Psalms 16:10

My soul, i.e. my person, as this word is every where used by a synecdoche of the part, and then the person by another synecdoche of the whole is put for the body. The soul is oft put for the body; either for the living body, as Psalms 35:3, Psalms 105:18, or for the carcass or dead body, as it is taken Leviticus 19:28, Leviticus 21:1 Numbers 5:2, Numbers 6:6,9,11 9:10 19:11,13; and so it is interpreted in this very place, as it is produced, Acts 2:29, &c.; Acts 13:36,37. In hell, i.e. in the grave or state of the dead, as appears,

1. From the Hebrew word scheol, which is very frequently so understood, as is undeniably evident from Genesis 42:38 Numbers 16:30 Job 14:13 compared with Job 17:13 Psalms 18:5, Psalms 30:3 141:7 Ecclesiastes 9:10 Ezekiel 32:21,27 Jon 2:2, and many other places.

2. From the following clause of this verse.

3. From Ac 2$ 13$, where it is so expounded and applied. Thine Holy One, i.e. me thy holy Son, whom thou hast sanctified and sent into the world: It is peculiar to Christ to be called the Holy One of God, Mark 1:24 Luke 4:34. To see corruption, or rottenness, i.e. to be corrupted or putrefied in the grave, as the bodies of others are. Seeing is oft put for perceiving by experience; in which sense men are said to see good, Psalms 34:12, and to see death, or the grave, Psalms 89:48 Luke 2:26 1 Thessalonians 8:51, and to see sleep, Ecclesiastes 8:16. And the Hebrew word shochath, though sometimes by a metonymy it signifies the pit or place of corruption, yet properly and generally it signifies corruption or perdition, as Job 17:14, Job 33:18,30 Psa 35:7 55:23 Jonah 2:6, and is so rendered by the seventy Jewish interpreters, Psalms 107:20 Proverbs 28:10 Jeremiah 13:4, Jeremiah 15:3 Lamentations 4:20 Ezekiel 19:4, Ezekiel 21:31. And so it must be understood here, although some of the Jews, to avoid the force of this argument, render it the pit. But in that sense it is not true; for whether it be meant of David, as they say, or of Christ, it is confessed that both of them did see the pit, i.e. were laid in the grave. And therefore it must necessarily be taken in the other sense now mentioned; and so it is properly and literally true in Christ alone, although it may in a lower and metaphorical sense be applied to David, who had a just and well-grounded confidence, that although God might bring him into great dangers and distresses, which are called the sorrows of death, and the pains of hell, Psalms 116:3; yet God would not leave him to perish in or by them.