God’s Word for You

Psalm 16:5-6 a delightful inheritance

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Friday, April 3, 2026

We should remember that the Holy Spirit himself interprets this Psalm for us, quoting and explaining it in Acts 2:25-31 and in Acts 13:35-37. The writer of the Psalm is David, and we can view many of the verses through his eyes and mind, but primarily the speaker is not David nor the believer, but Christ himself. This is more and more the case as the Psalm progresses. In the verses before us, we can still make a Christian application, but we will pay more attention to how these words point to Christ and reveal his own heart to us.

5 O LORD, my assigned portion and my cup;
  you hold my lot.

The believer prays, “Lord, you are my assigned portion and cup.” In this lifetime, God is the assigned portion for the Christian. Throughout most of Scripture, when a “cup” is mentioned in a prophetic and symbolic way, as it is here, it means suffering (Psalm 75:8; Isaiah 51:17; Jeremiah 25:15, 49:12; Lamentations 4:21; Ezekiel 23:32; Habakkuk 2:16; Zechariah 12:2; Revelation 14:10, 16:19, 17:4, 18:6). An exception is the cup of blessing in Psalm 23:5, the good cup that overflows (also Psalm 116:13, the cup of salvation). Which is meant here, a cup of wrath and punishment, or a good cup of blessing?

If it is a cup of troubles, then for the believer, this is the cross we carry, the cross given to correct our ways, to be an example to other people, and to give God glory. It is not an easy cup. But it is not given lightly to us; God is the one who “holds my lot.” This lot is not a parcel of land (the kind we see in verse 6), but the lot that the ancient Israelites cast when they wanted to solve a dilemma. The one rolling such dice, David says, is not me the sinner, but God the omniscient and omnipotent. He does not really roll dice at all. Man may not know why this or that event happens in life, but he relies on God for every blessing. But this verse points ahead beyond this lifetime to eternal life, for this is truly “my assigned portion,” for it is not only given by God, but it is God himself. For even as he approached death, Jacob said, “O Lord, I wait for your salvation” (Genesis 49:18)

Yet the cup could also easily be the good cup of overflowing blessing. In fact, this makes better sense in the verse, for although it is good for Christians to remember that crosses come from the hand of God, this cup is the Lord God—not just from him, but he himself. He is our cup, our blessing that constantly overflows, the cup that Psalm 116:13 calls “the cup of salvation.”

Christ prays, “Father, you are my assigned portion and lot, and you are my cup.” Christ had no home of his own in the world; no place to lay his head. His cup meant the rescue of his people, and so he did not object even though his cup meant torture, pain, and death. But shall this cup, even with Christ willing to drink from it, be the cup of wrath that Jesus prayed about in Gethsemane (Matthew 26:39)? Should we not stay with the grammar of the verse and recognize this cup as the Father of the Son? The cup of bitterness is what the condemned sinner receives, and, yes, what Christ drank in his suffering. But the Father in heaven is the cup of Christ’s resurrection and glory, his place at the Father’s right hand (Mark 16:19).

6 My boundary lines have fallen in pleasant places;
  I have a delightful inheritance.

The believer prays, “my boundary lines are pleasant.” The imagery is from the assigning of the territories to the Israelites when they first entered Canaan. Moses permitted two and a half tribes (Manasseh was so large that it was divided) to have land on the east side of the Jordan; this was by their own request (Joshua 13:8, 18:7). Then Joshua cast or threw lots for the other nine and a half tribes for the area west of the Jordan, for every tribe except the Levites who were priests and received no tribal territory, “but only towns to live in, with pasturelands for their flocks and herds” (Joshua 14:4). Each tribe found delightful things in their territories: coastland, lakes, rivers, streams, forests, mountains, hills, valleys, grazing land, glens, glades, and especially springs of fresh water. The believer looks at the things God has placed into his or her life, and learns to delight in them without coveting his neighbor’s property or inheritance (forbidden by the Ninth Commandment).

Christ prays, “my boundary lines are pleasant.” As the great high priest of Israel, he considers himself, like the Levites, to have no physical place in the land of Canaan, but like the Levites of Israel, was given a home here and there as he preached, first in one village, then in another, staying even in the little olive grove just outside the temple courts and within sight of the Beautiful Gate (Acts 3:2). Whatever it was that Christ needed on earth, it was furnished for him by his Father in heaven. Here we have shown to us the glory of the office of Christ, the holy dignity of that office. We would never have known or understood this if it had not been revealed to us by Scripture. Paul says, “The preaching about Christ is a mystery that has been kept silent for eternal ages” (Romans 16:25), and Jesus said, “Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 16:17). What greater inheritance for Jesus our Lord, who suffered hell in our place, than to be our King, eternally, praised by all who have had faith in him? “At the name of Jesus, every knee will bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth” (Philippians 2:10), for in Jesus even the dead under the earth will rise to life, and praise him with those who remained alive until the end and the angels in heaven. We all will praise him together forever. A delightful inheritance, and one which we will be delighted to take part in.

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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