for thou wilt not leave my soul in hades, nor wilt thou give thy gracious one to see corruption.
Peter is speaking to a crowd in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. To prove that God raised Jesus, he quotes words David wrote a thousand years earlier in Psalm 16. The psalm makes two promises: one about a soul, one about a body. Everything Peter argues next turns on whose soul and body they are.
Peter's point is not that the psalm could refer to Christ. It is that it could not refer to anyone else. The proof stood a short walk away, in a tomb everyone knew.
Was David writing of himself? Impossible. He had died and was buried, and his tomb was among them, still holding his dust. Clearly his grave was well known then. And everyone fully agreed that he, the first of his dynasty, had not risen from the dead. Yet he wrote of One who would die, and would shortly afterwards be raised.
The verse is not saying the same thing twice. Each half tracks a different part of the person who died. Peter's own explanation a few verses later keeps them apart.
Hades never means the grave, as some claim, although the imagery of the grave may naturally be applied to it. It is still clearly distinct. It stands in the same relation to the soul as the grave does to the body... So in the words quoted about the Lord in Acts 2:27, "you will not abandon my soul to Hades" refers to the soul. "Or let your Holy One see corruption" refers to the body. The apostle Peter separates them in the same way when he explains the psalm.
Older English translations turn "Hades" into "hell." That has confused many readers.
The word "hell" in that verse is not "Gehenna," the lake of fire, but "hades" (or in Hebrew "sheol"), which does not indicate a place, but a state. It is the unseen state of the soul and spirit as separated from the body. So His spirit and soul were in the unseen condition called "hades." But they were in the place called "paradise," the third heaven. In resurrection God would not leave His soul in that unseen condition. Nor would He let His body see corruption. Soul and body would be reunited.
The title is not the ordinary word for those set apart to God. It describes a character, and the possessive pronoun matters.
"Holy One" here is not the same as "saints in the earth." "Saints" are those set apart — consecrated to God. Your "Holy" One is one who walks in devotion to God, pleasing to Him. It is Christ known in this character... Notice that it is "Your Holy One," One who morally belongs to God by the perfection of His character.
Commentators differ. Some read the title of His body, tracing the name back to the angel's word to Mary:
"Your Holy One" is the flesh of Jesus (Acts 2:27, 31). The title comes from Luke 1:35. That word set the human nature of Jesus apart from every stain, and kept it in full favour and acceptance with God.
Corruption is not simply what happens to dead matter. It has a cause, and in His case the cause was absent.
The Lord was completely sinless. So we can understand how His blessed holy body saw no corruption, for corruption is the effect of sin. The blessed Lord had fully settled the question of sin by His atoning death on the cross. So death could have no further claim on Him. When sinful bodies die, death holds its sway and the process of decay starts at once.
Peter states two impossibilities. Death could not keep its hold, and Scripture could not fail.
Death could not hold Him fast — the death that He, the Holy One, had submitted to for sin, for God's glory. Nor was it possible to break the Scripture that said, "For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your Holy One see corruption." ... Here Peter, and Paul in Acts 13:33-37, declare that God fulfilled it by raising Jesus from the dead. It was not fulfilled in David, still less in anyone else.
The confidence in this verse is first His, but it does not stop with Him.
Christ is indeed the "Holy One," but believers are "holy and beloved," and, as such, can know the blessedness of the life of Christ as man. They too can look on with confidence, knowing that God will not leave the soul in death nor the body in corruption.
- Proof. David died, was buried, and his tomb was still there — so the psalm was never about him, and Peter names the only Man it fits.
- Parts. Hades holds the soul as the grave holds the body. The verse promises release from both, and Peter keeps the two lines apart.
- Person. "Your Holy One" is One who belongs to God by the perfection of His character. David could not say that of himself.
- Purity. Decay is the effect of sin. There was no sin in Him, so His holy body saw no corruption.
- Promise. Death could not hold Him, and Scripture could not be broken. The same confidence now belongs to those God calls "holy and beloved."
Thou hast made known to me [the] paths of life, thou wilt fill me with joy with thy countenance.
Peter quotes a psalm of David in his sermon, and this verse is the last line he quotes: a path out of death that ends in the joy of God's face. Two questions follow: who is really speaking, and why does a promise of joy settle an argument about an empty tomb?
The words Peter reads out are David's, yet he treats them as belonging to someone else. The New Testament itself gives the ground for reading the psalm that way.
Twice in the New Testament the Psalm is applied to Christ. The apostle Peter quotes verses 8-11 to prove the resurrection of Christ (Acts 2:25-28). The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews applies the principle of the first verse to prove that Christ shared in human nature (Hebrews 2:13). So we have the warrant of Scripture for applying the Psalm to Christ personally.
