Ps. 49.14b (an interpretive proposal)

“The upright / shall rule them / at dawn – their forms / for Sheol’s consumption / rather than / their lofty abodes.” This portion of vs. 14 is difficult to interpret. Where are the upright? Are ruling them within Sheol, as if there was some gradation there? If so, doesn’t that seem to fly in the face of the entire thrust of the psalm? Namely, that Sheol robs all men (from high to low, wise to fool, rich to poor) from their ‘worthiness’. If the righteous were afforded some ability to be ‘higher’ than these wicked, rich fools, it would seem as if something (righteousness?) does persist down into the grave. And yet, as we have just said, there is absolutely no preparation for this in the psalm. Moreover, if that were a correct interpretation, it would be odd that it is never referred to in the psalm again when it seems to reflect something of an ‘answer’ radically different than what is proposed in the rest of the psalm. It is for that reason that I think any interpretation must lie in a different direction—that the righteous “ruling them’ takes place on the earth, not down in Sheol. I think this actually makes better sense of the verse. What follows is the wicked’s man’s ‘form’ descending into Sheol—in fact, being ‘consumed’ by Sheol. However, while he goes ‘down’ into a claustrophobic grave, his ‘lofty abode’ remains above. I think what we see here are two things: 1) that the wicked, rich man is, in his ‘going down’ is so utterly ‘reversed’ in his fortune that, not only is he entirely stripped of his earthly ‘worthiness’ but he is in fact, ‘ruled’ by those who remain on the earth (the ‘righteous’). Even his earthly presence is here subjected to those he attempted to ruin. 2) That the wicked are dispossessed of their ‘mansions’ and they are given over to the righteous. We have seen this in other psalms—that the wicked are removed and the righteous put in their place and, literally, in their dwelling places, much like Israel was put in the dwelling places of those God removed from the land in the conquest. This interpretation is much better in my mind as it completely coheres with the rest of the psalm, thematically and literarily.