Psalms 16:11 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Thou wilt show me the path of life That is, the way that leadeth to life; not to a temporal and mortal life here, for he is supposed to be dead and buried, (Psalms 16:10,) but to an endless, immortal, and blessed life after death, in the presence of God, as it follows; the way to which is by the resurrection of the body. The sense, therefore, is, Thou wilt raise me from the grave, and conduct me to the place and state of everlasting felicity. In thy presence Hebrew, את פניךְי, eth panecha, or, before thy face, that is, in that heavenly world where thou art graciously and gloriously present; where thou dost clearly and fully discover thy face, and the light of thy countenance: whereas, in this life thou hidest thy face, and showest us only thy back parts, and we are in a state of comparative absence from thee, and see thee only through a glass darkly, and enjoy thee but in part. Is fulness of joy Full and perfect joy, and satisfaction, which it is in vain to expect in this life, and which is only to be found in the vision and fruition of thee, Exodus 33:14. See the margin. At thy right hand Which he mentions as a place of the greatest honour, the place where the saints have their station at the last day, Matthew 25:33, and where Christ himself is said to sit, Psalms 110:1; Matthew 26:64; Colossians 3:1; Hebrews 1:3. There are pleasures for evermore Everlasting delights in the contemplation and fruition of God. Observe, reader, through the resurrection of Christ, here foretold, every dying believer in him, like his dying Master, may cheerfully put off his body in confident expectation of a blessed immortality. His flesh also shall rest in hope. Our bodies have little rest in this world; but in the grave they shall rest as in their beds, Isaiah 57:2. We have little to hope for from this life, but we may rest in hope of a better life, and put off the body in that hope. Death destroys the hope of man, Job 14:14, but not the hope of a true Christian, Proverbs 14:32. He has hope in his death, “living hopes,” says Henry, “in dying moments; hopes that the body shall not be left for ever in the grave; but though it see corruption for a time, it shall, at the end of time, be raised to immortality; Christ's resurrection is an earnest of ours, if we be his.” Observe further: “In this world sorrow is our lot, but in heaven there is joy; all our joys here are empty and defective; but, in heaven, there is fulness of joy; our pleasures here are transient and momentary, and such is the nature of them that it is not fit they should last long; but those at God's right hand are pleasures for evermore; for they are the pleasures of immortal souls in the enjoyment of an eternal God.”