Who May Dwell with the Lord?

The preceding Psalm closed with the words לא ימּוט; this word of promise is repeated in Psa 16:8 as an utterance of faith in the mouth of David. We are here confronted by a pattern of the unchangeable believing confidence of a friend of God; for the writer of Psa 16:1-11 is in danger of death, as is to be inferred from the prayer expressed in Psa 16:1 and the expectation in Psa 16:10.

But there is no trace of anything like bitter complaint, gloomy conflict, or hard struggle: the cry for help is immediately swallowed up by an overpowering and blessed consciousness and a bright hope. There reigns in the whole Psalm, a settled calm, an inward joy, and a joyous confidence, which is certain that everything that it can desire for the present and for the future it possesses in its God.

The Psalm is inscribed לדוד; and Hitzig also confesses that “David may be inferred from its language. ” Whatever can mark a Psalm as Davidic we find combined in this Psalm: thoughts crowding together in compressed language, which becomes in Psa 16:4 bold even to harshness, but then becomes clear and moves more rapidly; an antiquated, peculiar, and highly poetic impress (אדני, my Lord , מנת, נחלת, שׁפר, תּומיך); and a well-devised grouping of the strophes.

In addition to all these, there are manifold points of contact with indisputably genuine Davidic Psalms (comp. e. g. , Psa 16:5 with Psa 11:6; Psa 16:10 with Psa 4:4; Psa 16:11 with Psa 17:15), and with indisputably ancient portions of the Pentateuch (Exo 23:13; Exo 19:6; Gen 49:6). Scarcely any other Psalm shows so clearly as this, what deep roots psalm-poetry has struck into the Tôra, both as it regards the matter and the language.

Concerning the circumstances of its composition, vid. , on Psa 30:1-12. The superscription מכתּם לדוד, Psa 16:1-11 has in common with Psa 56:1. After the analogy of the other superscriptions, it must have a technical meaning. This at once militates against Hitzig’s explanation, that it is a poem hitherto unknown, an ἀνέκδοτον, according to the Arabic mâktum , hidden, secret, just as also against the meaning keimee'lion, which says nothing further to help us.

The lxx translates it στηλογραφία (εἰς στηλογραφίαν), instead of which the Old Latin version has tituli inscriptio (Hesychius τίτλος· πτυχίον ἐπίγραμμα ἔχον). That this translation accords with the tradition is shown by that of the Targum גּליפא תריצא sculptura recta (not erecta as Hupfeld renders it). Both versions give the verb the meaning כּתם insculpere , which is supported both by a comparison with כּתב, cogn.

חצב, עצב, and by חתם imprimere ( sigillum ). Moreover, the sin of Israel is called נכתּם in Jer 2:22 (cf. Psa 17:1) as being a deeply impressed spot, not to be wiped out. If we now look more closely into the Michtam Psalms as a whole, we find they have two prevailing features in common. Sometimes significant and remarkable words are introduced by אמרתּי, וימר, דּבּר, Psa 16:2; 58:12; Psa 60:8, cf.

Isa 38:10-11 (in Hezekiah’s psalm, which is inscribed מכתּב = מכתּם as it is perhaps to be read); sometimes words of this character are repeated after the manner of a refrain, as in Psa 56:1-13 : I will not fear, what can man do to me! in Psa 57:1-11 : Be Thou exalted, Elohim, above the heavens, Thy glory above all the earth! and in Ps 59: For Elohim is my high tower, my merciful God .

Hezekiah’s psalm unites this characteristic with the other. Accordingly מכתם, like ἐπίγραμμα, appears to mean first of all an inscription and then to be equivalent to an inscription-poem or epigram, a poem containing pithy sayings; since in the Psalms of this order some expressive sentence, after the style of an inscription or a motto on a monument, is brought prominently forward, by being either specially introduced or repeated as a refrain.

The strophe-schema is 5. 5. 6. 7. The last strophe, which has grown to seven lines, is an expression of joyous hopes in the face of death, which extend onward even into eternity.

Psa 16:1-3 The Psalm begins with a prayer that is based upon faith, the special meaning of which becomes clear from Psa 16:10 : May God preserve him (which He is able to do as being אל, the Almighty, able to do all things), who has no other refuge in which he has hidden and will hide but Him. This short introit is excepted from the parallelism; so far therefore it is monostichic, - a sigh expressing everything in few words.

