Mournful views of death.
These verses are by no means the only ones which set forth similar views. Their melancholy is very profound. See this in—
I. THE DESCRIPTION OF THE HABITATION OF THE DEAD. The terms they use are all sad. As:
1. "The pit." (Psalms 88:4.) "The lowest pit" (Psalms 88:6). The idea is of a vast profound subterranean cavern, into which no ray of light entered. Infernal regions indeed:
2. "Destruction." (Psalms 88:11.) A place where all living powers came to an end, and death only reigned.
3. "The dark." (Psalms 88:12.) And "darkness" (Psalms 88:6).
4. "The land of forgetfulness" and silence. God had been their Light, their Joy, their Life; hut now they should know him no more. What wonder that they so shrank from death!
II. THE BLESSINGS OF WHICH THEY WERE DEPRIVED. The living might rejoice in them, hut never the dead. These blessings were:
1. Knowledge of God's wonders. The memory and experience of these were to the living their perpetual gladness; but the dead know and can know nothing of them. They are unhappy beings who know not anything, clean forgotten, out of mind—beings whom God himself remembers not.
2. God's loving kindness. (Psalms 88:11.) They had been wont to exclaim, "How excellent is thy loving kindness!" to pray that God would "continue" it; to declare that they would "not conceal" it from all men, that they continually "thought of" it, that it was "good," that it was "life," yea, "better than life." But now they were shut off from it altogether.
3. God's "faithfulness." (Psalms 88:11.) This, too, they were wont lovingly to extol (cf. Psalms 36:5; Psalms 40:10; Psalms 89:1, Psalms 89:5, Psalms 89:8, Psalms 89:24, Psalms 89:33, etc.). But it was gone from them in the grave.
4. God's righteousness. (Psalms 88:12.) This had been all their trust and stay when living, but in the grave they knew it no more.
III. THEIR LOSS OF ALL POWER.
1. They cannot praise God. (Psalms 88:10.) This had been their joy on earth.
2. They cannot see. It would be in vain that God's wonders were displayed before them.
3. They cannot hear. Therefore it would be of no avail to declare God's loving kindness to them.
4. They cannot know either the wonders or the righteousness of God.
5. They have no power even to stand on their feet. Body, mind, and soul all stripped of their former powers. No wonder that Hezekiah cried, in his dread of death, "The living, the living, he shall praise thee!" And this was the belief of all the saints of the Old Testament.
IV. QUESTIONS THAT ARISE FROM THE FACT OF THESE VIEWS ABOUT DEATH.
1. Are they true? Certainly not. In no one single particular are they true. The believer does not after death abide in the grave, nor in any pit, nor in the land of destruction, of darkness, and of forgetfulness. He is "with Christ, which is far better" (see New Testament, passim).
2. Were they ever true? In part they were. Christ opened the kingdom of heaven to all believerses He was the Forerunner. None entered into the heavens until Christ, "the Way," first entered. Until then the spirits of the just were being safely guarded—the rendering (1 Peter 3:19) "in prison" is surely a misleading one, suggesting, as it does, the idea of punishment, whereas the word only signifies being "watched over," "guarded," "kept"—in the invisible world, in Hades, the place of departed spirits. They were in an inferior, but not in an unhappy, condition. It was called by the Jews "Abraham's besom," "Paradise" (Luke 16:23; Luke 23:43). And again and again in the Psalms we have utterances of bright though not definite hope as to the future (Psalms 11:7; Psalms 16:8-11; Psalms 17:15; Psalms 49:15, etc.). But they had their seasons of despondency, and then this hope fled away, and they could speak only as in these verses before us, which are so very far from the complete truth. Even then, blessed were the dead who died in the Lord!
3. Why was our better, brighter hope withheld from them, so that they could hold such sad views as these? The reply is to be found in God's method of educating the race. Step by step, here a little and there a little, progressively—such seems to have been the Divine plan. As we educate our children, so did God educate man (cf. Hebrews 1:1). Our Lord taught the people, when he was here on earth, "as they were able to bear it." And such seems ever to have been God's way. It has been suggested (J.A. Froude) that, seeing how Egypt had perverted the doctrine of a future life, making it the minister of all kinds of wrong, God kept any clear knowledge of this life from Israel, concentrating their attention upon the present life and its duties by means of present temporal rewards and punishments. It may have been so; but the question is one beyond our power to fully answer.
4. Why is the better hope given to us? To vindicate God (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:12-19). To sustain men's hope. "We are saved by hope." To quicken the love and pursuit of believers. To deliver from the fear of death. All this our hope does.—S.C.
HOMILIES BY R. TUCK