Charles Ellicott Commentary Psalms 69:28

"Let them be blotted out of the book of life, And not be written with the righteous." — Psalms 69:28 (ASV)

Book of the living—or life.—This image, which plays such a great part in Christian poetry (Revelation 3:5; Revelation 13:8; Revelation 21:27; Luke 10:20), is derived from the civil lists or registers of the Jews (Exodus 32:32; Jeremiah 22:30; Ezekiel 13:9).

Initially, erasure from this list only implied that a man was dead or that a family was extinct (see references above). However, because death was thought to deprive of all benefit of the covenant (see Note, Psalms 6:5), this erasure came to imply exclusion from all the rights and privileges of the Theocracy.

Consequently, it also meant exclusion from the glory of participating in the promised deliverance and restoration of the race. Gradually, as eschatological ideas developed, it came to signify exclusion from the resurrection to eternal life.

Daniel 12:1 marks a stage in this development. In the psalmist’s mouth, the words would correspond to the ideas current when he wrote. From the next clause, Let them not be written with the righteous, it might be argued that the idea limiting the resurrection to the righteous had already appeared. This idea was current at the time of 2 Maccabees 7:14 but was probably familiar to some minds much sooner.