The psalm speaks throughout as "I" and "me," yet the "I" is not David.
In the sixteenth psalm, David speaks in the first person, yet he clearly speaks of Another than himself. That One was perfect in a perfect pathway. He kept the LORD always before Him, and the LORD was therefore always for Him. This gave unwavering steadiness to all His steps. So it was a pathway of life, even though it led through death. In it His flesh rested in confident hope. God would not abandon His soul to Hades, nor let piety such as His see corruption. Beyond, the face of God was the brightness before Him.
This "path of life" does not avoid the grave. It goes straight through it and comes out beyond.
So He would rejoice through it all, and pass through death with unclouded hope. His flesh would rest in hope; as a man He did not fear death. The LORD, whom He trusted, would not leave His soul in Hades, nor let His Holy One see corruption. His soul would go to the place of departed spirits and His body to the place of corruption, yet He would not be left in the one or see the other. The LORD would show Him the path of life through death, and beyond it.
Peter faces a charge: the disciples stole the body. He answers it from Scripture.
The lie that the disciples came by night and stole Jesus away, while the soldiers slept, is useless. Peter does not even notice such an unworthy excuse. He simply states the great truth on which the gospel rests: "Whom God raised up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for Him to be held by it." ... Indeed death could not hold Him fast. He, the Holy One, had submitted to it for sin, to God's glory. Nor could the Scripture be broken which said, "You will not abandon My soul to Hades, or let Your Holy One see corruption." So He was shown the path of life through death, with fullness of joy in the presence of God His Father.
The verse does not end at rescue from death. It ends in gladness, and Jesus as Man finds that gladness in God Himself.
On His side too, Jesus, the ever blessed Man, lives to God. His holy nature as Man finds its untold, unmeasured bliss in God. He knows God infinitely, perfectly, with all the powers of the One risen from the dead. He is in the condition and the place where God has planned to put man in the closest relationship and privilege. He stands in the full light of all that God is. From that nearest and dearest place — may we reverently say it — the heart of Jesus rises up in ever happy and holy delight in God.
That destination explains why joy is possible long before the journey is over.
The secret of this joy is found in having the glorious end in view. The path of life may pass through a world of sorrow. It may lead through the valley of the shadow of death. But at last it ends in the presence of God. For Christ, and for those who are Christ's, this is the Father's presence. Here, among the sorrows of earth, we may taste the cup of life. There, among the joys of heaven, we shall enter into the fullness of life.
The path He was shown is not for Him alone.
In this place of death He makes out a path for us. His Father and God shows Him the "path of life." He was the life. But the path of life had to be tracked through this place of death, where not one thing testifies of God — one wide waste, where there is no way. Christ has tracked the path Himself... The gospel shows He gives it to those who believe.
- Speaker. David wrote the words, but the psalm speaks of Another. Peter and the Letter to the Hebrews both apply it to Christ.
- Path. The "paths of life" do not go around death. They run through it and come out beyond it, so the grave could not hold Him.
- Proof. Peter meets the theft-of-the-body story with Scripture, not debate. Death could not hold Him.
- Joy. The path ends at God's own face. Nearness to God is the source of the joy, and that end in view brings joy along the way.
- Ours. He tracked that path first, and the gospel hands the same path to everyone who believes.
Brethren, let it be allowed to speak with freedom to you concerning the patriarch David, that he has both died and been buried, and his monument is amongst us unto this day.
Peter has just quoted a psalm where the speaker says God will not leave his soul in Hades or let his body decay. To show that David was not speaking about himself, Peter points to a grave in their own city.
Older translations read "Men and brethren." That sounds like two groups. It is not.
In "men and brethren" (Acts 1:16; Acts 2:29, and so on), there are not two classes. The sense is "men who are brethren," or, in our own way of speaking, simply "brethren."
That is why the ESV reads simply "Brothers." Peter speaks to his own people, and he speaks freely.
Calling David a patriarch is unusual. The word normally belongs to a much earlier period.
"Head of a family." In the New Testament this title belongs to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the ancestors of the Israelites, and to the twelve sons of Jacob. David carries it too. Acts 2:29; Acts 7:8-9; Heb. 7:4. Other passages call these same men "the fathers."
So David stands at the end of that honoured line, the last of Israel's founding fathers.
Peter's argument rests on a fact nobody in Jerusalem could dispute.
Was David writing of himself? Impossible. He had died and was buried, and his tomb was with them, still holding his dust. Clearly his tomb was well known at that time. And everyone agreed that he, the first of his royal line, had not risen from the dead. Yet he wrote of One who would die, and would soon be raised. For God would not leave that One's soul in Hades (the place of spirits without bodies), and He would not let His body see corruption.
