One of the features of modern exegesis is a deep and abiding concern for context and the human biblical author’s authorial intent. To be sure, this due respect and attention to such a major literary facet of the text has yielded treasures that we should not dismiss lightly. However, this level of concern, detached from canonical and theological (and even philosophical) questions has its limitations. Not all theological insights to be found in any given text are gleanable from asking answering historical questions surrounding the passage’s context. Psalm 17:15 provides a good example to illustrate the limitations of such a constrained exegesis.

David’s prayer in Psalm 17 is, in many ways, unremarkable for its kind. Like many of David’s psalms, it is a cry for help to God alone. According to David, he is wrongfully pursued by “deadly enemies” (Ps 17:9). These enemies “close their hearts to pity” and “speak arrogantly” (Ps 17:11). The chief enemy “is like a lion eager to tear” (Ps 17:12), and so, David appeals to God—who is sovereign over even the very life of his oppressors (Ps 17:14)—to “vindicate” him (Ps 17:1). The text itself does not provide with certainty the occasion for this psalm, but David had his fair share of enemies, and it is not difficult to imagine he wrote it under the duress of being hunted by any one of them (Saul, particularly, stands out as a believable candidate for the “lion” David refers to here. Cf., 1 Samuel 19-31).

In this context, then, verse 15 seems to commend itself as David’s consolation of confidence in God to answer his prayer. “As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I wake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness” (Ps 17:15). There seems to be some ambiguity as to whether David means to say that he will behold God’s face in his (David’s) own righteousness (as verse 2 and 3 might seem to suggest), or behold God’s face in God’s righteousness (as the parallel of verse 15’s second half might suggest— “in righteousness,” corresponds to “your likeness”). It may be that both are in view, though which aspect receives primary punctuation will depend on how one answers the most relevant question with respect to our purposes here: does David refer merely to consolation he will receive in this life, or does he refer to something else as well? David will behold God’s face in righteousness, and will be satisfied with God’s likeness, when he wakes. When is that? Does David speak of the morning following this prayer, or does he refer to waking from the sleep of death in the resurrection? If our hermeneutical concerns are constrained to merely describe what is happening in David’s historical context at the time of Psalm 17’s origin, we would be hard-pressed to squeeze a whole doctrine of the resurrection and the beatific vision into such a small phrase. Such constraint is precisely why many biblical commentators are so reluctant to describe anything beyond David’s confidence in his deliverance from this particular peril. For example, Rolf Jacobson and Beth Tanner modestly conclude their comments on Psalm 17:15 in this way, “The psalmist, having prayed himself as it were almost into an exhausted sleep, closes his eyes in the trusting confidence that the new day will dawn with hope—because all tomorrows are in the hands of the Lord.”[1] Likewise, Derek Kidner observes how “some expositors” (including Kirkpatrick,[2] Weiser,[3] Briggs,[4] and Dahood[5]) “suggest that the words when I awake meant to the psalmist no more than this,” namely, that David was confident in God’s vindication of his own righteousness.[6]

If, however, we allow ourselves to read Psalm 17:15 not merely in light of the historical occasion for the prayer, but also in light of what David has written elsewhere, and indeed, what all the biblical authors have written, such a minimal interpretation of “when I awake” does not satisfy. This is the very same David, after all, who penned 27:4. This psalm is written in a similar context, with a similar tone—David can remain undaunted by his “adversaries and foes,” who “assail” him to “eat up [his] flesh” (Ps 27:2), because “the LORD is [his] light and salvation (Ps 27:1). In this context, David expresses his single-minded desire: “One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple” (Ps 27:4). That David is speaking of a desire that by necessity points beyond this life is evident from the fact that he already takes comfort in God as his light and his salvation. He is already within the “stronghold of [his] life” (Ps 27:1), and yet, despite the hopeful and glorious reality he enjoys as he writes these words, he longs for something more. Like Moses, who enjoyed theretofore unparalleled access to God’s presence, he was so bold as to ask—single mindedly—for something else. David does not simply pine after a life of contemplation in Yahweh’s temple in Jerusalem, he longs to dwell in Yahweh’s true house, where he can see not merely the beauty of the temple, but the beauty of Yahweh himself. To “gaze upon the beauty of the LORD” is the “one thing” for which he asks.

