I will walk before the LORD in the land of the living.
I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living. This verse and Psalms 116:8 are drawn from Psalms 56:13, "Thou hast delivered my soul from death: wilt not thou deliver my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the light of the living?" What was then uttered as in part an acknowledgment of deliverance, in part a prayer, is here wholly a grateful acknowledgment of a perfected deliverance of the life, the eyes, and the feet. Instead of "in the light," we have here "in the land (Hebrew, lands: cf. 2 Chronicles 11:23) of the living" (Psalms 27:13). The promises in Isaiah 30:19, "Thou shalt weep no more;" Jeremiah 31:16, are here spoken of as fulfilled, and as calling forth the gratitude of the delivered people. The lands of Canaan, "the pleasant land" (Daniel 8:9), are in one aspect "the land of the living." All the restored exiles who had been permitted to "enter into the land of Israel" were "written in the book of the living" (Psalms 69:28), "in the writing of the house of Israel" (Ezekiel 13:9). In a higher sense the words are fulfilled in those who shall partake of the resurrection to eternal life, in the land where "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes" (Revelation 20:6; Revelation 21:4). That this (Psalms 116:8) was not fully realized at the return from Babylon appears from the "weeping" of the ancient men at the remembrance of the former temple, when the foundation of the second temple was being laid (Ezra 3:12-13).