Psalms 16

Key Terms

Translator Notes

1. miktam appears six times in the Psalter (Psalms 16, 56-60) and nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible. The Septuagint translates it as stelographia ('inscription on a pillar'). The meaning remains uncertain, but the word may relate to ketem ('gold') or to katam ('to cover, conceal').

Translator Notes

1. The Hebrew of this verse is among the most debated in the Psalter. The second-person feminine form amarte is unusual (either an archaic form or addressed to the psalmist's own soul). The phrase tovati bal alekha has generated at least four major interpretive traditions. Our rendering follows the dominant reading: 'I have no good apart from you.'

Translator Notes

1. The identity of the qedoshim ('holy ones') is debated. They may be human saints (faithful Israelites), heavenly beings (as in some readings of Deuteronomy 33:2-3), or both. The context — 'in the land' (ba-arets) — favors human referents: the faithful community in Israel.

Translator Notes

1. The phrase niskeihem mi-dam ('their drink offerings of blood') likely refers to pagan rituals involving blood libations, which were forbidden in Israelite worship. Some scholars see this as a reference to human sacrifice or to rituals involving the mingling of blood with wine in the drink offering.
2. The ambiguity of atsvotam ('their sorrows' or 'their idols') is productive: pursuing false gods generates both — the idols themselves and the misery they bring.

Key Terms

Translator Notes

1. The four inheritance terms (menat, cheleq, kos, goral) are drawn from the concrete world of land allotment and applied to the relationship with God. This is not abstract theology but economic metaphor: the psalmist's wealth, security, and future are invested entirely in God.

Key Terms

Translator Notes

1. chavalim ('lines, ropes, measuring cords') comes from the practice of dividing land with ropes. The idiom 'the lines have fallen' means 'my portion has been assigned.' The image is of a person standing on their newly measured property, looking around, and finding it genuinely delightful.

Translator Notes

1. kilayot ('kidneys') as the seat of deep thought and emotion appears in Jeremiah 17:10 ('I the LORD search the heart and examine the kidneys') and Psalm 139:13 ('you formed my kidneys'). Translating as 'inner being' preserves the function while avoiding the anatomical literalism.

Translator Notes

1. The phrase shivviti YHVH le-negdi tamid became so central to Jewish spirituality that it was inscribed on plaques (called shivviti plaques) hung in synagogues and homes as a visual reminder to keep God constantly in view.

Key Terms

Translator Notes

1. kevod ('glory') as a term for the human soul or essential self appears also in Psalm 7:5 and 57:8. The Septuagint translates it as 'my tongue' (glossa), perhaps reading kavod as kaved ('liver'). Peter's quotation in Acts 2:26 follows the Septuagint: 'my tongue rejoiced.'

Key Terms

Translator Notes

1. She'ol in the Hebrew Bible is not hell in the later Christian sense. It is the shadowy underworld where all the dead go — not a place of punishment for the wicked but the default destination of all who die. The psalm's remarkable claim is not that the psalmist avoids punishment but that the psalmist avoids the normal fate of all humanity: descent into She'ol.
2. shachat can mean 'pit' (a place) or 'corruption, decay' (a process). The Septuagint translates it as diaphthora ('corruption, decay'), which becomes theologically significant in Peter's argument in Acts 2:31 — David's body did see decay, but the one David prophesied about did not.

Key Terms

Translator Notes

1. The progression from 'path of life' to 'fullness of joy' to 'pleasures forever' creates an escalating trajectory that carries the reader beyond the boundaries of this life into something that sounds like eternal communion with God. Whether the original psalmist understood this as life after death in the later theological sense is debated, but the language strains toward a reality that death cannot contain.
2. This verse has been called the high-water mark of Old Testament hope. It does not describe survival after death in explicit terms, but it describes a relationship with God so full, so joyful, and so permanent that death seems unable to interrupt it.