Ps. 49.16-17 (death is a shattering force)

“Do not fear / when a man / becomes rich - when the honor / of his household / increases – for / in his death / he cannot / take it all along – his honor cannot / go down there / after him.” The psalm is, at this point, reaching its conclusion and, in doing so, beginning to mirror the opening of the psalm. Here, the ‘do no fear when a man becomes rich’ closely resembles the ‘why should I be afraid in evil days…when they who trust in their wealth…’ of verses 5-6. There, the opening was said in a very confident tone of almost sarcasm. Here, a directive is issued to the student to “not fear”. As we have argued throughout, there is an important difference in this psalm than in many others that encourage the student to “not fear” in the face of the wicked. In many of those other psalms, the reason for their encouragement is because the wicked’s actions will boomerang back on them; they will suffer judgment through the outworking of their evil deeds. Here, something very different is in view. It is not that the wicked are going to suffer from a particular form of judgment. Rather, it is that they will suffer from the same fate that awaits everyone (wise to fool, rich to poor): death. Nowhere does this psalm indicate that their death will be unnatural or early. In this way the psalm really is much more meditative. There is a deafening lack of petition anywhere in the psalm. And this lack of petition is actually completely in accord with the theme of the psalm: that nothing man can offer to God can redeem him from Sheol (including piety). This is why this directive of “do not fear” emerges with almost as much certainty as when one is commanded to “not fear” because God is with them (as in the conquest)—there is an utter certainty about the irrevocable nature of death and the consuming nature of Sheol that is on par with a certainty of God’s presence (oddly enough). This is wisdom literature reaching an amazing height (or, depth). By way of wisdom we come to see that no ‘honor’ (here, wealth) can penetrate the earth; it does not ‘go down’ but stays above. The dead are not, and cannot be, objects of veneration (or power) for they are all, uniformly, robbed of their honor and prestige by Sheol. We see this in the verses geographical movement—it rises in the first verse as man’s wealth and honor ‘increase’; in the second, though, everything plunges into the depths at which time, man is stripped bare of his worth. Man’s ‘rising’ therefore is not, even though it seems to be, an eternal one. For it would seem that man, in entering into ‘honor’ and ‘worth’, is entering into a sphere of perpetuity, of ‘everlasting’ honor, that he is partaking in something that will abide with him, even across the border of Sheol. For the psalmist, however, there is something about the magnitude of death that creates a severe interruption in this ascent. Indeed, for him, although he does not explicitly state it (although it is implied in the next verse…), death seems to be almost a curse—a robbing, a violent stripping of man’s ‘worth’. For him, in death there is no continuity with life. It would seem that this is precisely the vision he is attempting to discard. In this way, we see that for him death is a barrier, an objective force that intrudes, and breaks apart the spectrum of life. It is as if man is shattered in death. Sheol is not anywhere portrayed here as enacting anything but an active destruction of man. It is uncompromising (vs. 7); unredeemable (vs. 8); consigns man to the same fate as a beast (vs. 10, 12, 14, 20); is a claustrophobic dwelling (vs. 11); a stripping (vs. 11); a devouring mouth (vs. 14); and utter darkness (vs. 19). Indeed, the perpetuity that man desires is only obtained in Sheol.