12 Are your wonders made known in the dark? Or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?
*Minor differences ignored. Grouped by changes, with first version listed as example.
Shall thy wonders be known in the dark? - In the dark world; in "the land of darkness and the shadow of death; a land of darkness, as darkness itself, and where the light is as darkness." Job 10:21-22. "And thy righteousness." The justice of thy character; or, the ways in which thou dost maintain and manifest thy righteous character.
In the land of forgetfulness - Of oblivion; where the memory has decayed, and where the remembrance of former things is blotted out. This is a part of the general description, illustrating the ideas then entertained of the state of the dead; that they would be weak and feeble; that they could see nothing; that even the memory would fail, and the recollection of former things pass from the mind. All these are images of the grave as it appears to man when he has not the clear and full light of revelation; and the grave is all this - a dark and cheerless abode - all abode of fearfulness and gloom - when the light of the great truths of the Gospel is not suffered to fall upon it. That the psalmist dreaded this is clear, for he had not yet the full light of revealed truth in regard to the grave, and it seemed to him to be a gloomy abode. That people without the Gospel ought to dread it, is clear, for when the grave is not illuminated with Christian truth and hope, it is a place from which man by nature shrinks back, and it is not wonderful that a wicked man dreads to die.
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. 6: 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.
Shall thy wonders be known in the dark? and thy righteousness in the land (k) of forgetfulness?
(k) That is, in the grave, where only the body lies without all sense and remembrance.
Shall thy wonders be known in the dark?.... A description of the grave again; see Job 10:21, The sense may be, should he continue in the dark and silent grave, how would the wonders of the grace of God, of electing, redeeming, justifying, pardoning, and adopting grace, be made known; the wonders of Christ's person and offices, and the wondrous things, and doctrines of the Gospel, relating thereunto? as the glory of these would be eclipsed, there would be none to publish them:
and thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? the grave, where the dead lie, who, having lost all sense of things, forget what were done in this world, and they themselves are quickly forgotten by the living; and had Christ continued in this state, and had not risen again to our justification, how would his justifying righteousness have been revealed, as it is from faith to faith in the Gospel, which is therefore called the word and ministration of righteousness?
Forgetfulness - In the grave, where men are forgotten by their nearest relations.
*More commentary available at chapter level.