NT Text: Acts 2:25-31
OT Source(s):
Source: G.K. Beale & D.A. Carson, Commentary on the NT Use of the OT; Darrell L. Bock, Proclamation from Prophecy and Pattern; Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type: Direct Quotation
Connection Method(s): Promise-Fulfillment (with prosopological reading — David speaks as a prophet in the voice of the Christ; NOT Typology)
Anchor Text: Ps 16:8-11 — You Will Not Let Your Holy One See Corruption
Significance: This is the foundational apostolic resurrection-citation — Psalm 16:8-11 quoted in full in the first Christian sermon, where Peter develops the NT's most extended Ps 16 pesher (Acts 2:25-31). The connection is Promise-Fulfillment read prosopologically, not Typology: Peter does not argue that David is a type whose pattern is escalated in Christ, but that David, being a prophet (2:30), spoke these words in the voice of his greater Son. The argument runs by impossibility-of-self-reference — "the patriarch David died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day" (2:29); his body did see decay; therefore "You will not let Your Holy One see decay" cannot describe David, but only the Christ "who was not abandoned to Hades, nor did His body see decay" (2:31). The argument is exegetically load-bearing on the LXX rendering of šaḥat as διαφθοράν ("decay/corruption") rather than the ambiguous Hebrew "pit"; only the corruption-reading forces the verse past David to the resurrected Messiah. Peter pairs this with the Davidic-covenant oath (2:30; cf. 2 Sam 7:12-13) and immediately with Psalm 110:1 (2:34-35), so that Ps 16 carries the resurrection-claim and Ps 110 the session-claim in a single inaugurated-eschatology argument that climaxes, "God has raised this Jesus to life, to which we are all witnesses" (2:32). The telos of the citation is not a lesson in courage but the risen, undecayed Christ himself: the same psalm that promises His body would not see corruption ends in "the path of life... fullness of joy in Your presence... eternal pleasures at Your right hand" (16:11) — so that the resurrection is not bare escape from the grave but entry into the joy of God, the firstfruits of the believer's own undecaying hope (cf. 1 Cor 15:20-23). To behold the Holy One who saw no corruption is to be drawn toward the fullness of joy that is His and, in Him, ours forevermore.