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24 You guide me with your counsel,
    and afterward you will receive me into glory.[a]
25 Whom do I have in heaven except you?
    And besides you there is nothing else I desire on earth.
26 Even should my heart and my flesh[b] fail,
    God is the rock of my heart
    and my portion forever.

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Footnotes

  1. Psalm 73:24 Receive me into glory: is it a question here of heavenly glory? The text does not make this clear. It states that God will preserve the righteous from a brutal and premature death and rehabilitate them (see Job 19:9; 29:18; 42:7), while he despises the wicked who will suddenly disappear (v. 18f). Nothing obliges us to give the verb “receive” a stronger meaning than in Pss 18:17 (“snatched me up”) and 49:16 (“take”—see also note there) based on the assumption into heaven of Enoch (Gen 5:24; Sir 44:16) and Elijah (2 Ki 2:3; Sir 48:9). However, as in Ps 16:9f, the psalmist’s fervor and the demands of his love for God lead him to long never to be separated from him; it constitutes a stage in the explicit belief in the resurrection, attested in Dan 12:2.
  2. Psalm 73:26 My heart and my flesh: the whole being (see Ps 84:3). Heart: see note on Ps 4:8. Portion: as a Levite, the psalmist has the Lord for his portion (or inheritance) of the Promised Land, i.e., he lives off the tithes that the people present to the Lord (see Num 18:21-24; Deut 10:9; 18:1-8).