To the choirmaster. A Psalm of the Sons of Korah.
1 Hear this, all peoples!
Give ear, all inhabitants of the world,
2 both low and high,
rich and poor together!
3 My mouth shall speak wisdom;
the meditation of my heart shall be understanding.
4 I will incline my ear to a proverb;
I will solve my riddle to the music of the lyre.
5 Why should I fear in times of trouble,
when the iniquity of those who cheat me surrounds me,
6 those who trust in their wealth
and boast of the abundance of their riches?
7 Truly no man can ransom another,
or give to God the price of his life,
8 for the ransom of their life is costly
and can never suffice,
9 that he should live on forever
and never see the pit.
10 For he sees that even the wise die;
the fool and the stupid alike must perish
and leave their wealth to others.
11 Their graves are their homes forever,
their dwelling places to all generations,
though they called lands by their own names.
12 Man in his pomp will not remain;
he is like the beasts that perish.
13 This is the path of those who have foolish confidence;
yet after them people approve of their boasts. Selah
14 Like sheep they are appointed for Sheol;
death shall be their shepherd,
and the upright shall rule over them in the morning.
Their form shall be consumed in Sheol, with no place to dwell.
15 But God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol,
for he will receive me. Selah
16 Be not afraid when a man becomes rich,
when the glory of his house increases.
17 For when he dies he will carry nothing away;
his glory will not go down after him.
18 For though, while he lives, he counts himself blessed
—and though you get praise when you do well for yourself—
19 his soul will go to the generation of his fathers,
who will never again see light.
20 Man in his pomp yet without understanding is like the beasts that perish. – Psalm 49:1-20 ESV
This psalm is an honest response to one of the most common concerns expressed by the godly in every generation. Why do the wicked prosper while the righteous seem to suffer? This seeming incongruity on God’s part has always puzzled His people, often causing them to question His justice. The author of Psalm 73 voiced the frustration of the faithful as he conveyed inequitable success of the godless.
I envied the proud
when I saw them prosper despite their wickedness.
They seem to live such painless lives;
their bodies are so healthy and strong.
They don’t have troubles like other people;
they’re not plagued with problems like everyone else. – Psalm 73:3-5 NLT
He goes on to express the impact this inequity has on God’s people.
And so the people are dismayed and confused,
drinking in all their words.
“What does God know?” they ask.
“Does the Most High even know what’s happening?”
Look at these wicked people—
enjoying a life of ease while their riches multiply. – Psalm 73:10-12 NLT
This is exactly the problem the author of Psalm 49 is addressing, but he comes at it from an eternal perspective. Rather than focusing on the temporal success of the wicked, he points out the promise of future reward for the righteous. He approaches the whole matter from God’s all-knowing, all-seeing vantage point. Yahweh is not blind to the actions of the unrighteous, and He is not guilty of injustice or inequity. Things are not always as they seem. So, inspired by the wisdom of the proverbs, the psalmist calls on all people to listen to his counsel.
Listen to this, all you people!
Pay attention, everyone in the world!
High and low,
rich and poor—listen!
For my words are wise,
and my thoughts are filled with insight. – Psalm 49:1-3 NLT
Rather than rail against God for His apparent mishandling of earthly affairs, the psalmist sought to take a more long-term perspective. While it may appear that the wicked grow wealthy as they purposefully disregard God’s law and abuse His people, their affluence will have no influence on their eternal state. They will never make enough money to pay for their sins or ransom their way out of judgment.
Why should I fear when trouble comes,
when enemies surround me?
They trust in their wealth
and boast of great riches.
Yet they cannot redeem themselves from death
by paying a ransom to God.
Redemption does not come so easily,
for no one can ever pay enough
to live forever
and never see the grave. – Psalm 49:5-9 NLT
The psalmist repeatedly brings up the topic of Sheol, or the grave, because he is attempting to shift the focus to the fate of the wicked. Death is inevitable and unavoidable. This life can be fleeting and fickle, with some enjoying experiencing joy and material success while others suffer great sorrow and the pains of poverty. But in the end, they all suffer the same fate: Death.
King Solomon was the wisest man who ever lived and he enjoyed all the perks that came with his role as king. He was wealthy, powerful, well-educated, and surrounded by all the pleasures money could buy, but he had learned that money was an unreliable source of satisfaction and provided no protection from the grave.
Those who love money will never have enough. How meaningless to think that wealth brings true happiness! The more you have, the more people come to help you spend it. So what good is wealth—except perhaps to watch it slip through your fingers! – Ecclesiastes 5:10-11 NLT
There is another serious problem I have seen under the sun. Hoarding riches harms the saver. Money is put into risky investments that turn sour, and everything is lost. In the end, there is nothing left to pass on to one’s children. We all come to the end of our lives as naked and empty-handed as on the day we were born. We can’t take our riches with us. – Ecclesiastes 5:13-15 NLT
A rich man may use his money to build a beautiful mausoleum to contain his remains, but his wealth can’t stave off death. That is precisely the point the psalmist is trying to make.
Those who are wise must finally die,
just like the foolish and senseless,
leaving all their wealth behind.
The grave is their eternal home,
where they will stay forever.
They may name their estates after themselves,
but their fame will not last.
They will die, just like animals.
This is the fate of fools,
though they are remembered as being wise. – Psalm 49:10-13 NLT
It doesn’t matter if you’re wise, foolish, wealthy, impoverished, famous, or faceless — everyone faces the same fate. With this rather somber and depressing thought in mind, the psalmist drives home his primary point. He will rest in God’s sovereign protection and provision.
Like sheep, they are led to the grave,
where death will be their shepherd.