And the emphatic pronunciation שׁמרני shāmereni harmonises with it; for it is to be read thus, just as in Psa 86:2; Psa 119:167 shāmerah (cf. on Isa 38:14 עשׁקה), according to the express testimony of the Masora. The text of the next two verses (so it appears) needs to be improved in two respects. The reading אמרתּ as addressed to the soul (Targ.) , cf. Lam 3:24.

, is opposed by the absence of any mention of the thing addressed. It rests upon a misconception of the defective form of writing, אמרתּ (Ges. §44, rem. 4). Hitzig and Ewald (§190, d ) suppose that in such cases a rejection of the final vowel, which really occurs in the language of the people, after the manner of the Aramaic (אמרת or אמרת), lies at the bottom of the form.

And it does really seem as though the frequent occurrence of this defective form (ידעת = ידעתי Psa 140:13; Job 42:2, בנית = בניתי 1Ki 8:48, עשׂית = עשׂיתי Eze 16:59, cf. 2Ki 18:20, אמרת now pointed אמרת, with Isa 36:5) has its occasion at least in some such cutting away of the i , peculiar to the language of the common people; although, if David wrote it so, אמרת is not intended to be read otherwise than it is in Psa 31:15; Psa 140:7.

First of all David gives expression to his confession of Jahve, to whom he submits himself unconditionally, and whom he sets above everything else without exception. Since the suffix of אדני (properly domini mei = domine mi , Gen 18:3, cf. Psa 19:2), which has become mostly lost sight of in the usage of the language, now and then retains its original meaning, as it does indisputably in Psa 35:23, it is certainly to be rendered also here: “Thou art my Lord” and not “Thou art the Lord.

” The emphasis lies expressly on the “my. ” It is the unreserved and joyous feeling of dependence (more that of the little child, than of the servant), which is expressed in this first confession. For, as the second clause of the confession says: Jahve, who is his Lord, is also his benefactor, yea even his highest good. The preposition על frequently introduces that which extends beyond something else, Gen 48:22 (cf.

Psa 89:8; Psa 95:3), and to this passage may be added Gen 31:50; Gen 32:12; Exo 35:22; Num 31:8; Deu 19:9; Deu 22:6, the one thing being above, or co-ordinate with, the other. So also here: “my good, i. e. , whatever makes me truly happy, is not above Thee,” i. e. , in addition to Thee, beside Thee; according to the sense it is equivalent to out of Thee or without Thee (as the Targ.

, Symm. , and Jerome render it), Thou alone, without exception, art my good. In connection with this rendering of the על, the בּל (poetic, and contracted from בּלי), which is unknown to the literature before David’s time, presents no difficulty. As in Pro 23:7 it is short for בּל־תּהיה. Hengstenberg remarks, “Just as Thou art the Lord! is the response of the soul to the words I am the Lord thy God (Exo 20:2), so Thou only art my salvation!

is the response to Thou shalt have no other gods beside Me (על־פּני). ” The psalmist knows no fountain of true happiness but Jahve, in Him he possesses all, his treasure is in Heaven. Such is his confession to Jahve. But he also has those on earth to whom he makes confession. Transposing the w we read: ולקדושׁים אשׁר בּארץ המּה אדּירי כל־חפצי־בם׃ While Diestel’s alteration: “to the saints, who are in his land, he makes himself glorious, and all his delight is in them,” is altogether strange to this verse: the above transfer of the Waw suffices to remove its difficulties, and that in a way quite in accordance with the connection.

Now it is clear, that לקדושׁים, as has been supposed by some, is the dative governed by אמרתּי, the influence of which is thus carried forward; it is clear what is meant by the addition אשׁר בארץ, which distinguishes the object of his affection here below from the One above, who is incomparably the highest; it is clear, as to what המּה defines, whereas otherwise this purely descriptive relative clause אשׁר בּארץ המּה (which von Ortenberg transposes into אשׁר ארצה בהמּה) appears to be useless and surprises one both on account of its redundancy (since המה is superfluous, cf. e.

g. , 2Sa 7:9; 2Sa 2:18) and on account of its arrangement of the words (an arrangement, which is usual in connection with a negative construction, Deu 20:15; 2Ch 8:7, cf. Gen 9:3; Eze 12:10); it is clear, in what sense אדירי alternates with קדושׁים, since it is not those who are accounted by the world as אדיריס on account of their worldly power and possessions (Psa 136:18, 2Ch 23:20), but the holy, prized by him as being also glorious, partakers of higher glory and worthy of higher honour; and moreover, this corrected arrangement of the verse harmonises with the Michtam character of the Psalm.

