Psalms 17:15

I will see Your face with righteousness In the future, take my judgment away from before You and grasp the righteous deeds that I have performed, and through them I will see Your face.

I will see Your face with righteousness in the future (Mid. Ps. 17:13), or I will see Your face with righteousness Take my judgment away from before You and grasp the righteous deeds that I have performed, and through them I will see Your face. In other editions, this is one interpretation: I will be satisfied with Your image upon the awakening I will be satisfied with the vision of Your image when the dead awaken from their sleep. In many editions, the following appears at this point: Another explanation: I will be satisfied from seeing Your face when the dead awaken from their sleep, for they are in the likeness of Your image, for so it is stated (in Gen. 9:6): “For in the image of God, He made man.”

As for me, I shall behold Thy face in righteousness: – says David. The wicked have no delight in the world to come, but it is not so with me, for I am looking forward to and hoping to see Thy face in the world to come; and when he says As for me, in righteousness, (he means) for I am looking forward to and hoping to see Thy face in the world to come in (reward for the) righteousness I do in this world in not eating and living in luxury as they do.

I shall be satisfied: – He says, I shall be satisfied, balancing Their children are satisfied: they shall be satisfied in this world, while I shall be satisfied in the world to come.

On awaking: – for my soul shall not die and sleep; the opposite of “they shall sleep a perpetual sleep” (Jer. 51:39, 57).

(with.) Thy likeness: – as “and the likeness of the Lord shall he behold” (Num. 12:8), which is the same as saying, “the likeness of the Lord he has seen.” (What is meant) is mental apprehension of the glory of God according to the soul's capacity after its separation from the body. Moses our teacher (upon him be peace!) experienced this during the lifetime of the body, which was not the case as regards the rest of the Prophets; for his intelligence was active, while all the functions of the body were suspended – “he did neither eat bread nor drink water” (Exod. 34:28) and then the face of the Lord did he behold. This was not so with Elijah, when it is related of him that“ in the strength of that meat,” as we have interpreted in Kings (1. 19:8). And as regards the rest of the Prophets, this (experience) will be theirs after death. The learned Rabbi Abraham ben Ezra has expounded this verse of this world, and he expounds it thus: “I delight to behold Thy face, for the righteousness which I have observed has become the cause of the delight I feel in seeing Thy face. The sense (of the phrase) is the recognition and contemplation of the works of God that they in general are wrought in wisdom and endure for ever. I then am satisfied with the enjoyment of Thy likeness” being in this unlike the wicked men of the world, who are satisfied “when Thou fillest their belly; and this is not in dream, but only when I am awake. And this beholding is not in visions of the eye, but only in visions of the mind, which are visions of God in truth.”