Psalms 6:5

For in death [there is] no remembrance of thee,.... Of the goodness, truth, power, and faithfulness of God; no notice can be taken nor mention, made either of the perfections or works of God, whether

For in death there is no remembrance of thee: in the grave who shall give thee thanks? In death there is no remembrance of thee , [ zikrekaa (H2143)] - 'memorial of thee' (as in Psalms 9:6).

In death; amongst the dead; or in the grave, as it follows. There is no remembrance of thee; to wit, by me David, consisting both of soul and body; and no such remembrance, to wit, in way of thankfulness and praise, as the next clause of the verse limits and explains it; which he might fear would be true, not only because he should not have occasion to praise God for this deliverance, but also because he was in grievous agonies of conscience, and under terrors of God’ s wrath, and his eternal damnation; which being oft incident to the saints of God under the New Testament, it is not strange if it were so also under the Old Testament. Besides he speaks of the remembrance or celebration of God’ s name and grace in the land of the living, to the enlargement and edification of God’ s church, and the propagation of true religion among men; which is not done in the other life, and was justly prized at so high a rate by David and other holy men, to whom therefore it must needs be a great grief to be for ever deprived of such opportunities. For otherwise David very well knew, and firmly believed, that souls departed were not extinct, but did go to God, , and there remember, and adore, and enjoy God, though quite in another way than that of which he here speaks.

Psalms 6:5 For in death [there is] no remembrance of thee: in the grave who shall give thee thanks?Ver. 5. For in death there is no remembrance of thee] Some heathens were of the opinion that when a man died all died with him; neither was there any further sense of wealth or woe for ever. Socrates doubted, but Aristotle affirmed it to be so, for aught he knew, ουδενετιτωτεθνεωτιδοκειουτεαγαθον, ουτεκακονειναι (Ethic. 1.3, c. 9). Eusebius and Augustine make mention of certain Arabian heretics, who held that the soul died with the body, and so remained dead to the last day, and then they revived with the resurrection of the body. This was long since exploded as a foul error, contrary to that which the Scripture holdeth forth in many places. All that David would say here is, that dead men remember not, that is, they mention not God’ s worthy acts, to the quickening of others; their praises cannot provoke other men to believe in God, or serve him, as in their lifetime they might, therefore David would fain live to do more good. A certain martyr going to suffer said, he was sorry that he was going to a place where he should do God no more work, but be receiving wages only (Sever. Epist. 3). Domine, si adhuc populo tuo sim necessarius non recuso laborem, said a dying saint, Lord, if I may be yet useful to thy people, I should be very well content it might be so. See Isaiah 38:18-19. David and Hezekiah prayed hard that they might not yet die, lest religion and the true worship of God, which they had begun to vindicate and establish, should by their decease fall to the ground, through the wickedness of their survivors and successors. In the grave who shall give thee thanks?] sc. Palani et cum aliis, saith Aben Ezra, openly and exemplarily, in the company of others. Some render it, In hell who shall confess to thee? Hereby is showed the fear of God’ s children (saith Diodati) anguished by the feelings of his wrath, lest they should die out of his grace unreconciled, and by that means be excluded and debarred from their desired aim, to be everlastingly instruments of his glory. But it is better to take sheol here for the place and state of the dead, after their dissolution; though Dilrio will needs have it to be always in Scripture meant as hell; which if it be so, then why should Job so earnestly desire to be hid in it? Job 14:13. That was a singular example of Paul the hermit, who, though dead, seemed to be serving God, and affected those that beheld him (Adag. Sacr. in 2 Sam. xxii. Digress. 2). For he was found (saith Jerome) dead kneeling upon his knees, holding up his hands, lifting up his eyes; so that the very dead corpse seemed yet, by a kind of religious gesture, to pray unto God.

