Psalms 17:15

15. As for me The pronoun is emphatic, and marks the contrast between the psalmist and the “men of the world,” just mentioned. So Psalms 73:28: “But, [as to me,] it is good for me to draw near to God,” etc.

I will behold thy face in righteousness An expression like Job 19:26, and Psalms 11:7, on which last see note, and compare 1 John 3:2. Clearly this hope is to be realized only in the life to come.

When I awake To apply this to awaking from natural sleep, or, figuratively, to coming forth in new vigor from the night of affliction, completely destroys the sense. He is contrasting the temporal with the eternal, this world with the next. To “awake” from the sleep of death was not an uncommon figure in Old Testament times. See 2 Kings 4:31; Job 14:12; Isaiah 26:19; Daniel 12:2. A resurrection from the grave is here anticipated as an object of faith in language as full and literal as any in which Messianic prophecy has foretold the Messiah. See on Psalms 16:9-11.

Likeness The word means form, shape, similitude, and in Numbers 12:8, it would seem to denote a symbolic form of God, as the shekinah. Resemblance to God was the highest idea of perfection to the Hebrew, grounded on Genesis 1:26. It also is the point of the temptation, (Genesis 3:5,) where, instead of “ye shall be as gods,” read “ye shall be as God.” If the objective idea of form is at all involved in the word, we do not dissent, for the New Testament statements imply as much of the glorified state: (see 1 Corinthians 15:49; Philippians 3:21; 1 John 3:2;) but the connexion of the text requires specially the subjective or moral sense the similitude of character just as “I will behold thy face in righteousness” is not to be understood of objective vision, but of subjective experience perception joined with communion and exactly accords with 1 John 3:2: “We shall see him as he is.” So, also, I shall… awake with thy likeness, is parallel to the apostle’s statement, “We shall be ( ομοιοι αυτω ) like him.” The same Hebrew word in Exodus 20:4, is rendered by the Septuagint ομοιωμα , ( likeness,) a word of the same family as that used by the apostle above. Indeed, 1 John 3:2 is a complete parallel of the text, and they together bear a cognate testimony to the glorious doctrine of the resurrection of the body after a divine model.