The psalm describes a life of perfect uprightness and a body that never decayed. Neither fits David.
Certainly no one could say all this of David himself. No one could credit him with such perfection. His monument among them showed that he had seen corruption, like everyone else. So he was not speaking of himself. There was only One this could describe.
This argument was not Peter's alone.
Paul reasons in much the same way as Peter did in Acts 2:29-31; and both with unanswerable power. Only one man, the Messiah, was to see no corruption while tasting death. David in his own generation served the purpose of God, but he saw corruption. So did all his descendants, except that One of whom he prophesied in the Spirit. Scripture cannot be broken.
Peter does not stop at David's death. He moves from the buried king to the kingdom settled forever in David's son.
In his reasoning here, the apostle cites Psalm 132. That is the great psalm of the kingdom settled forever in the son of David. … This, and this alone, explains the uniquely glorious character of the kingdom, even on its earthly side. Even now the King is risen from the dead. This stamps permanence on it as nothing else could: yet it is the kingdom of a man. Only it is man risen from the dead, for in all things He must have the pre-eminence (Col. 1:18).
David's tomb is not an isolated case. It stands for the whole record of Israel's finest men.
Where is David, the man after God's own heart, in his glory? His tomb is with us today; the gates of Hades had prevailed over the king. Solomon in all his glory and wisdom, where is he? His tomb also is with us today; the gates of Hades had prevailed. All the great ones of the Old Testament had passed away.
- Brothers — Peter speaks freely to his own people. "Men and brethren" means one group, not two.
- Patriarch — David carries the title first given to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jacob's twelve sons. He closes that line of fathers.
- Tomb — his grave was a known place in Jerusalem, still holding his dust; everyone agreed he had not risen.
- Prophet — the psalm describes a perfection and a body that never decayed. Neither was David's, so he spoke of Another. Paul later argued the same way.
- King — the buried patriarch points to the risen King. A kingdom held by a man raised from the dead can never be undone.
Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn to him with an oath, of the fruit of his loins to set upon his throne;
Peter stands in Jerusalem and argues from a grave: David died and was buried, so his psalm about a body that would not decay must point to someone else. Verse 30 gives the missing link — David was a prophet, and he knew God had sworn an oath about one of his descendants and a throne.
Peter's case rests on a fact anyone in the crowd could check.
The Psalm writer speaks in the first person all the way through. I, me, or my turns up in every verse. Was David writing about himself? Impossible. He had died and was buried, and his tomb was there among them, still holding his dust... People had read that Psalm for centuries. Most likely everyone in the crowd knew it. But to that day none of them could point to anyone who had died and say, "Here is the man."
Being a prophet did not make David a passive channel. He understood something of what he was writing.
David was surely aware that he was describing more than his friend's betrayal... So we see that David knew he was an instrument in the hands of the Spirit of God. Through him God announced in advance His purposes about Christ: both His allowing the wickedness that brought Him to the cross, and the grace that by that very means accomplished our redemption.
Peter points back to an oath in the Psalms. Writers note that the same passage holds two promises side by side: one absolute, one conditional.
In verse 11 it is the expression of the divine purpose, "The LORD swore to David a sure oath from which he will not turn back: 'One of the sons of your body I will set on your throne.'"... So when Christ, as the Son of David, is in the Spirit's view, the promise is unconditional, because it announces God's purpose in grace. But when David's own children, his immediate descendants, are in view, whether they stay on his throne depends on their responsibility.
This is why the resurrection carries the argument. An oath about a throne that lasts for ever needs an heir death cannot remove.
In his argument the apostle cites Psalm 132, the great psalm of the kingdom settled for ever in the son of David... This, and this alone, explains why the kingdom is so glorious, even in its earthly side. Even now the King is risen from the dead. Nothing else could stamp it with permanence like that. Yet it is still the kingdom of a man — only a man risen from the dead.
The oath calls for a descendant from David's own body. If Joseph was only Jesus' supposed father, how can Jesus be that descendant? The answer points to two lines meeting in one Person.
The Lord's manhood was real because He was born of Mary, "the Virgin" of David's house. If He had not truly been the Son of God on the other side, the truth of His Godhead would have been overthrown. And if He had not held the legal rights of Solomon's line through Joseph — though Joseph was only His supposed father — He would not be the true Messiah under the oath God swore to David.
Did the oath reach its goal when Jesus rose and ascended? Commentators say no. David himself, they point out, foretold a waiting time before that throne is taken.
Peter would have them know what David has shown: for that Son whom David calls his Lord there would be a time of waiting for the Kingdom, with enemies opposing... So the pause before He takes David's throne is itself a proof that Jesus is the Messiah, instead of an argument against it. And it is David himself who testifies to this.
