Psalms 16:11

Three phrases, and they answer three different questions.

You will show me the path of life — where am I going. In your presence is fullness of joy — what is it like when I get there. In your right hand there are pleasures forever more — how long does it last. Direction, quality, duration. The verse closes all three doors that usually stay open.

The word fullness is worth pausing on. Not joy, not much joy — fullness. It implies a container with a capacity, and the capacity being reached. Most joy in ordinary life is partial by nature; something is always missing from it, and often what is missing is the sense that it will hold. This one is described as complete, and the completeness is located in a place: in your presence.

That location is the whole argument of the psalm. David has already said earlier that he has no good beyond God. Here he does not say joy is given by God's presence, as though it were dispensed there. He says it is in it. The presence is not the source of the joy at one remove. It is where the joy is.

And Peter, preaching at Pentecost, reads the earlier verses of this psalm as being about someone whose body did not see decay. He takes the path of life quite literally — a path leading through death and out the other side.