Psalms 88:10-12

Wilt thou shew wonders to the dead? shall the dead arise and praise thee? Selah.

-Appeal to God's regard to His own honour as involved in delivering the suppliant; because it is to the living that God shows His wonders, and it is from the living that God receives praises with the perfect powers of the entire man, body and soul united.

Verse 10. Wilt thou show wonders to the dead? shall the dead arise and praise thee? 'Death is here contemplated as it is in itself apart from anything to mitigate or counteract its terrors-what it would be had redemption not been; what it was to the Redeemer's soul (DeBurgh). So far from this being an argument against the resurrection, it is Messiah's own most powerful plea for it-that otherwise man would be deprived of salvation, and God of the praise which the Redeemed shall give for it throughout eternity. Thou canst not show wonders to the dead, as such; because "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living" (Matthew 22:32). Or even if thou wert to show thy wonders, it is only by their rising to life again that they can duly praise thee for them. Our hopes of immortality in Scripture are not, as in pagan philosophy, made to depend on the indestructibility of the soul, but on the resurrection of the body, and the union of body and soul at the Lord's coming (Psalms 49:14; Psalms 16:10; Job 19:25).

Not until the light of the Gospel shone is the conscious blessedness of the intermediate state, except by hints, brought to light (Isaiah 57:2; Luke 16:22; Luke 23:43; 2 Corinthians 5:6; Philippians 1:23). The Hebrew for "the dead" is Rephaim (Genesis 14:5) - literally, a giant race of Canaan, whose name was applied in poetry to the departed spirits, which fear and imagination invested with gigantic proportions. Compare 1 Samuel 28:13, where the witch of Endor says, "I saw gods ascending out of the earth," (Hengstenberg). Gesenius derives it from a root, 'powerless' [ raapaah (H7503)], which applies better here; the point is, the dead have not the requisite powers wherewith to praise thee. However, the former view is recommended by the consideration that it is unlikely the same word should have two derivations and two significations in no way connected. The traces of the aboriginal giants of Canaan, the Rephaim, Emim, Zuzim, and Zamzummim (Deuteronomy 2:11; Deuteronomy 2:20; Deuteronomy 3:11; Deuteronomy 3:13; Joshua 12:4), are still extant in the massive architecture found: solid walls four feet thick; squared stones, one on the other without cement; the roofs consisting of enormous slabs of black basaltic rock; the doors, eighteen inches thick, were secured by ponderous bars, the recesses for which are still to be seen.

Verse 11. Shall thy loving-kindness be declared in the grave? or thy faithfulness in destruction? - i:e., in the place of destruction, the region of the dead. It is by delivering man, in the person of Christ, the first-fruits, from the grave, not by leaving him in the grave, the penalty of sin, that God means to "declare his loving-kindness" to man. It is not by leaving man in the "destruction" which sin and death produce, that God will declare His "faithfulness" to his promises which have flowed out of His "loving-kindness;" for instance, His promise that the woman's seed should bruise the serpent's head (Genesis 3:15; and Hosea 13:14).

Verse 12. Shall thy wonders be known in the dark? - Shall thy wonderful light, life, and salvation be known in the dark tomb? No; they can only be fully known by thy raising up thy people out of it.

And thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? Compare note on Isaiah 38:18. Messiah's plea for his own resurrection and for that of His members is, that as, in relation to the visible earth, man seems forgotten in the grave, so the "righteousness" of God requires Him to vindicate man's cause, now rendered a just one through His vicarious law-fulfiller, against Satan the usurper and oppressor, by manifestly rescuing man from the region where he seems to be forgotten. Compare Psalms 88:5, "whom thou rememberest no more;" Psalms 31:12; Ecclesiastes 8:10; Ecclesiastes 9:5.