Psalms 16:2

My soul, you have said to Yahweh, “You are my Lord. Apart from you I have no good thing.”

World English Bible
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Other translations

WEBBE

My soul, you have said to the LORD, “You are my Lord. Apart from you I have no good thing.”

BSB

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

KJV

O my soul, thou hast said unto the LORD, Thou art my Lord: my goodness extendeth not to thee;

ASV

[O my soul], thou hast said unto Jehovah, Thou art my Lord: I have no good beyond thee.

BBE

O my soul, you have said to the Lord, You are my Lord: I have no good but you.

Original Hebrew

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The early church

"I have said to the Lord, You are my God, for You require not my goods": for with my goods Thou dost not look to be made blessed.
Augustine of Hippo · d. 430Expositions on the Psalms
It is man, not God, who benefits from the whole economy of worship.
Augustine of Hippo · d. 430City of God

Commentary

Spurgeon · Verse 2

"O my soul, thou hast said unto the Lord, Thou art my Lord." In his inmost heart the Lord Jesus bowed himself to do service to his Heavenly Father, and before the throne of Jehovah his soul vowed allegiance to the Lord for our sakes. We are like him when our soul, truly and constantly in the presence of the heart-searching God, declares her full consent to the rule and government of the Infinite Jehovah, saying, "Thou art my Lord." To avow this with the lip is little, but for the soul to say it, especially in times of trial, is a gracious evidence of spiritual health; to profess it before men is a small matter, but to declare it before Jehovah himself is of far more consequence. This sentence may also be viewed as the utterance of appropriating faith, laying hold upon the Lord by personal covenant and enjoyment; in this sense may it be our daily song in the house of our pilgrimage. "My goodness extendeth not to thee." The work of our Lord Jesus was not needful on account of any necessity in the Divine Being. Jehovah would have been inconceivably glorious had the human race perished, and had no atonement been offered. Although the life-work and death-agony of the Son did reflect unparalleled lustre upon every attribute of God, yet the Most Blessed and Infinitely Happy God stood in no need of the obedience and death of his Son; it was for our sakes that the work of redemption was undertaken, and not because of any lack or want on the part of the Most High. How modestly does the Saviour here estimate his own goodness! What overwhelming reasons have we for imitating his humility! "If thou be righteous, what givest thou him? or what receiveth he of thine hand?" (Job 35:7.)

Read Spurgeon on Psalm 16 →

Cross-references

15

Topics

Cross-references: Treasury of Scripture Knowledge. Hebrew and Greek data from STEPBible.org (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0. Library: sources.