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Commentaries and Other Bible Study Helps - Prayer Tents - Prayer Tents
49:13-20 Contrasting Destinations: We Go to God, Not Sheol. There are two groups of people here, they (the unfaithful, those who have foolish confidence) and "I" (the faithful, who sing this); and God treats them differently when they die. The unfaithful are like sheep . . . appointed for Sheol, while God will ransom the faithful person's soul from the power of Sheol (vv. 14-15). Since the impious go to Sheol, and the pious do not, here it represents the grim place of destruction for the wicked, and not simply the grave (see note on 6:5). A genuine grasp of this will enable a person to resist being afraid when a man becomes rich (49:16)--the fear that might lead the faithful to despair of God's justice and goodness, or to give up piety in order to join the wicked and to get praise when they do well for themselves (v. 18).
49:15 Quite often in the Bible, "soul" describes the life principle that animates the body, or the person's inner self, and can simply be another way of saying "the self." At other times, however, it can describe that inner self as something that survives the death of the body, as it does here, where my soul is parallel to me, the self that after death will not go to Sheol. In the larger picture of the Bible, the separation of body and soul is unnatural, a product of sin (Gen. 3:19), and will be healed with their reunion at the resurrection (Dan. 12:2-3; cf. 2 Cor. 5:1-4).
