Psa 88:10-12 | Clarke | e4.org | Verse 10. Wilt thou show wonders to the dead! ] methim, dead men . Shall the dead ] rephaim , "the manes or departed spirits." Arise and praise thee? ] Any more in this life? The interrogations in this and the two following verses imply the strongest negations .

‏ Psalms 88:10-12

Verse 10. Wilt thou show wonders to the dead!] methim, dead men.

Shall the dead] rephaim, "the manes or departed spirits."

Arise and praise thee?] Any more in this life? The interrogations in this and the two following verses imply the strongest negations.

Verse 11. Or thy faithfulness in destruction?] Faithfulness in God refers as well to his fulfilling his threatenings as to his keeping his promises. The wicked are threatened with such punishments as their crimes have deserved; but annihilation is no punishment. God therefore does not intend to annihilate the wicked; their destruction cannot declare the faithfulness of God.

Verse 12. The land of forgetfulness?] The place of separate spirits, or the invisible world. The heathens had some notion of this state. They feigned a river in the invisible world, called Lethe, ληθη, which signifies oblivion, and that those who drank of it remembered no more any thing relative to their former state.

----------Animae, quibus altera fato

Corpora debentur, lethaei ad fluminis undam

Securos latices et longa oblivia potant.

VIRG. AEn. vi. 713.

To all those souls who round the river wait

New mortal bodies are decreed by fate;

To yon dark stream the gliding ghosts repair,

And quaff deep draughts of long oblivion there.