you can't find distress and sorrow if your asleep.
If you are totally unconscious and dead then I'd agree, you cannot feel anything including distress or sorrow. If you look at Psalm 116, the first thing I bring your attention to is that the writer AIN'T DEAD. Look at the whole context. HE was in danger for his life and cried out for help from God and what do you know, verse 8 says that the Lord rescued his life from death.
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Brother Mike
Job 17:13 If I wait--Sheol is my house, In darkness I have spread out my couch.
Job fully believed he was soon to die. He says that Sheol will be his house and in that house he will just spread out his couch and wait. Nothing indicating soul sleep.
Job 17:16 To the parts of Sheol ye go down, If together on the dust we may rest. Sheol was down............ Abraham was down............
There must have been rest there for those that served God and coincides with Jesus that between God's people and Hell there was a gulf.
Of course Sheol is down, it is the grave! The grave is a place of darkness that is generally down in the ground so all who went ot Sheol could be described as going down. You posted text from Job 17, but did you read the thing? Here's verses 13-17:
13If the only home I hope for is the grave,
if I spread out my bed in the realm of darkness,
14if I say to corruption, ‘You are my father,’
and to the worm, ‘My mother’ or ‘My sister,’
15where then is my hope—
who can see any hope for me?
16Will it go down to the gates of death?
Will we descend together into the dust?”
Nowhere in this text is there a mention of doing anything or feeling anything in death. Unless you are saying that "spreading out one's bed in darkness" is to be taken as a literal act as opposed to being understood as being dead, then this text is clearly not advocating activity in death.
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Brother Mike
Eze 31:16 From the sound of his fall I have caused nations to shake, In My causing him to go down to sheol, With those going down to the pit, And comforted in the earth--the lower part, are all trees of Eden, The choice and the good of Lebanon, All drinking waters. two things here.........
Sheol had two regions......... One with water and good things. It was still down in the pit, but different and comfort. This is the place Job spoke of.
This text says NOTHING about Hadean regions! Read the whole chapter! It's a taunt against Pharoah and Eygpt's armies that begins my metaphorically comparing Assyria to a marvelous Cypress tree of Lebanon that had become great by God's providence and had subsequently pridefully began exhaulting in its own greatness. Because of that God brought about its (Assyria) destruction (Ezekial 32:11). In verse 18 Ezekiel then compare Pharoah and his allies to once mighty and now fallen Assyria and tells Pharoah that the same fate awaited them.
To make this text a descripture of life in death totally lifts it from context and misses the point!
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Brother Mike
Pro 9:18
No indication of people going to sleep there, but as guest. This came after following the women into hell. If all sleep then there would not be separate places in Hell itself and not one scripture indicates you sleep there but all sleep in the dust of the earth, their bodies dead.
Again, the texts here say NOTHING about an afterlife scenario. READ THE CHAPTER! It is speaking of the fate of foolish men that allow themselves to be enticed and brought in by the bold and foolish woman mentioned in verse 13. It tells the reader that fooling around with such a woman leads to dire consequences and destruction! It say not a word about what post-death is like.