(5) For in death.—As in Psalms 30:9, the sufferer urges as a further reason for Divine aid the loss Jehovah would suffer by the cessation of his praise. The Israelite’s natural dread of death was intensified by the thought that the grave separated him from all the privileges of the covenant with God. (Comp. Isaiah 38:18.) There can be neither remembrance of His past mercies there, nor confession of His greatness. The word translated grave, in exact parallelism with death, is sheôl, or underworld, in the early conception merely a vast sepulchral cave, closed as rock-tombs usually were by gates of stone or iron (Isaiah 38:10; Job 17:16). The derivation of the word is disputed, but the primary meaning appears to have been hollowness. It occurs sixty-five times in the Bible, and is rendered in the Authorised version three times “pit,” and then with curious impartiality thirty-one times “grave,” and as many “hell.” When it ceased to be merely a synonym for “grave,” and began to gather a new set of ideas we cannot ascertain. It was before the time of which we have any contemporary records. But it acquired these new ideas very slowly. Sheol was for a very long time only a magnified grave, into which all the dead, bad and good alike, prince and peasant, went; where they lay side by side in their niches, as the dead do in the loculi of eastern tombs now, without sense of light or sound, or any influence from the upper world (1 Kings 2:2; Job 30:23; Psalms 89:48). It is something more than death, put it is not life. The “sleep of death” expresses it. As in Homer’s Hades, the dead are men without the minds or energies of men—“soulless men; so the dead in the Hebrew conception are rephaim, that is, weak, shadowy existences. Indeed, the Biblical representation is even less tolerable than the Greek. Homer’s heroes retain many of their interests in the living world; they rejoice in the prosperity of their friends—their own approval or disapproval makes a difference to those still on earth—and, apart from this continued connection with the upper air, they had gone to a realm of their own, with its sovereign lord, its laws and customs, its sanctions, and penalties. Not so in the Jewish belief—“the dead know not anything”; “there is no wisdom in sheol.” It would be of no use for God to show any wonders among those incapable of perceiving them (Ecclesiastes 9:5-10; Psalms 88:10). They have passed altogether from all the interests and relations of life, even from the covenant relation with Jehovah. (Comp. Isaiah 38:18; Psalms 115:17.) How the Hebrew conscience, helped, possibly, by the influence of foreign ideas, gradually struggled into a higher light on these subjects, belongs to the history of eschatology. The fact that Psalms 6 reflects the earlier undeveloped doctrine, is an argument against any very late date for it.

Verse 5. In death there is no remembrance of thee] Man is to glorify thee on earth. The end for which he was born cannot be accomplished in the grave; heal my body, and heal my soul, that I may be rendered capable of loving and serving thee here below. A dead body in the grave can do no good to men, nor bring any glory to thy name!

5. A further plea. There can be no gain in his death. Nay, Jehovah will be the loser by it. For man is created to praise God, and God delights in his praise. But in the state to which man passes at death, he can no longer gratefully call to mind His goodness (Psalms 145:7), or celebrate His praise. Here, as in Psalms 30:9, Psalms 88:10-12, Psalms 115:17 (cp. Isaiah 38:18 ff.; the Book of Job; Ecclesiastes 9:5; Ecclesiastes 6:10); we meet with that dreary despairing view of the state after death, which the Hebrews shared with the rest of the ancient world. They did not look forward to annihilation, but to a dreamy, shadowy, existence which did not deserve the name of life. The dead, they thought, were cut off from all activity and enjoyment, and worst of all, from the consciousness of God’s presence, and from that communion with Him, which is the essence of ‘life’ (Psalms 30:5). It is hardly possible for us who live in the light of Christ’s Resurrection (2 Timothy 1:10), to realise what the lifelong slavery to the fear of death (Hebrews 2:15) meant to the faithful Israelite, and the bold struggles of his faith to break the fetters. See Introd. p. xciii ff. in the grave] It is far better, with the R.V., to retain the Hebrew word Shìôl to denote the abode of the departed. It is the O.T. equivalent of Hades, by which it is rendered in the LXX. It was thought of as a vast subterranean abyss, where all alike were gathered; a place of gloom and silence, but withal of rest, however joyless, for its shadowy denizens have no more power to do harm than good. “There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest.” Cp. Job 3:13-19; Isaiah 14:9 ff. See Oehler’s O.T. Theology, § 78.

For in death - In the state of the dead; in the grave. There is no remembrance of thee - They who are dead do not remember thee or think of thee.

5. In death—David had grounded his prayer (Psalms 6:4) on the mercy of God, that it might be honoured by his deliverance; now, he rests it on the state of the dead, as unable to praise Him.