Psalms 16:10

10. Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell “Hell” is here used in its old English sense, in which it is the fittest English word for the Hebrew שׁאול , ( sheol,) and its corresponding Greek, αδης , ( hades,) both signifying, pit, grave, under world, unseen world, region of the dead, especially the place of departed spirits, whether good or bad. Our English translators have rendered sheol by grave thirty times out of the sixty-four times it occurs. It sometimes means the place of future punishment, never the region of the blessed; the context always determining its specific sense in a given place. The text in the original simply reads, “Thou wilt not abandon my soul to sheol,” that is, to the dominion of death. But לשׁאול , ( to sheol,) might be rendered in sheol, the preposition denoting rest in a place, as well as motion to it. It is not that he should not taste death, but that his body should rest in hope of deliverance, and not be left or abandoned to the grave. See note on Psalms 6:5. So convinced were the ancient Jews that the language applied to one literally dead, that they had a tradition that the body of David never decayed.

Neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption “This forms, in our text, an essential member in the progress of thought, and an important declaration and revelation respecting the resurrection of the body.” Moll. It is the gist of the Messianic application of the psalm, so literally and forcibly applied by Peter and Paul, Acts 2:27; Acts 13:35.

Holy One Saint. The word חסידיךְ , is, in our present Hebrew Bibles, plural holy ones, saints. which completely evades the Messianic application of the passage; and it has been charged that the Jews, in the Masoretic, or common Hebrew, text, have changed the word for this purpose from its original singular form. But this is improbable; for besides that they have given the singular pointing to the word in the text, ( ד , for ד ,) they have, in Keri, or margin, marked the plural yod ( י ) as redundant. It is certain that the present reading is an error.

The Septuagint, Vulgate, and Syriac, give the singular, indicating that that was anciently the true reading, with which the weight of testimony from the MSS. accords. Dr. Kennicott, ( “Dissertations,” etc.,) out of thirty-two manuscripts, found twenty-eight of the oldest and best which had the singular. Modern critical authority amply concedes this point. Indeed, it would be enough to say that a plural signification simply contradicts all fact, for the saints do die and see corruption. Only in its prophetic designation of some one particular person can it be true, and this person both Peter and Paul directly affirm to be Jesus. Acts 2:27 and Acts 13:35.

Corruption Whether the Hebrew word denotes “corruption” in the sense of putrescence, decomposition, or only pit, grave, involving the simple idea of death, depends upon its derivation. The Septuagint, διαρθοσαν , ( corruption,) is derived from שׁהת , ( shahath,) to reduce to ruins, crush, corrupt. So, also, the ancient versions generally, and so Peter and Paul used it. Acts 2:27. This is allowable by competent critics, (Gesenius, Winer, Moll, Furst, etc.,) and so ought to settle the question. Others derive it from שׁוחה , ( shoohhah,) pit, grave, as Jeremiah 18:20; Jeremiah 18:22. The difference is, that the former has the idea of remaining in the grave till decomposition: the latter of simply dying and being buried: as if the psalmist had said, “Thou wilt not suffer me to see the pit or grave,” that is, Thou wilt not suffer me to die and be buried the flatness of which, as seen in Psalms 16:9, is its own refutation. Besides, “to see the pit,” is admitted on all hands to have the sense of “to succumb to the dominion of death,” and denotes a permanent state, opposed to the phrase, “To see life.” Psalms 16:11; Psalms 49:9; John 3:36. The word “suffer,” also, means to give, to give up, to deliver up, and answers to “leave,” or forsake, in the previous hemistich. The idea, then, in both lines of the distich is, that of abandonment to sheol, or the grave, which involves decomposition or corruption, which the psalmist asserts God will not do.