"Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom" Ecclesiastes 9:10 Obviously if the saints in heaven cannot know, let alone work or plan, then they exist in a state altogether different from ours and prayer to them has no point. What does everyone else think, is this an open and shut case?
you're assuming that "the realm of the dead" is heaven. I think he's referring to sheol. The Saints are not in the realm of the dead but are in the presence of God.
To further this point, I submit Isaiah 14, which also speaks of the realm of the dead which the prophey links to the depths of the pit.
Right. I don't know. Charitably speaking it is a place of spiritual residence for the souls of men. Psalmist doesn't seem to be condemning the whole world to hell so the meaning must be something different. Whatever he is trying to say, he indicates that the future state of men prohibits any knowledge or awareness. I guess at the end of the day I'd ask how you understand the passage.
During our Lord's transfiguration on the mountain Elijah and Moses were talking with Him. That seems to indicate that they came from the Presence of God and knew what was happening on earth.
As I understand it, there exists the intermediate state, which consists of the Bosom of Abraham for the righteous and Hades for those under condemnation. The saints are already in Heaven where they enjoy the beatific vision. No one is in Hell (Gehenna) until after the Final Judgement. We pray that God has mercy on the dead in the intermediate state, but only God knows their final fate.
Sheol is usually translated as the Grave and I think our KJV translates it exactly as that. The Psalm then refers to people in the grave, that is both in heaven and hell, and, in the intermediate state if you want to invoke it. All who are in the grave have no knowledge or awareness, seemingly? N.B. I don't think that individual instances of awareness in the saints, such as, say, Elijah, or the saints in Revelation, impinges on this point. This Psalm seemingly makes a general statement about the afterlife, whereas God is always of course able to make exceptions he decides that he wants to.
It has to be said, there is an emerging understanding of death and the afterlife in Ancient Israel. They believed in Sheol, which is not greatly unlike Hades, where the 'Rephaim' (shades, ruined half existences) dwelt. There isn't much consensus on how conscious the dead are of events, against stands Psalms 88 and 115, and on the other side Isaiah 14 and I Samuel 28 where Samuel seems to pretty much know everything that's been going on and even makes a prophecy. There is some dispute of course- Enoch is taken by God (Gen 5.24) as is Elijah of course, and (by popular convention rather than scriptural evidence) Moses is also accorded this honour. Psalm 49 and 73 begin to suggest this privilege may be more widely available. In the OT, only Daniel 12.2 seems to explicitly affirm a resurrection, while others (e.g. Ezek. 16) could either be read in this way or plausibly as a metaphor for the restoration of the fortunes of Israel. This is a major turning point in Israelite thought. In the intertestamental material all this really gets developed, the departed become 'souls' rather than 'shades'- In the rather apocryphal books of Enoch they seem to be fairly conscious of what's going on...In a typical Bible with Apocrypha you can see this in 2 Esdras 7. 75ff where delight and punishment is met out as a foretaste of what happens after the resurrection. Chronologically, the later the Jewish text, the more affirmative it is likely to be about the afterlife (including the resurrection). But you know, this debate was hardly settled amongst the Jews in the NT period; you may recall the debate between the saducees and the pharisees about whether there was a resurrection or not. I think though, Christianly speaking, the resurrection of Christ who then ascends to prepare a room for his followers in his fathers house, is a game-changer for this religion. How can the dead possibly not rise in this scenario? What one does with the older material though is another matter, but either way it would I think be historically dubious and theologically mistaken to try and base a Christian view on the afterlife predominantly on what the OT teaches rather than the NT.
Jesus' story of Lazarus an the Rich man shows two souls with awareness, and while the Rich man was not accorded the opportunity to converse with his earthly kin there's nothi.g to say that he could not pray for them, nor that Lazarus, who was actually in Abraham's bosum was not afforded more leeway. It's clear tjat the will to pray for the living was there.
Re. Lazarus and such, my response is the same as for Elijah. There is nothing to say that God can't grant awareness to a soul when he brings it down from heaven for his purposes. I have no issue with this or that soul being granted awareness. Rather I'm getting at the default state of souls, which Solomon here and David in the Psalms seem to be repeatedly getting at.
I don't follow Spherelink. What is the "default state of souls"? In the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, both souls were in the spirit world and both had awareness.
[quote="Spherelink, post: 17179, member: 1224"Obviously if the saints in heaven cannot know, let alone work or plan, then they exist in a state altogether different from ours and prayer to them has no point. What does everyone else think, is this an open and shut case?[/quote]Back to the issue in the OP, the saints cannot be in sheol and be in heaven, since the bible makes it clear that heaven and sheol are not only different places, they appear to be on opposite ends of the spectrum (see Job 11:8 and Psalm 139:8). I think the problem is that you may be squeezing New Testament reality into an Old Testament construct. A significant historical event occured between the writing of ecclesiastes and the present. Namely, Christ went down ti hell and liberated the righteous
(see Ephesians 4:8-10 And 1 Peter 3:19). Since that time, the wicked are chained in sheol, hades, tartarus awaiting the final judgment (2 Peter 2:4) but the dead in christ are brought into the presence of the Lord which is in heaven, not sheol