A Study of Psalm 16 (verse 9, Secure)

¹ Preserve me, God, because I take refuge in you.

² I say to Yahweh, “You are my Lord; apart from you I have nothing good.” ³ I say of the holy people who are in the land, “They are the noble ones in whom is all my delight.” ⁴ The sorrows of those who hurry after other gods will multiply. I will not pour out their bloody libations, nor take their names on my lips. ⁵ Yahweh is my assigned portion and my cup. You safeguard my allotment. ⁶ The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places. Indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.

⁷ I will continually praise Yahweh, who gives me counsel. Even at night my heart instructs me.

⁸ I have set Yahweh before me continually. Because He is at my right hand I will not be shaken. ⁹Therefore my heart is glad and my spirit rejoices, my body will live securely.

Request (v.1), confession of faith (vv.2-6), testimony of hearing from God (v.7), and confident assurance of Yahweh’s preservation (vv.8-11) forms the structure of this psalm of David. David’s assurance of preservation is formed in two couplets of negative and positive assurances. The first couplet is verses 8 and 9, with the negative assurance being that he won’t be shaken, mirrored by the positive assurance that he will be secure.

David has great joy in knowing that God is going to preserve him from whatever danger he is facing. He says his heart has joy and his כָּבֹוד, kabod, or glory, has joy. One commentator suggests that the word in Hebrew is actually kabed, the liver, which makes perfect sense. Both the Hebrew terms for glory and liver (kabod and kabed) have the connotation of heaviness. The liver is our heaviest bodily organ (unless you count the skin as an organ),[1] and the glory we give God is attributing weightiness or significance to Him.[2] Since the Hebrew has no vowels, only consonants, it is possible that the scholars and scribes of Israel mistook the word kabod for kabed, getting “glory” instead of “liver.” But it is also possible that David meant “glory” instead of “liver,” glory as a term for the soul or the person.

In Psalm 7:5 David says, let my enemy pursue and overtake me; let him trample my life (kabod) to the ground. He likely did not mean “let my enemy trample my liver.” In Psalm 57:8 David asks God to awaken his soul (kabod), and probably does not mean his liver.  And in Psalm 108:1 David wants to make music with all his kabod, all his soul, not all his liver. It is beautiful that the Hebrew thinks of our soul as that which is heavy or glorious. So whether David rejoices in his liver (a very Hebrew concept) or in his soul (an equally Hebrew concept), he rejoices in God’s deliverance.

And David’s “body” (Hebrew, flesh) will live securely because of God’s promise of preservation. Everyone must die physically. But David has the promise that in this moment of peril he will not die. No one needs to predict whether or not we will eventually die, for we all will. Yet when we find ourselves facing the possibility of death soon, due to illness or enemy, it is good to be assured that our time has not now come.

David will be secure or safe, not shaken so as to fall or fail. This security is the kind that allows you to live trustfully, without any suspicion of harm (Proverbs 3:29). It is the kind that allows you to be even complacent (Ezekiel 30:9), without a care (Micah 2:8), and live boldly (Proverbs 28:1). David has come to feel great relief at the promise of God’s preservation of him.

[1] The human liver is approximately 4.5 times heavier than our heart, and heavier than both of our lungs combined.

[2] C.S. Lewis has a sublime sermon, The Weight of Glory, https://www.doxaweb.com/assets/weight_of_glory.pdf