The throne He sits on now is not the throne He was promised.
Now the Messiah rejected by the Jews sits on the throne of God His Father, in contrast with His own throne, which He is to take another day. Neither David nor any other sat on the Father's throne... At His coming again He will sit upon the throne of David according to the prophecy before us and many more.
- Oath. God swore an oath to seat one of David's descendants on David's throne. That promise rests on His purpose alone, not on anyone's obedience.
- Prophet. David knew it, and wrote about Someone else. His own tomb was still in Jerusalem, and his own body had decayed.
- Descent. The oath called for a real son of David: true manhood through Mary, of David's house, and the legal royal title through Joseph.
- Resurrection. A throne promised for ever needs a King death cannot hold. God raised Jesus, and that stamps the kingdom with permanence.
- Waiting. He now sits on His Father's throne, not yet on David's. David foretold that very pause before He takes it.
he, seeing [it] before, spoke concerning the resurrection of the Christ, that neither has he been left in hades nor his flesh seen corruption.
Peter's sermon at Pentecost reaches its turning point here, in words David wrote long before. The verse makes two claims — a soul not abandoned to Hades, a body that did not decay — and neither one fits David himself.
Peter's argument rests on a fact his hearers could check. David was still in his grave.
Was David writing of himself? Impossible. He had died and was buried, and his tomb was with them, still holding his dust. Clearly his tomb was well known then. And everyone agreed that he, the first of his dynasty, had not risen from the dead. Yet he wrote of One who would die and would soon be raised. God would not leave that One's soul in Hades — the place of spirits without their bodies — nor would He let His body see corruption.
Hades means the state of the dead apart from the body. The second half of the verse turns to the body itself.
His soul would not be left in hades, which is the unseen state of separation from His body. Also, "your Holy One" would not see corruption. This of course refers to His body. The body was in a state of death, because the spirit and soul had left it. Yet it would not see corruption.
Commentators differ over the exact wording. One traces a long-standing error to a rendering the text does not support.
Psalm 16:10 teaches that the Lord would not leave Messiah's soul to Hades, any more than His body to see corruption. "To leave in" does not seem to fit either the Hebrew or the Greek in the correct text. Early superstition made much of that error, and many revive it today.
The verse names soul and body apart, because death parted them. Neither was lost.
His soul was in hades, His body in the grave. Death separated His soul from His body, but divine power held both, so to speak, for His resurrection and glory. I see no difficulty here. His soul was in paradise, His body in the grave. Hades is only the invisible place of departed spirits, nothing more.
Every other body begins to decay at death. His did not, and one writer traces the reason to who He was and to what His death settled.
It is clear that our Lord could not go to a place of torment. It is just as clear that His soul was without its body, while His precious incorruptible body lay in the grave those memorable three days. The Lord was perfectly sinless. So we can understand how His blessed holy body saw no corruption, for corruption is the effect of sin. The blessed Lord had also fully settled the question of sin by His atoning death on the cross. So death could have no further claim on Him. When sinful bodies die, death holds its sway and decay sets in at once. In this verse our Lord's incorruptible body and His soul without its body were not to be left in death and hades. On the third day body and soul were re-united and His glorious resurrection took place — proof that the work of redemption was complete.
Peter does not stop to answer excuses. He rests his case on Scripture.
Peter does not even notice such an unworthy excuse. He simply states the grand truth on which the gospel rests… The word of God through David pointed to the resurrection of the Messiah. God showed Him openly, when risen, to witnesses He had chosen beforehand. But indeed death could not hold Him fast. He, the Holy One, had submitted to death for sin, to God's glory. Nor was it possible for the Scripture to be broken which said, "You will not leave My soul to Hades, nor let Your Holy One see corruption." … Here Peter, and Paul in Acts 13:33-37, declare that God fulfilled this when He raised Jesus from the dead. It was not fulfilled in David, and still less in anyone else.
The verse also settles what resurrection means.
What did the apostles regard as an essential feature of the resurrection? Let Peter instruct us, as he did his hearers on the day of Pentecost. David, he said, spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, "that He was not abandoned to Hades, nor did His flesh see corruption." Peter did not preach a resurrection of the person apart from the body that died.
- Foreseen — David wrote as a prophet about One still to come. His own tomb, well known in Jerusalem, proved he was not writing about himself.
- Separated — Death parted soul from body. His soul was in the unseen place, His body in the grave. Divine power held both for His resurrection.
- Preserved — Decay is the effect of sin. The sinless One's body did not decay, and His atoning death left death no further claim on Him.
- Raised — Scripture could not be broken, and death could not hold Him. God raised Him and showed Him to witnesses He had chosen.
- Bodily — Peter preached the resurrection of the very body that died, not of a person apart from his body.