A few thoughts about Psalm 6
Thought #1. One obvious thing to point out is that Psalm 6 gets deep into emotion. Last week, we said that David let a little emotion show in Psalm 3, but 6 is one where he deeply laments for a few verses. If you're feeling frustrated and wornout by difficulty, you may find this Psalm easy to pray directly to God. That's what is so great about the Psalms. They're not meant only for instruction and interpretation. We can take some of them and pray them to the Lord.
Thought #2. In my Bible there's a big ominous box around Psalm 6:5 with a big question mark out beside it. Why? Here's the verse:
5 For in death there is no remembrance of you;
in Sheol who will give you praise?
The problem is obvious. We know that 1) the Scripture is inspired by God and 2) after death there is a little thing called eternal life in which there IS remembrance of God and there IS praise to God. Is David making an incorrect theological statement about death?
When I first ran into this verse, I was fine with just underlining it and slapping a question mark out beside it. Hopefully, you also feel the freedom to just say, "Wow. What does that mean?" and move on when you're reading the Bible. If it all made sense easily why would God give a gift of teaching? If you don't understand something, it's perfectly reasonable and even wise to ask other believers. Nowadays, if you look in my Bible, you'll see that original question mark along with a cross reference that I wrote later.
You may want to make this note as well: 2 Timothy 1:10. In the first part of the verse it talks about Jesus and says this about Him:
10 ... who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel...
This says that Jesus "brought... immortatlity to light." This means that even though the Holy Spirit inspired David to write Psalm 6, it was Jesus who would come around over a thousand years after David who would bring revelation about immortality. You can see throughout the Old Testament that there were hints of resurrection and immortality in the prophetic writings, but it wasn't until Jesus came that God would reveal more clearly the future resurrection and eternal life.
David said what he knew, according to the amount of revelation he had. From his perspective, once a person is dead, there's no more praising or remembering God because the person is obviously no longer up and about, going to the temple, making sacrifices, joining in corporate prayers with other living humans.
I guess it's possible that the Holy Spirit could have stopped David from Psalm 6:5 if He had wanted to. He could have revealed immortality to him ahead of time. However, it seems that the plan of God was to leave immortality UNrevealed until the time of Jesus, when he would bring it to light through the Gospel.
Hopefully this is helpful.
Much Love,
Dustin
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