DAY 157
CHALLENGE
“The Bible says people aren’t conscious after death. It describes the dead as being asleep (Ps. 13:3; Dan. 12:2; Matt. 9:24; John 11:11) and says that ‘the dead know nothing’ (Eccles. 9:5; cf. Ps. 6:5, 88:10–12, 115:17).”
DEFENSE
These passages are explained by several factors.
One factor is euphemism—substituting a more pleasant term for an un- pleasant reality. Describing death as sleep is euphemism. People refer to death by many euphemisms (“passing on,” “going home,” “no longer with us”), and even those who believe in a conscious afterlife use sleep as a euphemism (“Grandma fell asleep”). This is because the dead look asleep. They don’t stand up or move, and their eyes are frequently closed. People even close their eyes to make them look more like they are asleep and thus less disturbing.
The sleep euphemism is an example of phenomenological language, where something is described by how it appears rather than how it actually is (death is not literally sleep; otherwise, corpses would come back to life every morning). Phenomenological language shapes biblical descriptions of death in other ways. Since corpses do not talk, Scripture notes that dead people don’t praise God. Thus the psalmist indicates that, as long as he is alive, he will praise God for delivering him, but if he becomes a corpse, he won’t. This fits a common Old Testament pattern of asking for God’s blessings so his praise can be declared.
Phenomenological language stems from an earthly perspective—one without access to the invisible world. This is particularly the case in Ecclesiastes, where the author deliberately assumes an earthly perspective as a tool of analysis, as stressed by the book’s repeated emphasis on what happens “under the sun” (1:3, 9, 14, etc.). From the earthly perspective, he argues that life is better than death, for “he who is joined with all the living has hope” (9:4) and “the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing” (9:5), for they no longer have “any share in all that is done under the sun” (9:6). This is the expression of a man trying to make sense out of death from an earthly perspective, apart from divine revelation—not a theological assertion about the afterlife.
TIP
Other verses show that the dead are conscious (see Day 158).