Texts in Conversation
Psalm 6 teaches that death ends the chance to praise God because Sheol is a silent place where memory and thanks come to a halt. Baruch presents the same outlook by portraying the dead as unable to lift their voices in gratitude.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Psalm 6:5
Hebrew Bible
3 I am absolutely terrified, and you, Lord—how long will this continue? 4 Relent, Lord, rescue me! Deliver me because of your faithfulness. 5 For no one remembers you in the realm of death. In Sheol who gives you thanks? 6 I am exhausted as I groan. All night long I drench my bed in tears; my tears saturate the cushion beneath me. 7 My eyes grow dim from suffering; they grow weak because of all my enemies.
Date: 600–201 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Baruch 2:17
Deuterocanon
15 that all the earth may know that you are the Lord our God, because Israel and his posterity is called by your name. 16 O Lord, look down from your holy house and consider us. Incline your ear, O Lord, and hear. 17 Open your eyes, and see; for the dead that are in Hades, whose breath is taken from their bodies, will give to the Lord neither glory nor righteousness; 18 but the soul who is greatly vexed, who goes stooping and feeble, and the eyes that fail, and the hungry soul, will declare your glory and righteousness, O Lord. 19 For we do not present our supplication before you, O Lord our God, for the righteousness of our fathers and of our kings.
Date: 200–50 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... The significance of the recension which underlies the Latin is that it is an explicit rejection of the older doctrine that once a man is dead, his soul in Sheol is cut off from all that can be truly called life, and from all true personal relationships with the Lord; that, in particular, he is cut off from the living Israelite's privilege of raising his voice in praise and thanksgiving to God. This imperfect doctrine finds expression especially in certain Psalms. Psalm 6:5: 'In death there is no remembrance of thee; in Sheol who shall give thee thanks?' Psalm 115:17: 'The dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into silence. But we will bless the Lord'. See also Psalm 30:9; 88:10-12; Isaiah 38:18, 19; Baruch 2:17 etc. And the same doctrine finds a place in the Greek here in Sirach: 'Who shall give praise to the Most High in the grave?'. But the Latin suppresses this question here; and goes on then positively to contradict the assumption which underlies it ..."
Conleth Kearns, The Expanded Text of Ecclesiasticus: Its Teaching on the Future Life as a Clue to Its Origin, ed. Pancratius C. Beentjes, DCLS 11 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, 2011), 152–153.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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