At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)
“The way of life is above to the wise, that he may depart from hell beneath” (Prov. 15:24).
Interpreters are divided on how to handle this passage, but there are good reasons for thinking that it shouldn’t be controversial. The alternatives here are Sheol below and the “way of life” above. The question at issue is whether this is talking about a contrast between the wicked descending to death, and the righteous living a happy, prosperous life up here in the “land of the living,” on the one hand, or whether it is talking in plain terms about the afterlife—the godly going “above,” and the ungodly “below.”
The received wisdom is that the doctrine of a resurrected afterlife is not pronounced at all in the Old Testament, and that detailed descriptions of Heaven do not come to the fore until the time of the New Testament. The problem with this is that Jesus flatly rejects it. When He is debating with the Sadducees over the dead being raised, His argument is taken from Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament, and these were words spoken around 1800 B.C. Moreover, Jesus does not just make this argument, but He also charges the Sadducees with ignorance of the Old Testament. The reason they did not believe in the resurrection, He says, is that they did not know the Scriptures, and they did not now the power of God—evident throughout the Old Testament Scriptures.
There is no good reason not to include this passage as contributing to our ultimate hope, the hope of the resurrection of the dead. The Messiah was not abandoned to Sheol (Ps. 16:10), and this means that neither shall we be. The great Job knew that “in his flesh” he was going to see God (Job 19:26). The prophet Daniel predicted that (Dan. 12:1-2). “After two days will he revive us: In the third day he will raise us up, And we shall live in his sight” (Hosea 6:2).
In short, this passage lines up nicely with what Paul exhorts us to do in Colossians 3. “Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth” (Col. 3:2).
