1For the lead player, for the Korahites, a psalm.
2Hear this, all peoples,
hearken, all who dwell in the world.
3You human creatures, you sons of man,
together the rich and the needy.
4My mouth speaks wisdom,
my heart’s utterance, understanding.
5I incline my ear to a saying,
I take up with the lyre my theme.
6Why should I fear in evil days,
when crime comes round me at my heels?
7Who trust in their wealth
and boast of their great riches—
8yet they surely will redeem no man,
will not give to God his ransom.
9To redeem their lives is too dear,
and one comes to an end forever.
10Will he yet live forever?
11For he sees the wise die,
both the fool and the stupid man perish,
and they abandon to others their wealth.
12Their grave is their home forever,
their dwelling for all generations,
though their names had been called upon earth.
13And man will not rest in splendor.
He is likened to beasts that are doomed.
14This way of theirs is their foolishness,
and after, in words alone, they show favor.
selah
15Like sheep to Sheol they head—
death shepherds them—
and the upright hold sway over them in the morn.
And they wear out their image in Sheol,
16But God will ransom my life,
from the grip of Sheol He will take me.
selah
17Do not fear when a man grows rich,
when he enlarges his house’s glory.
18For in his death he will not take all,
his glory won’t go down behind him.
19For his own self he blesses when alive
and acclaims You for giving him bounty.
20He will come to the state of his fathers—
forevermore will not see the light.
21Man will not grasp things in splendor.
He is likened to beasts that are doomed.
PSALM 49 NOTES
Click here to advance to the next section of the text.
2. Hear this, all peoples. The address at the beginning to all inhabitants of earth is not from a triumphal national perspective, as in some other psalms, but rather reflects the universalist orientation of this text as a Wisdom psalm. Indeed, there is no other poem in the collection that has such pronounced Wisdom features.
3. You human creatures, you sons of man. The vocative “you” attempts to reproduce the emphatic effect of the reiterated gam in the Hebrew.
4. My mouth speaks wisdom, / my heart’s utterance, understanding. This declaration that the speaker is about to pronounce words of instruction is one that often recurs in the Book of Proverbs.
5. saying, / . . . theme. These are technical terms for didactic messages cast in poetic form (mashal and ḥidah) that are frequently repeated in Proverbs (see, for example, Proverbs 1:6).
8. yet they. The translation, with some manuscripts, reads ʾakh, “yet,” for the Masoretic ʾaḥ, “brother.”
9. To redeem their lives is too dear, / and one comes to an end forever. As is often the case in biblical poetry, pronoun reference is confusing, though the meaning of this verse is not in doubt. Those who trust in their wealth but are unwilling to put up money for those in need find it too expensive to redeem the lives of the needy. Before the recalcitrant rich can be prevailed on to help, the poor man in straits will perish, will be gone forever.
10. Will he . . . live forever? At this point, it is not entirely certain whether “he” is the poor man (and hence this verse is a direct continuation of the end of the previous verse) or whether the rich man is now being reminded that he will not live forever. The emphasis on the fate of mortality that awaits even the great of the earth (verses 11 and 12) might favor the latter interpretation.
11. For he sees the wise die, / both the fool and the stupid man perish. This notion of death as the grim equalizer between wise and foolish, as between rich and poor, sounds more like Qohelet than Proverbs. The term for “fool,” kesil, is a distinctive item in the lexicon of Qohelet, just as the whole clause “they abandon to others their wealth” has close parallels in Qohelet.
12. Their grave. The translation reads, as do several of the ancient versions, qivram for the Masoretic qirbam, “their midst.” In the Hebrew, this is a simple reversal of two consonants. This reading produces an appropriately sardonic statement—that the dead, whatever their earthly acquisitions and attainments, have only the grave as their everlasting home.
though their names had been called upon earth. The initial “though” is frankly an interpretive guess (the Hebrew says only “and”), yielding the Ecclesiastian sense that these men who were once famous on earth now have only the grave as a habitation.
13. man will not rest in splendor. The primary meaning of the verb yalin is “to spend the night.” The idea would be that a man’s earthly glory barely lasts a night, for, like all mere beasts, he is fated to die. But when this line is repeated as a refrain at the end of the poem, the verb used is yavin, “understand” or “grasp,” and it is not clear which of the two readings is the authentic one, or whether the second reading is a deliberate play on the first. Yalin, however, makes more sense in connection with the theme of the ephemerality of human life.
14. and after, in words alone, they show favor. The Hebrew of this entire verset is not intelligible. Literally, it reads “and after them in their mouth they show favor.” The text has almost certainly been scrambled here, but no attempt to reconstruct the original is very convincing. Even the selah at the end of the line does not mark any logical division in the poem.
15. and the upright hold sway over them in the morn. This appears to express an idea, anomalous in the Bible, that the powerful will awake in the underworld to discover that the upright now rule them. A complicated emendation yields “And straight they go down like cattle.”
their image. The translation assumes tsuratam, “their image,” instead of the Masoretic tsuram, “their rock.” The verb “wear out” attached to this noun is in the infinitive in the Hebrew, still another oddity in this perplexing text.
a habitation for them. The Hebrew mizevul lo is another opaque moment in the text.
16. from the grip of Sheol He will take me. “Grip” is literally “hand.” But this entire line, invoking a God Who rescues the speaker from the verge of death, seems more appropriate to a thanksgiving psalm and does not jibe well with the meditation on mortality that constitutes the poem.
19. For his own self he blesses when alive / and acclaims You for giving him bounty. This is another line of this psalm in which the individual words are comprehensible but not the way they fit together. If the received text is correct, the meaning might be: While he was alive, this man proud of his riches congratulated himself and also conceded thanks to God for his prosperity (revocalizing the verb “acclaim” from its plural form to a singular). The speaker regards such a man as exhibiting a highly dubious piety.
20. the state of his fathers. The literal sense of the Hebrew is “the generation of his fathers.” The idea is that he who reveled in his earthly possessions will inevitably be reduced to the condition of all who came before him, enveloped in the eternal darkness of death.
21. Man will not grasp things in splendor. If the shift from yalin to yavin, from “rest” to “grasp,” was actually intended by the poet, the point at the end is that not only does man barely abide a fleeting night in worldly splendor but also that in his attachment to such splendor, he can have no understanding of the grim end that ineluctably awaits all men.