David stood on a hilltop across the valley from Saul’s camp, holding the king’s spear and water jar. He had crept into the camp that night and could have killed Saul in his sleep. Instead, from a safe distance, he called out a complaint. Men had driven him away, he said, “that I should have no share in the heritage of the LORD, saying, ‘Go, serve other gods’” (1 Samuel 26:19 ESV).

To a modern reader, the logic seems strange. How does leaving a place mean serving another god?

But in the ancient world, land and worship belonged together. Each people had its territory, and each territory had its god. When Naomi urges Ruth to turn back, she points to her other daughter-in-law, who “has gone back to her people and to her gods.” Ruth’s answer joins the two in the same breath: “your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” Israel’s land was divided by lot, tribe by tribe, and marked out with ropes, the surveyor’s measuring lines.

Psalm 16 borrows that whole vocabulary. “YHWH is the portion I possess and my cup. You are holding my lot,” the psalmist says. Then: “Property lines have fallen for me in the most delightful places.” The word for “lines” is literally “ropes.” The psalmist is describing a land survey, and he is glad of where the boundaries fell.

Just before this, he has refused to pour out drink offerings to other gods. So the image says more than “I’m content.” It names whose land he stands on, and therefore whose God is his.

There is one more turn. In Deuteronomy, when the Most High divides the nations, Israel becomes the LORD’s portion: “Jacob his allotted heritage,” literally the measured rope of his inheritance (Deuteronomy 32:9 ESV). Psalm 16 reverses the image. The people are no longer only the LORD’s portion. The LORD is also the psalmist’s.

David was driven from his share of the land. But this psalm claims a share no one can drive him from.

Read more on psalms.scriptura.org → Psalm 16 Verse by Verse