The singularity of this request, of course, does not bespeak an absolute unwillingness to request anything else of God. Instead, we should understand this desire—the desire to “gaze upon the beauty of the LORD”—as the desire that subsumes all other desires. All other legitimate requests of Yahweh eventuate in this one. All answered prayers, for David, find their ultimate answer in being in the house of the LORD, gazing upon his beauty. Such a pure expression of desire for God—such an unveiled and revelatory moment of deep sincerity—accords with what we find in other passages, such as Exodus 33:18, Isaiah 33:17, 1 Corinthians 13:9-11, and Revelation 22:3-5.

We must conclude, therefore, that, whatever David means by “awaking” in Psalm 17:15, the verse cannot merely signify David’s assurance of waking the next day, content with God in the face of opposition. To be sure, the text can certainly refer at least to such an immediate hope, but surely Psalm 17:15 calls our mind to a hope that transcends this age and this life. “The sight of God is either by faith on earth,” writes the nineteenth-century biblical commentator, William S. Plumer, “or by vision in heaven. Beholding as by a glass darkly the glory of the Lord on earth is a pledge of beholding his glory in the visions of immortality.”[7] Plumer rightly indicates that both readings are legitimate, depending on which horizon is in view: communion with God before or after the resurrection. Plumer writes,

Beholding as by a glass darkly the glory of the Lord on earth is a pledge of beholding his glory in the visions of immortality. I shall be satisfied with thy likeness, when I wake either every morning, and find myself with God, enjoying his favor and friendship, and so beholding him in his works of providence and grace; or as when one awakes from sleep, the emblem of death, I shall be delivered from these impending evils, and shall thus be assured of thy love; or above all, when I awake from my last sleep of death and in the glories of a resurrection state shall see God face to face, then to my discoveries of him shall bring everlasting satisfaction to my soul.[8]

In the psalms, David finds deep consolation in God’s deliverance from temporal danger. But what becomes clear in consideration of all his reflections—and in light of the biblical canon as a whole—is that David’s deepest consolation is the blessed hope of the beatific vision. Some of the most affective lines in all the psalter—like those in Psalm 17:15 or Psalm 27:4—point the reader beyond the temporal circumstances of David the King, or David the politician, to the heavenly hope of David the worshiper. Like rays of transcendent light cutting through the firmament and clouds of transient struggles, David evinces a heart that is beckoned beyond earth’s atmosphere into the highest heavens. David’s otherworldly hope is in the blessed vision—the hope to behold and be satisfied by the face and likeness of he who is righteousness (Ps 17:15), the hope to dwell in the house of the Lord to gaze upon his beauty (Ps 27:4)—a hope that is well-founded, which becomes clear with the development that comes with progressive revelation.

[1] Rolf A. Jacobson and Beth Tanner, “Book One of the Psalter: Psalms 1–41,” in The Book of Psalms, Nancy deClaissé-Walford, Rolf A. Jacobson, and Beth LaNeel Tanner (eds) (Grand Rapids, MI; Eerdmans, 2014), 189.

[2] A. F. Kirkpatric, Psalms (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1912).

[3] Artur Weiser, Psalms (London, UK: SCM Press, 1962).

[4] Charls A. Briggs and Emilie Briggs, Psalms (London, UK: T&T Clark, 2000).

[5] Mitchel Dahood, Psalms 1-50 (Newhaven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995).

[6] Derek Kidner, Psalms 1–72: An Introduction and Commentary (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1973), 107.

[7] William S. Plumer, Psalms: A Critical and Expository Commentary with Doctrinal and Practical Remarks, Reprinted(Edinburgh, UK: 1978), 228.

[8] Plumer, Psalms, 228.