The thought thus obtained, is the thought one expected (love to God and love to His saints), and the one which one is also obliged to wring from the text as we have it, either by translating with De Welte, Maurer, Dietrich and others: “the saints who are in the land, they are the excellent in whom I have all my delight,” - a Waw apodoseos , with which one could only be satisfied if it were והמּה (cf. 2Sa 15:34) - or: “the saints who are in the land and the glorious-all my delight is in them.

” By both these interpretations, ל would be the exponent of the nom. absol . which is elsewhere detached and placed at the beginning of a sentence, and this l of reference (Ew. §310, a) is really common to every style (Num 18:8; Isa 32:1; Ecc 9:4); whereas the ל understood of the fellowship in which he stands when thus making confession to Jahve: associating myself with the saints (Hengst.)

, with (von Lengerke), among the saints (Hupf. , Thenius), would be a preposition most liable to be misapprehended, and makes Psa 16:3 a cumbersome appendage of Psa 16:2. But if l be taken as the Lamed of reference then the elliptical construct ואדּירי, to which הארץ ought to be supplied, remains a stumbling-block not to be easily set aside. For such an isolation of the connecting form from its genitive cannot be shown to be syntactically possible in Hebrew (vid.

, on 2Ki 9:17, Thenius, and Keil); nor are we compelled to suppose in this instance what cannot be proved elsewhere, since כל־חפצי־בם is, without any harshness, subordinate to ואדירי as a genitival notion (Ges. §116, 3). And still in connection with the reading ואדירי, both the formation of the sentence which, beginning with ל, leads one to expect an apodosis, and the relation of Psa 16:3 to Psa 16:2, according to which the central point of the declaration must lie just within כל־חפצי־בם, are opposed to this rendering of the words ואדירי כל־חפצי־כם.

Thus, therefore, we come back to the above easy improvement of the text. קושׁים are those in whom the will of Jahve concerning Israel, that it should be a holy nation (Exo 19:6; Deu 7:6), has been fulfilled, viz. , the living members of the ecclesia sanctorum in this world (for there is also one in the other world, Psa 89:6). Glory, δόξα, is the outward manifestation of holiness.

It is ordained of God for the sanctified (cf. Rom 8:30), whose moral nobility is now for the present veiled under the menial form of the עני; and in the eyes of David they already possess it. His spiritual vision pierces through the outward form of the servant. His verdict is like the verdict of God, who is his all in all. The saints, and they only, are the excellent to him.

His whole delight is centred in them, all his respect and affection is given to them. The congregation of the saints is his Chephzibah , Isa 62:4 (cf. 2Ki 21:1).

Psa 16:1-3 The Psalm begins with a prayer that is based upon faith, the special meaning of which becomes clear from Psa 16:10 : May God preserve him (which He is able to do as being אל, the Almighty, able to do all things), who has no other refuge in which he has hidden and will hide but Him. This short introit is excepted from the parallelism; so far therefore it is monostichic, - a sigh expressing everything in few words.

And the emphatic pronunciation שׁמרני shāmereni harmonises with it; for it is to be read thus, just as in Psa 86:2; Psa 119:167 shāmerah (cf. on Isa 38:14 עשׁקה), according to the express testimony of the Masora. The text of the next two verses (so it appears) needs to be improved in two respects. The reading אמרתּ as addressed to the soul (Targ.) , cf. Lam 3:24.

, is opposed by the absence of any mention of the thing addressed. It rests upon a misconception of the defective form of writing, אמרתּ (Ges. §44, rem. 4). Hitzig and Ewald (§190, d ) suppose that in such cases a rejection of the final vowel, which really occurs in the language of the people, after the manner of the Aramaic (אמרת or אמרת), lies at the bottom of the form.

