Isaiah 38

Isa. 38:18, 19. "For the grave cannot praise Thee," etc. The death that is here spoken of is that which is death indeed, or is properly so called. The state of death is here spoken of as it is originally, and as being still a state of death, and not as it is changed by redemption from a state of death to a state of life, or so as to be made a more glorious rest of life. Hezekiah speaks of that death wherein men do really die or are truly dead, and not that improperly so called, wherein men are a thousand times more alive than they were before, and are immortal and beyond a possibility of dying. Death as it is originally, and when it is properly death, is a state wherein men cannot "praise God" nor "celebrate Him," nor "hope for His truth." It is a state of evil without any good: it is, Job says, "A land of darkness as darkness itself, and the shadow of death without any order, and where the light is as darkness." It is a state wherein there is no good done, no good enjoyed, no good hoped for. It is a state of absolute emptiness of any good or principle, happiness or hope. They that are in hell are in such a state of death. Such was death originally. Such was death as it was threatened to our first parents; and very commonly when death is spoken of in the Old Testament it is in this notion of it. For the change of a state of death into a state of more glorious life was not fully revealed under the Old Testament. "Life and immortality are brought to light in the gospel." It is under this notion that death seems to be spoken of in Ecclesiastes 9:4-6, where it is said that "a living dog is better than a dead lion," and that "the dead have no more a reward," and that "they have no more a portion for ever in any thing done under the sun." Hezekiah did not mean that they that are redeemed from the power of the grave, they that get the victory over death and shall never die (as Christ promises to believers), "shall not praise God, nor hope for His truth." We see in this instance that the better men are the more terrible would it make death if there was no future state. For the better they are the more they love God. Good men have found the fountain of good. Those men who have a high degree of love to God do greatly delight in God. They have experience of a much better happiness in life than others, and therefore it must be more bitter to them to have their being eternally extinct by death. Thus this seems to be above all other things the sting of Hezekiah's affliction in his expectation of death, that he should no more have any opportunity of communion with God, and of worshipping and praising Him, as appears by these two verses, together with the 11th and 22nd verses, there not being at that time a clear and full revelation of a future state. Hence we may strongly argue a future state, for it is not to be supposed that God would make man such a creature as to be capable of looking forward beyond death, and capable of knowing and loving and delighting in Him, as the fountain of all good, and should make it his duty so to do, which will necessarily increase in him a dread of annihilation, and an eager desire of immortality, and yet so order it that that desire should be disappointed, so that his loving his Creator should in some sense make him the more miserable.

Isa. 40:1-2