Psalms 6:5 - Exposition

For in death there is no remembrance of thee (comp. Psalms 30:9 ; Psalms 88:11 ; Psalms 115:17 ; Psalms 118:17 ; Isaiah 38:18 ). The general view of the psalmists seems to have been that death was a cessation of the active service of God—whether for a time or permanently, they do not make clear to us. So even Hezekiah, in the passage of Isaiah above quoted. Death is represented as a sleep ( Psalms 13:3 ), but whether there is an awakening from it does not appear. No doubt, as has been said, "the cessation of active service, even of remembrance or devotion, does not affect the question of a future restoration," and the metaphor of sleep certainly suggests the idea of an awakening. But such a veil hung over the other world, under the old dispensation, and over the condition of the departed in it, that thought was scarcely exercised upon the subject. Men's duties in this life were what occupied them, and they did not realize that in another they would have employments—much less form any notion of what those employments would be. The grave seemed a place of silence, inaction, tranquillity. In the grave (Hebrew, in Sheol ) who shall give thee thanks? (comp. Psalms 115:17 , Psalms 115:18 ).