Psalm 6:5 For in death there is no remembrance of you: in the grave who shall give you thanks? This Psalm is the first of those called penitential, and composed in confession of sin. From consideration of birth sin the writer turns to the littleness of man, and the shortness of life compared with God's greatness and goodness. As references to the silence of the grave and the departure of the dead occur frequently, we may ask in what sense we are to take such words. David evidently understood that this life is our only period of probation. He had apprehensions of a judgment day. David felt that, whatever he was to be, to become, to receive, or to suffer, in the state beyond the grave, was all to be begun while he was in the flesh. David felt how essential to his happiness it was to obtain God's favour, and that at once, without delay. All our hopes beyond the grave rest on our few years' passage through this life. There is no preparation after it. We are hastening on to the unalterable state, where we shall praise God for over, or never. We are like the sculptor, chiselling an inscription upon marble. Well done or badly done, clearly engraved or badly formed, or wrongly spelt, still those letters remain in imperishable characters. The sculptor's success, or his mistakes, both remain; no time will fade, no water will wash away, what is engraved in stone. So with our heavenly and eternal work, "the time is short"; but its records and its effects are lasting; they endure from generation to generation. Let us be stirred up by such thoughts to engrave for ourselves in the imperishable records of the Book of Life the record of a life spent by us, through God's grace, to His honour and in His service. (W. J. Stracey, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: For in death there is no remembrance of thee: in the grave who shall give thee thanks?WEB: For in death there is no memory of you. In Sheol, who shall give you thanks? |
    |