And it does really seem as though the frequent occurrence of this defective form (ידעת = ידעתי Psa 140:13; Job 42:2, בנית = בניתי 1Ki 8:48, עשׂית = עשׂיתי Eze 16:59, cf. 2Ki 18:20, אמרת now pointed אמרת, with Isa 36:5) has its occasion at least in some such cutting away of the i , peculiar to the language of the common people; although, if David wrote it so, אמרת is not intended to be read otherwise than it is in Psa 31:15; Psa 140:7.

First of all David gives expression to his confession of Jahve, to whom he submits himself unconditionally, and whom he sets above everything else without exception. Since the suffix of אדני (properly domini mei = domine mi , Gen 18:3, cf. Psa 19:2), which has become mostly lost sight of in the usage of the language, now and then retains its original meaning, as it does indisputably in Psa 35:23, it is certainly to be rendered also here: “Thou art my Lord” and not “Thou art the Lord.

” The emphasis lies expressly on the “my. ” It is the unreserved and joyous feeling of dependence (more that of the little child, than of the servant), which is expressed in this first confession. For, as the second clause of the confession says: Jahve, who is his Lord, is also his benefactor, yea even his highest good. The preposition על frequently introduces that which extends beyond something else, Gen 48:22 (cf.

Psa 89:8; Psa 95:3), and to this passage may be added Gen 31:50; Gen 32:12; Exo 35:22; Num 31:8; Deu 19:9; Deu 22:6, the one thing being above, or co-ordinate with, the other. So also here: “my good, i. e. , whatever makes me truly happy, is not above Thee,” i. e. , in addition to Thee, beside Thee; according to the sense it is equivalent to out of Thee or without Thee (as the Targ.

, Symm. , and Jerome render it), Thou alone, without exception, art my good. In connection with this rendering of the על, the בּל (poetic, and contracted from בּלי), which is unknown to the literature before David’s time, presents no difficulty. As in Pro 23:7 it is short for בּל־תּהיה. Hengstenberg remarks, “Just as Thou art the Lord! is the response of the soul to the words I am the Lord thy God (Exo 20:2), so Thou only art my salvation!

is the response to Thou shalt have no other gods beside Me (על־פּני). ” The psalmist knows no fountain of true happiness but Jahve, in Him he possesses all, his treasure is in Heaven. Such is his confession to Jahve. But he also has those on earth to whom he makes confession. Transposing the w we read: ולקדושׁים אשׁר בּארץ המּה אדּירי כל־חפצי־בם׃ While Diestel’s alteration: “to the saints, who are in his land, he makes himself glorious, and all his delight is in them,” is altogether strange to this verse: the above transfer of the Waw suffices to remove its difficulties, and that in a way quite in accordance with the connection.

Now it is clear, that לקדושׁים, as has been supposed by some, is the dative governed by אמרתּי, the influence of which is thus carried forward; it is clear what is meant by the addition אשׁר בארץ, which distinguishes the object of his affection here below from the One above, who is incomparably the highest; it is clear, as to what המּה defines, whereas otherwise this purely descriptive relative clause אשׁר בּארץ המּה (which von Ortenberg transposes into אשׁר ארצה בהמּה) appears to be useless and surprises one both on account of its redundancy (since המה is superfluous, cf. e.

g. , 2Sa 7:9; 2Sa 2:18) and on account of its arrangement of the words (an arrangement, which is usual in connection with a negative construction, Deu 20:15; 2Ch 8:7, cf. Gen 9:3; Eze 12:10); it is clear, in what sense אדירי alternates with קדושׁים, since it is not those who are accounted by the world as אדיריס on account of their worldly power and possessions (Psa 136:18, 2Ch 23:20), but the holy, prized by him as being also glorious, partakers of higher glory and worthy of higher honour; and moreover, this corrected arrangement of the verse harmonises with the Michtam character of the Psalm.

The thought thus obtained, is the thought one expected (love to God and love to His saints), and the one which one is also obliged to wring from the text as we have it, either by translating with De Welte, Maurer, Dietrich and others: “the saints who are in the land, they are the excellent in whom I have all my delight,” - a Waw apodoseos , with which one could only be satisfied if it were והמּה (cf. 2Sa 15:34) - or: “the saints who are in the land and the glorious-all my delight is in them.

