Scripture Daily

Context No. 402 of 4322 · Psalms

Context · Reflection

Psalms 49:1-20: in context

1Hear this, all you peoples. Listen, all you inhabitants of the world, 2both low and high, rich and poor together. 3My mouth will speak words of wisdom. My heart will utter understanding. 4I will incline my ear to a proverb. I will solve my riddle on the harp. 5Why should I fear in the days of evil, when iniquity at my heels surrounds me? 6Those who trust in their wealth, and boast in the multitude of their riches— 7none of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give God a ransom for him. 8For the redemption of their life is costly, no payment is ever enough, 9that he should live on forever, that he should not see corruption. 10For he sees that wise men die; likewise the fool and the senseless perish, and leave their wealth to others. 11Their inward thought is that their houses will endure forever, and their dwelling places to all generations. They name their lands after themselves. 12But man, despite his riches, doesn’t endure. He is like the animals that perish. 13This is the destiny of those who are foolish, and of those who approve their sayings. Selah. 14They are appointed as a flock for Sheol. Death shall be their shepherd. The upright shall have dominion over them in the morning. Their beauty shall decay in Sheol, far from their mansion. 15But God will redeem my soul from the power of Sheol, for he will receive me. Selah. 16Don’t be afraid when a man is made rich, when the glory of his house is increased; 17for when he dies he will carry nothing away. His glory won’t descend after him. 18Though while he lived he blessed his soul— and men praise you when you do well for yourself— 19he shall go to the generation of his fathers. They shall never see the light. 20A man who has riches without understanding, is like the animals that perish.

Psalm 49 is a wisdom poem addressed to everyone, high and low, rich and poor alike, and it takes on one of our most persistent anxieties: the way we fear and envy people who have more than we do. Why should I be afraid, the psalmist asks, when I am surrounded by those who trust in their wealth and boast of their great riches? And then he answers his own question by pointing at the one fact that levels everyone.

No amount of money, he says, can ransom a single life. No one can pay God a price high enough to buy his way out of death or keep himself from the grave forever. The redemption of a life is too costly; no payment is ever enough. So the wise die, and the fool dies, and both leave their wealth to somebody else. The rich imagine their estates will last forever, and they name their lands after themselves to make their names permanent, but, the psalm says twice, like the beasts that perish. When a rich man dies, he carries nothing away with him; his glory does not follow him down. The wealth that made him feared and envied is simply left behind, powerless at the one appointment no one escapes. And right in the middle of this leveling comes the psalmist's quiet confidence: but God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave, for he will receive me. The one thing money cannot buy, redemption from death, is exactly what God gives freely to his own.

The whole psalm is aimed at loosening the grip of envy and fear. When I look at people who have more, more money, more status, more of everything I lack, and feel that familiar mix of dread and longing, I am forgetting that they carry none of it past the grave. Do I envy and fear the prosperous as though their wealth were real power, when it is powerless at the end, and is my confidence anchored where the psalmist's is, in a God who redeems the soul, the one thing no amount of riches can touch?

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