Psalm 16: 1-11…..Sheer Joy in my decision!

Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge.
I say to the LORD, “You are my Lord;
I have no good apart from you.”
As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones,
in whom is all my delight.
The sorrows of those who run after another god shall multiply;
their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out
or take their names on my lips.
The LORD is my chosen portion and my cup;
you hold my lot.
The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.
I bless the LORD who gives me counsel;
in the night also my heart instructs me.
I have set the LORD always before me;
because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.
Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices;
my flesh also dwells secure.
For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol,
or let your holy one see corruption.
You make known to me the path of life;
in your presence there is fullness of joy;
at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

Comment: Apart from the small passage, which I quote here, the whole psalm is David’s expression of confidence and delight in following Yahweh. The quote is – The sorrows of those who run after another god shall multiply;
their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out
or take their names on my lips.
‘ It is not as if blood was not the centre of Old Testament Jewish worship. Over the couple of millennia recorded in the OT scriptures millions of litres of the blood of a variety of animals was shed as part of their worship On the positive side we must remember that the majority of the food value was used in the upkeep of the priests and in the joy of its eating by the worshippers. For worship of many of the surrounding ‘gods’ their children were sacrificed, and we can feel the shuddering horror of David as such things happening!

The remainder of the psalm as said in my title of this passage is an expression of the joy which David has in his worship of the True and Living God!

Prayer: Life isn’t always easy God, but thank you for the underlying peace and joy that there is in knowing You.

2 thoughts on “Psalm 16: 1-11…..Sheer Joy in my decision!

  1. Thank you Barry for your comments on this Psalm. O the sheer joy of worshipping and following Jesus. O the sheer frustration of living here on earth. Without the joy of the Lord, life here would be most despairing. God bless you.

    Like

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