” By both these interpretations, ל would be the exponent of the nom. absol . which is elsewhere detached and placed at the beginning of a sentence, and this l of reference (Ew. §310, a) is really common to every style (Num 18:8; Isa 32:1; Ecc 9:4); whereas the ל understood of the fellowship in which he stands when thus making confession to Jahve: associating myself with the saints (Hengst.)

, with (von Lengerke), among the saints (Hupf. , Thenius), would be a preposition most liable to be misapprehended, and makes Psa 16:3 a cumbersome appendage of Psa 16:2. But if l be taken as the Lamed of reference then the elliptical construct ואדּירי, to which הארץ ought to be supplied, remains a stumbling-block not to be easily set aside. For such an isolation of the connecting form from its genitive cannot be shown to be syntactically possible in Hebrew (vid.

, on 2Ki 9:17, Thenius, and Keil); nor are we compelled to suppose in this instance what cannot be proved elsewhere, since כל־חפצי־בם is, without any harshness, subordinate to ואדירי as a genitival notion (Ges. §116, 3). And still in connection with the reading ואדירי, both the formation of the sentence which, beginning with ל, leads one to expect an apodosis, and the relation of Psa 16:3 to Psa 16:2, according to which the central point of the declaration must lie just within כל־חפצי־בם, are opposed to this rendering of the words ואדירי כל־חפצי־כם.

Thus, therefore, we come back to the above easy improvement of the text. קושׁים are those in whom the will of Jahve concerning Israel, that it should be a holy nation (Exo 19:6; Deu 7:6), has been fulfilled, viz. , the living members of the ecclesia sanctorum in this world (for there is also one in the other world, Psa 89:6). Glory, δόξα, is the outward manifestation of holiness.

It is ordained of God for the sanctified (cf. Rom 8:30), whose moral nobility is now for the present veiled under the menial form of the עני; and in the eyes of David they already possess it. His spiritual vision pierces through the outward form of the servant. His verdict is like the verdict of God, who is his all in all. The saints, and they only, are the excellent to him.

His whole delight is centred in them, all his respect and affection is given to them. The congregation of the saints is his Chephzibah , Isa 62:4 (cf. 2Ki 21:1).

Psa 16:4-5 As he loves the saints so, on the other hand, he abhors the apostates and their idols. אהר מהרוּ is to be construed as an appositional relative clause to the preceding: multi sunt cruciatus (cf. Psa 32:10) eorum, eorum scil. qui alium permutant . The expression would flow on more smoothly if it were ירבּוּ: they multiply, or increase their pains, who...

, so that אחר מהרו would be the subject, for instance like אהבו ה (he whom Jahve loves), Isa 48:14. This Psa 16:4 forms a perfect antithesis to Psa 16:3. In David’s eyes the saints are already the glorified, in whom his delight centres; while, as he knows, a future full of anguish is in store for the idolatrous, and their worship, yea, their very names are an abomination to him.

The suffixes of נסכּיהם and שׁמותם might be referred to the idols according to Exo 23:13; Hos 2:19, if אהר be taken collectively as equivalent to אחר ם, as in Job 8:19. But it is more natural to assign the same reference to them as to the suffix of עצּבותם, which does not signify “their idols” (for idols are עצבּים), but their torments, pains (from עצּבת derived from עצּב), Psa 147:3; Job 9:28.

The thought is similar to 1Ti 6:10, ἑαυτοὺς περιέπειραν ὀδύναις ποικίλαις. אהר is a general designation of the broadest kind for everything that is not God, but which man makes his idol beside God and in opposition to God (cf. Isa 42:8; Isa 48:11). מהרוּ cannot mean festinant , for in this signification it is only found in Piel מהר, and that once with a local, but not a personal, accusative of the direction, Nah 2:6.

It is therefore to be rendered (and the perf . is also better adapted to this meaning): they have taken in exchange that which is not God (מהר like המיר, Psa 106:20; Jer 2:11). Perhaps (cf. the phrase זנה אהרי) the secondary meaning of wooing and fondling is connected with it; for מהר is the proper word for acquiring a wife by paying down the price asked by her father, Exo 22:15.

