49:13-14 The writer marvelled at the folly of the proud wicked. How silly it is to live only for the present. Death will end it all. The wicked may dominate the upright in this life, but a new day is coming in which God will turn the tables.
49:15 "The great But God. . . (15) is one of the mountain-tops of Old Testament hope."110
God will free the righteous from the power of the grave. He will receive them the other side of the grave. This is one of the Old Testament passages that reveals that believers living when the psalmist did had hope of life after death (cf. Job 19:25; Heb. 11:10; et al.). Revelation of the bodily resurrection, however, was obscure until Jesus Christ's resurrection and His apostles' instructions on that subject (1 Thess. 4; 1 Cor. 15).
"It is possible that the psalmist is looking at ultimate eschatological realities, anticipating his own resurrection and a time when the righteous, not the rich, will rule on earth. However, it is more likely that the ascendancy of the righteous refers to their vindication in this life, a well-attested theme in the Psalter, especially in the wisdom psalms (see, e.g., Pss. 1, 34, 37, and 112, as well as the discussion above). In this case verse 15 refers to God's preserving the psalmist through evil days' (cf. v. 5) by keeping him from premature, violent death at the hands of the oppressive rich and from the calamity that overtakes them. Morning' (v. 14), which brings to mind the dawning of a new day after a night of darkness, aptly symbolizes the cessation of these evil days.'"111
49:16-19 It is foolish to be jealous of wicked unbelievers. Their prosperity is only temporary. The wise person should not allow the wealth of the ungodly to intimidate him or her.
49:20 The psalmist repeated his concluding statement in the previous section (v. 12), but here he changed it slightly. Here he stressed the wicked person's lack of understanding. There he stressed his lack of endurance.
Believers should not envy the ungodly who prosper in this life. We should not feel inferior to them either. All that they are living for will perish with them. Those who fear God, however, can expect a glorious future with the Lord beyond the grave.
