Psalm 16 – Did David know about resurrection and eternal life?

Did David know about resurrection and eternal life? Even in Jesus' time, the Jewish leaders disagreed over whether resurrection was a thing. The Pharisees believed in resurrection. The Sadducees did not. Who knows where this split came from? But did David really know? It seems he did.

Psalm 16 

A miktam of David. 

Ps 16:1 Keep me safe, O God, 
 	  for in you I take refuge. 

Ps 16:2 I said to the LORD, “You are my Lord; 
 	  apart from you I have no good thing.” 

Ps 16:3 As for the saints who are in the land, 
 	  they are the glorious ones in whom is all my delight. 

Ps 16:4 The sorrows of those will increase 
 	  who run after other gods. 
	  I will not pour out their libations of blood 
 	  or take up their names on my lips. 

Ps 16:5 LORD, you have assigned me my portion and my cup; 
 	  you have made my lot secure. 

Ps 16:6 The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; 
	  surely I have a delightful inheritance. 

Ps 16:7 I will praise the LORD, who counsels me; 
 	  even at night my heart instructs me. 

Ps 16:8 I have set the LORD always before me. 
 	  Because he is at my right hand, 
 	  I will not be shaken. 

Ps 16:9 Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; 
 	  my body also will rest secure, 

Ps 16:10 because you will not abandon me to the grave, 
 	  nor will you let your Holy One see decay. 

Ps 16:11 You have made known to me the path of life; 
 	  you will fill me with joy in your presence, 
 	  with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

Some background on Psalm 16

On the first Lord’s day, following hard upon the resurrection of Jesus Christ, two people were walking to their hometown of Emmaus from Jerusalem. They were disciples of Jesus, and the name of one of them was Cleopas (Luke 24:18). If this Cleopas was the same man as the Clopas of John 19:25 (which seems likely since the names are nearly identical), and if both were disciples of Jesus and were in Jerusalem at this time (which we know to be the case), then the other of these two disciples was probably Mary, Clopas’s wife.

Cleopas and Mary were despondent because of the death of their master. They had heard reports of an empty tomb and of angels who had told some of the women that Jesus was “risen, just as he said.” Yet they did not doubt that Jesus was really dead and that their dream of a messiah who should reign upon the throne of his father David, the dream that had inspired them for the three long years of Christ’s ministry, was over. While they were making their sad way along their homeward path, Jesus appeared to them. They did not recognize him. “What are you discussing together as you walk along?” he asked them kindly.

They replied by an offhand reference to the “things” that had taken place in Jerusalem.

“What things?” Jesus asked.

“About Jesus of Nazareth,” they answered. “He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him; but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel.”

Jesus chided them for their slowness to believe all that the prophets had spoken. “Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” he asked them. Then, “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself” (see Luke 24:13–27).

That was a sermon I very much wish I could have heard. It was the Lord’s own sermon on the resurrection, a sermon in which he expounded the Old Testament texts that had bearing on his prophesied triumph over the grave on Easter morning.

What texts do you suppose Jesus spoke of?

We cannot know the full answer to that question, of course, though we have strong indications of what some of the texts were, due to the way they were later used by the early disciples in their preaching. But one text we can be certain of is Psalm 16:10. This is because Peter used a section of this psalm to preach the resurrection in his great sermon on Pentecost (Acts 2:25–28, citing Ps. 16:8–11) and because Paul likewise used a shorter portion of it in his sermon to the Jews in the synagogue of Antioch early in his ministry (Acts 13:35–37, citing Ps. 16:10). Psalm 16:10 says,

You will not abandon me to the grave,
nor will you let your Holy One see decay.