[9] Being assured of his lifelong communion
with God, the psalmist’s heart is filled with gladness and he breaks forth into
rejoicing. He knows that in the future he will be safe in God’s arms, and that
this is true both of his body and his soul. In this connection attention must
be drawn to the fact that he gives expression to that optimistic conviction,
based on faith, at the very moment when his thoughts turn to the contemplation
of death! [10] Indeed, it is
precisely what he feels bound to say as he faces the thought of death—which
does not frighten him, but on the contrary gives him confidence (cf. the
connecting word ‘for’). Opinions are divided as to the concrete meaning of the
statement made in v. 10. The great majority of more recent expositors hold the
view that what the author has in mind is that God will protect him from a
sudden, untimely, or evil death. However, neither the wording of the verse nor
the general circumstances and attitude of the poet suggest such an
interpretation; moreover, it is precisely the decisive feature of that
interpretation—the specific kind of death—which is read into the text. There is
no reason to doubt that the poet, speaking of death in quite general terms, has
in mind death as such, that is, death in general, and that by virtue of his
faith in God he is progressing towards the conquest of the fear of death in his
heart. How he actually conceives of the particular circumstances of that
process cannot be clearly deduced from his statement. If the second half of the
verse is translated as an exact parallel to the first half, as has been done
here, we might be able to think that the psalmist will be taken up by God into
heaven (cf. Gen. 5:24; 2 Kings 2:1 ff.). If the word which in accordance with
its usual meaning we have rendered ‘pit’, is derived from the Hebrew root of
the word ‘decay’ (= rot), then it may be possible to infer from that reading
that the psalmist is here thinking of the resurrection from the dead. Such an
interpretation—and it is not impossible—would be in keeping with the Greek
translation and with the New Testament, where the verse has been interpreted as
referring to the resurrection of Jesus (Acts 2:25 ff.; 13:35). It seems to me,
however, that in attempting to interpret the psalmist’s statement the question
of how he conceives of his being
spared death has been given undue prominence by the very manner in which that
question has been formulated; and this view is supported by the true meaning of
the psalm itself. The poet, at any rate—probably deliberately—does not
particularly emphasize that question. Presumably he refrains from doing so in
the first place because, standing as he does in the front line of those who are
opposed to the religious practices of their time, he does not want to expose
himself to being accused of paganism by adopting the belief in the resurrection
from the dead, which after all was encouraged in the worship of the vegetation
gods (cf. the cultic myth of Baal and Mot in the Ras Shamra texts and Hos. 6:1
ff.); and secondly, and this is what matters most, because, on the basis of his
faith in God, the ‘that’ is of greater importance to him than the ‘how’ (cf.
also the comments on v. 11). True, the author wants to express the fact that
his belief in the overcoming of death is equal to that of others. But the
source from which he derives his belief is a different one. It is the same
source which has become manifest throughout the psalm as the foundation of the
psalmist’s faithful optimism—a life lived in communion with God. Where such a
life in communion with God involves the whole man, there death for all
practical purposes loses that dreadful importance which it has for those people
whose sense of life is rather naïve. The problem of death here gives way, not
to an excessive craving for the enjoyment of life to the full in the natural
sense, but to the abundance of life lived on a higher level which flows from
communion with God. By reaching a deeper religious insight into the meaning of
life, the worshipper, in fact, considers the problem of death as no longer the
most crucial question. This is the course which the psalmist adopts to overcome
death. To the life-giving power of God in which the poet is privileged to
share, death and the underworld are no insurmountable obstacles which could
shatter that living communion with God. Living in utter dependence on God as he
does, the psalmist possesses the victorious power that is able to overcome
death. In the light of this interpretation we come to understand the sense in
which the verse in question has been used in the New Testament. There can be no
doubt that v. 10 is not meant to be understood as a prophetic prediction of the
resurrection of Jesus, but the New Testament teaching of the resurrection from
the dead and the thoughts which here occupy the mind of the psalmist are based
on the same fundamental conviction, namely, an unshakable belief in the
life-giving power of God (which in the resurrection of Christ has definitely
conquered death). (Artur Weister, The Psalms: A Commentary [The
Old Testament Library; Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1988], 176-78)