In the morning the godly will rule over them.
Their bodies will rot in the grave,
far from their grand estates.
But as for me, God will redeem my life.
He will snatch me from the power of the grave. – Psalm 49:14-15 NLT
The wicked, like all mankind, will eventually face death. Their bodies will rot in the grave while others spend their hard-earned wealth and enjoy the fruits of their earthly labor. And when they are gone, there will still be righteous, God-fearing people who remain behind. Verses 14 and 15 are sometimes construed as the psalmist’s belief in some form of afterlife. But at this point in their history, the Israelites did not have a fully formed theology of heaven, hell, and the eternal state. Their concept of life beyond the grave was a work in process that had yet fully developed.
“It is possible that the psalmist is looking at ultimate eschatological realities, anticipating his own resurrection and a time when the righteous, not the rich, will rule on earth. However, it is more likely that the ascendancy of the righteous refers to their vindication in this life, a well-attested theme in the Psalter, especially in the wisdom psalms (see, e.g., Pss. 1, 34, 37, and 112, as well as the discussion above). In this case verse 15 refers to God’s preserving the psalmist through ‘evil days’ (cf. v. 5) by keeping him from premature, violent death at the hands of the oppressive rich and from the calamity that overtakes them. ‘Morning’ (v. 14), which brings to mind the dawning of a new day after a night of darkness, aptly symbolizes the cessation of these ‘evil days.’“ – Robert B. Chisholm, Jr. – “A Theology of the Psalms.” In A Biblical Theology of the Old Testament
It’s unlikely that the psalmist is expressing his belief in a place called heaven or declaring his hope in an eternal abode beyond the grave. He is simply stating His trust in God’s sovereign will over the affairs of life. He knows that he, too, will one day face death, but he trusts that his days are numbered by God and that nothing will happen to him until his God-ordained hour comes.
The emphasis of his song is not on the hope of heaven but on the inevitability of death. Everyone dies — from the wealthiest and wisest to the impoverished and ignorant. Death is the great leveler. But the righteous have God on their side. He watches over them and protects them. He preserves their lives even when they are confronted by the unfair and unjust actions of the wicked. So, he concludes:
So don’t be dismayed when the wicked grow rich
and their homes become ever more splendid.
For when they die, they take nothing with them.
Their wealth will not follow them into the grave.
In this life they consider themselves fortunate
and are applauded for their success. – Psalm 49:16-18 NLT
Don’t waste your time envying them or longing to be like them. Don’t get fooled by their apparent success and seeming avoidance of God’s judgment. Death will come for them just as it does for everyone else. The Jews did believe that death was not the end, but it was not a well-formed or fully developed doctrine at this time. The psalmist is not trying to encourage hope in the afterlife; he is trying to remind his fellow Hebrews to trust God in this life. In a sense, he is saying, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” The wealthy wicked may seem blessed and free from pain and suffering, but death is the inevitable judgment for all mankind. Death, as the apostle Paul put it, is “the wages of sin” (Romans 6:23 NLT). Death entered the world because of sin, and only God can preserve and protect His people from the penalty of death. In the psalmist’s day, they believed God could delay death for His righteous ones.
But it wasn’t until the coming of Christ that the concept of a permanent escape from sin’s penalty became a reality. With His death and resurrection, Jesus paid the penalty for mankind’s sin debt. Death still occurs. The righteous must still face the inescapable reality of the finality of life. But the apostle Paul reminds us that there is hope beyond the grave because of the atoning work of Jesus.
But let me reveal to you a wonderful secret. We will not all die, but we will all be transformed! It will happen in a moment, in the blink of an eye, when the last trumpet is blown. For when the trumpet sounds, those who have died will be raised to live forever. And we who are living will also be transformed. For our dying bodies must be transformed into bodies that will never die; our mortal bodies must be transformed into immortal bodies.
Then, when our dying bodies have been transformed into bodies that will never die, this Scripture will be fulfilled:
“Death is swallowed up in victory.
O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?”
For sin is the sting that results in death, and the law gives sin its power. But thank God! He gives us victory over sin and death through our Lord Jesus Christ. – 1 Corinthians 15:51-57 NLT
The psalmist had no concept of this great truth, but he encouraged his audience to sing God’s praises nonetheless. He believed in the goodness and greatness of God in this life, even though he had no fully developed doctrine of the next life. He was willing to trust God in the here and now, even when it didn’t make sense. Death is the great equalizer, but God determines each man’s fate. As David confessed in Psalm 139, God knew his birth date and death date before he was even born.
You saw me before I was born.
Every day of my life was recorded in your book.
Every moment was laid out
before a single day had passed. – Psalm 139:16 NLT
So, don’t worry. Don’t be jealous. Don’t allow the apparent success of the unrighteous weigh you down or cause you to doubt God’s goodness. He is in control, and your life is in His all-powerful hands.
Father, I needed to hear this today. We live in a world where nothing seems to make sense. It seems like the wicked get rewarded while the righteous are forced to suffer in obscurity and face ridicule for our faith in You. It’s so easy to allow jealousy, envy, fear, and doubt to creep in and destroy my confidence. But this psalm reminds me that You are in control — at all times. I know things the psalmist didn’t know. I have been exposed to the truth of the gospel and the hope of eternal life through Jesus Christ. I know where I’m going when I die, yet I still struggle with fears, doubts, and questions about the seeming lack of justice in this life. Help me stay focused on Your faithfulness and sovereignty. You are not done yet. Your plan has not yet been completed, but it will be. Thank you for this timely reminder.. Amen
English Standard Version (ESV) The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.
New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.