With such persons, who may seem to be אדּירים in the eyes of the world, but for whom a future full of anguish is in store, David has nothing whatever to do: he will not pour out drink-offerings as they pour them out. נסכּיהם has the Dag . lene , as it always has. They are not called מדּם as actually consisting of blood, or of wine actually mingled with blood; but consisting as it were of blood, because they are offered with blood-stained hands and blood-guilty consciences.

מן is the min of derivation; in this instance (as in Amo 4:5, cf. Hos 6:8) of the material, and is used in other instances also for similar virtually adjectival expressions. Psa 10:18; Psa 17:14; Psa 80:14. In Psa 16:4 the expression of his abhorrence attains its climax: even their names, i. e. , the names of their false gods, which they call out, he shuns taking upon his lips, just as is actually forbidden in the Tôra, Exo 23:13 (cf.

Const. Apost . V. 10 εἴδωλον μνημονεύειν ὀνόματα δαιμονικά). ; He takes the side of Jahve. Whatever he may wish for, he possesses in Him; and whatever he has in Him, is always secured to him by Him. חלקי does not here mean food (Böttch.) , for in this sense חלק (Lev 6:10) and מגה (1Sa 1:4) are identical; and parallel passages like Psa 142:6 show what חלקי means when applied to Jahve.

According to Psa 11:6, כוסי is also a genitive just like חלקי; מנת חלק is the share of landed property assigned to any one; מנת כּוס the share of the cup according to paternal apportionment. The tribe of Levi received no territory in the distribution of the country, from which they might have maintained themselves; Jahve was to be their חלק, Num 18:20, and the gifts consecrated to Jahve were to be their food, Deu 10:9; Deu 18:1.

But nevertheless all Israel is βασίλειον ἱεράτευμα, Exo 19:6, towards which even קדושׁים and אדרים in Psa 16:3 pointed; so that, therefore, the very thing represented by the tribe of Levi in outward relation to the nation, holds good, in all its deep spiritual significance, of every believer. It is not anything earthly, visible, created, and material, that is allotted to him as his possession and his sustenance, but Jahve and Him only; but in Him is perfect contentment.

In Psa 16:5 , תּומיך, as it stands, looks at first sight as though it were the Hiph . of a verb ימך (ומך). But such a verb is not to be found anywhere else, we must therefore seek some other explanation of the word. It cannot be a substantive in the signification of possession (Maurer, Ewald), for such a substantival form does not exist. It might more readily be explained as a participle = תּומך, somewhat like יוסיף, Isa 29:4; Isa 38:5; Ecc 1:18, = יוסף, - a comparison which has been made by Aben-Ezra ( Sefath Jether No.

421) and Kimchi ( Michlol 11 a ), - a form of the participle to which, in writing at least, סוכיב, 2Ki 8:21, forms a transition; but there is good reason to doubt the existence of such a form. Had the poet intended to use the part . of תמך, it is more probable he would have written אתה תּומכי גורלי, just as the lxx translators might have had it before them, taking the Chirek compaginis as a suffix: σὺ εἶ ὁ ἀποκαθιστῶν τὴν κληρονομίαν μου ἐμοί (Böttcher).

For the conjecture of Olshausen and Thenius, תּוסיף in the sense: “thou art continually my portion” halts both in thought and expression. Hitzig’s conjecture תּוּמּיך “thou, thy Tummîm are my lot,” is more successful and tempting. But the fact that the תּמּים are never found (not even in Deu 33:8) without the אוּרים, is against it. Nevertheless, we should prefer this conjecture to the other explanations, if the word would not admit of being explained as Hiph .

from ימך (ומך), which is the most natural explanation. Schultens has compared the Arabic wamika , to be broad, from which there is a Hiphil form Arab. awmaka , to make broad, in Syro-Arabic, that is in use even in the present day among the common people. And since we must at any rate come down to the supposition of something unusual about this תומיך, it is surely not too bold to regard it as a ἅπαξ γεγραμμ.

: Thou makest broad my lot, i. e. , ensurest for me a spacious habitation, a broad place, as the possession that falleth to me, - a thought, that is expanded in Psa 16:6.