Charles Ellicott Commentary Psalms 16:10

"For thou wilt not leave my soul to Sheol; Neither wilt thou suffer thy holy one to see corruption." — Psalms 16:10 (ASV)

Leave. —Rather, commit, or give up.

In hell. —Better, to the unseen world (Sheôl), as in Psalms 6:5, where see Note.

Holy One. —Better, your chosen, or favoured, or beloved One. Hebrew, chasîd, which, starting from the idea of one standing in a state of covenant favour with Jehovah, naturally gathers to this passive sense an active one of living conformably to such a state: “gracious” as well as “graced,” “blessing” as well as “blessed.”

And so generally, as in the Authorised Version, it is rendered “saint” or “holy” (Psalms 145:17; and especially Psalms 1:5, My saints, those who have made a covenant with me by sacrifice).

The received Hebrew text has the word in the plural, but with the marginal note that the sign of the plural is superfluous. The weight of manuscript authority from all the ancient versions, and of the quotations in Acts 2:27 and Acts 13:35, is for the singular.

Corruption. —Hebrew, shachath, meaning a pit (from a root meaning to sink in), as in Psalms 7:15, where the Septuagint rightly has “abyss.” However, here and generally it is rendered “destruction” (not “corruption”), as if from shakhath, “to destroy.”

Even in Job 17:14, “the pit” would provide as good a parallelism to “worm” as “corruption.” The meaning of the passage is clearly that Jehovah will not abandon His beloved to death.

“To be left to Sheôl” and “to see the pit” are synonyms for “to die,” just as “to see life” (Ecclesiastes 9:9, Authorised Version: live joyfully) means “to be alive,” or, as in the next clause, “to make to see the path of life.”

At the same time, we discern here the first faint scintillation of that light of immortality which we see struggling to break through the darkness in all the later literature of Israel. The veil over the future of the individual, if not lifted, is stirred by the morning breath of a larger faith. Consequently, the use made of this passage in the New Testament (Acts 2:25) is justified (see the New Testament Commentary).