A messianic prophecy
Not Abandoned to the Grave
The promise
Psalm 16 is a song of deep trust, in which David rejoices that his hope and his portion are safe in God, that the Lord is at his right hand, and that his heart and even his flesh may rest in confidence. It rises to a remarkable and specific promise: For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption. The psalmist trusts that God will not abandon him to the grave nor allow his body to decay in death.
The word translated hell here is the Hebrew Sheol, the realm of the dead, the grave. David's confidence is that God will not leave him in the power of death, and that the path of life is before him. In its immediate sense the psalm breathes David's trust that God would preserve and deliver him, keeping him in life and joy in the presence of God.
Yet the words carried a hope larger than the man who first sang them, and the apostles would later fix on exactly this point. David did in fact die, full of years; his tomb was well known and honored in Jerusalem for a thousand years; and his body, like every other, returned to dust and saw corruption. If the promise that God's Holy One would not see corruption was to be true in its fullest sense, it had to point beyond David to another.
So the psalm, sung and treasured across the centuries, carried within it a hope too large for its author, a confidence that God's Holy One would not be left in death nor decay in the tomb. It waited, like the songs of suffering, for one of whom these words could be wholly and literally true, one whose flesh the grave could not hold and would not corrupt.
“For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.”Psalm 16:10
The fulfillment
At Pentecost, filled with the Holy Spirit, Peter stood before the gathered crowds of Jerusalem, the very city where Jesus had been crucified only weeks before, and preached the resurrection, and he built his argument on Psalm 16. He quoted the psalm, and then reasoned with his hearers directly and boldly: David, he said, is both dead and buried, and his sepulchre is with us unto this day. David did not ascend into the heavens; his body lies in its tomb.
Therefore, Peter argued, David was not speaking merely of himself. Being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn to set one of his descendants on his throne, David foresaw and spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in hell, neither his flesh did see corruption. The psalm found its true and full meaning not in David, whose flesh decayed, but in Jesus, whom God raised up.
Peter's point was sharp and testable. Jesus died and was buried, but God raised him up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that he should be held by it. His soul was not abandoned to the grave, and his body did not remain to decay, for on the third day the tomb was found empty and he appeared alive to many witnesses. The confidence David had sung was fulfilled beyond David in the resurrection of Christ.
This became the very heart of the first Christian preaching, and it has remained so ever since. The apostles did not first proclaim a set of teachings or a code of ethics; they proclaimed an event. God raised Jesus from the dead, the tomb was empty, and the ancient words of the psalmist had come true in a way David himself could never have fully imagined, in the risen body of Jesus of Nazareth.
“Because thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption. Thou hast made known to me the ways of life; thou shalt make me full of joy with thy countenance. Men and brethren, let me freely speak unto you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his sepulchre is with us unto this day. Therefore being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him, that of the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit on his throne; He seeing this before spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in hell, neither his flesh did see corruption.”Acts 2:27-31
Why it matters
The resurrection is the fulfillment on which every other one finally rests. Without it, the cross would be only a tragedy, the wounds only a horror, and all the other prophecies merely a sad and detailed account of a good man's undeserved sufferings. But the empty tomb turns the entire story inside out: the servant who was betrayed, silenced, pierced, and buried was raised, and death itself could not hold him. Every earlier prophecy points toward this, and this one vindicates them all.
Peter's argument is bold in its very honesty, and it is worth noticing how it works. He does not appeal to private feelings or hidden knowledge; he points to a public fact everyone could check, David's tomb, still there, still sealed, still occupied, and says: this psalm cannot be only about David, for David's flesh saw corruption. It must point to another, whose tomb is empty, whose body the grave released. The fulfillment is measured against a grave that anyone in Jerusalem could go and visit.
That the promise reaches beyond David to Christ is the pattern of so much of the Old Testament. The words of the kings and prophets often meant more than the speakers could contain, carrying hopes that only the Messiah could finally fulfill. David trusted that God would not abandon him to the grave, and in a measure God did deliver him again and again in life; but the fullness of that trust, the actual conquest of death itself, waited for the Son of David who would rise and never die again.
For the believer, this is the ground of all hope, the sure foundation beneath everything else. The One who was not left in the grave, whose flesh did not see corruption, has opened a way straight through death for all who trust him. The confidence of Psalm 16, that God will not abandon his own to the grave, is now the confidence of everyone who belongs to the risen Christ. Because he lives, the grave is not the end of the story, neither for him nor for those who are his. That is the good news toward which every prophecy in this study has been leading.
Questions people ask
How did Peter use Psalm 16 to argue for the resurrection?
In Acts 2 Peter quotes David's confidence that God would not leave his soul in the grave or let his holy one see corruption. He then points out that David died, was buried, and his tomb was still there, so David's body did decay. David must therefore have spoken as a prophet of the Messiah, Jesus, whom God raised without decay, proven by the empty tomb.
Was Psalm 16 originally about David or Jesus?
David wrote it as his own trust that God would not abandon him to death. Peter and Paul argue that its language reaches beyond David, since David died and his body decayed, while the psalm promises one who would not see corruption. They read it as prophetic, finding its full meaning in Jesus, whose resurrection fulfilled words that David's own experience could not.
How did Peter argue that Psalm 16 points to Jesus and not just David?
Peter pointed to a fact everyone could check: David died and was buried, and his tomb was still there in Jerusalem, so his flesh had seen corruption. Therefore the promise that God would not leave his Holy One to decay could not be fully about David. It pointed to another, whose tomb was empty and whose body the grave released, and that one, Peter declared, is Jesus, raised from the dead.