verse 6 and the inward thought of verse 11 are common to rich and poor, since any of us can lean on savings, work, a house or a good name as if they would last. God is kind to tell us the truth about them before the day we leave them. What we own is his gift to enjoy and to use for him, and our souls are safe only in his hands, bought at a price he paid himself.