Ecclesiastes 12:7

Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was,.... The body, which is made of dust, and is no other in its present state than dust refined and enlivened; and when the above things take place,

Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it. The dust - the dust-formed body; so called because formed from the dust, and also because of its weakness and pettiness.

The dust; the body, called dust, both for its original, which was from the dust, and to signify its vile and corruptible nature, 30:19 . Return to the earth as it was; whence it was first taken. He alludes to that passage, . The spirit; the soul of man, frequently so called, as , &c., because it is of a spiritual or immaterial nature. Return unto God; into his presence, and before his tribunal, that there it may be sentenced to its everlasting habitations, either to abide with God for ever, if it be approved by him, or otherwise to be eternally shut out from his presence and favour. Who gave it, to wit, in a peculiar manner, by his creating power: for in a general sense God giveth to every seed his own belly, ; hence he is called the Father of spirits, .

Ecclesiastes 12:7 Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.Ver. 7. Then shall the dust return to the earth, &c.] What is man, saith Nazianzen, but Nουςκαιχους, soul and soil, breath and body; a puff of wind the one, a pile of dust the other; no solidity in either. Zoroaster and some other ancient heathens imagined that the soul had wings, that, having broken these wings, she fell headlong into the body, and that, recovering her wings again, she flies up to heaven, her original habitation. That of Epicharmus is better to be liked, and comes nearer to the truth here delivered by the Preacher, Coneretum fuit, et discretum est, rediitque unde venerat; terra deorsum, spiritus sursum, - It was together, but is now by death set asunder, and returned to the place whence it came, the earth downward, the spirit upward. See Genesis 2:7, "God made man of the dust of the earth," to note our frailty, vility, and impurity. Lutum enim conspurcat omnia, sic et caro, saith one, - Dirt defiles all things; so doth the flesh. It should seem so, truly, by man’ s soul, which, coming pure out of God’ s hands, soon becomes “ Mens oblita Dei, vitiorumque oblita caeno. ” Bernard complains, not without just cause, that our souls, by commerce with the flesh, are become fleshly. Sure it is, that by their mutual defilement, corruption is so far rooted in us now, that it is not cleansed out of us by mere death (as is to be seen in Lazarus, and others that died), but by cinerification, or turning of the body to dust and ashes. The spirit returns to God that gave it.] For it is divinae particula aurae, an immaterial, immortal substance, that after death returns to God, the Fountain of life. The soul moves and guides the body, saith a worthy divine, as the pilot doth the ship. Now the pilot may be safe, though the ship be split on the rock. And as in a chicken, it grows still, and so the shell breaks and falls off. So it is with the soul; the body hangs on it but as a shell, and when the soul is grown to perfection, it falls away, and the soul returns to the "Father of spirits." Augustine (after Origen) held a long while that the soul was begotten by the parents, as was the body. At length he began to doubt this point, and afterward altered his opinion, confessing inter caetera testimonia hoc esse praecipuum, that among other testimonies this to be the chief, to prove the contrary to that which he had formerly held. Dr Preston.

(7) The preacher has risen above the doubts of Ecc 3:21. (See also Genesis 3:19.)

Verse 7. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God] 5. Putrefaction and solution take place; the whole mass becomes decomposed, and in process of time is reduced to dust, from which it was originally made; while the spirit, הרוח haruach, that spirit, which God at first breathed into the nostrils of man, when he in consequence became a LIVING SOUL, an intelligent, rational, discoursing animal, returns to God who gave it. Here the wise man makes a most evident distinction between the body and the soul: they are not the same; they are not both matter. The body, which is matter, returns to dust, its original; but the spirit, which is immaterial, returns to God. It is impossible that two natures can be more distinct, or more emphatically distinguished. The author of this book was not a materialist. Thus ends this affecting, yet elegant and finished, picture of OLD AGE and DEATH. See a description of old age similar, but much inferior, to this, in the Agamemnon of AEschylus, v. 76-82. It has been often remarked that the circulation of the blood, which has been deemed a modern discovery by our countryman Dr. Harvey, in 1616, was known to Solomon, or whoever was the author of this book: the fountains, cisterns, pitcher, and wheel, giving sufficient countenance to the conclusion.

7. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was] The reference to the history of man’s creation in Genesis 2:7 is unmistakeable, and finds an echo in the familiar words of our Burial Service, “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” So Epicharmus, quoted by Plutarch, Consol. ad Apoll. p. 110, “Life was compound, and is broken up, and returns thither whence it came, earth to earth and the spirit on high.” So the Epicurean poet sang, “Pulvis et umbra sumus.”“Dust and shadows are we all.”Hor. Od. iv. 7. 16— echoing the like utterance of Anacreon, ὀλίγηκόνιςκεισόμεθα.“We shall lie down, a little dust, no more”—echoed in its turn by Shakespeare (Cymbeline, iv. 2), “Golden lads and lasses must,Like chimney sweepers, turn to dust.”the spirit shall return unto God who gave it] We note, in the contrast between this and the “Who knoweth …?” of ch. Ecclesiastes 3:21, what it is not too much to call, though the familiar words speak of a higher triumph than is found here, the Victory of Faith. If the Debater had rested in his scepticism, it would not have been difficult to find parallels in the language of Greek and Roman writers who had abandoned the hope of immortality. So Euripides had sung Ἐάσατʼ ? ἤδηγῇκαλυφθῆναινεκρούς,Ὅθενδʼ ? ἕκαστονἐςτὸφῶςἀφίκετο,Ἐνταῦθʼ ? ἀπελθεῖν, πνεῦμαμὲνπρὸςαἰθέρα,Τὸσῶμαδʼ ? ἐςγῆν.“Let then the dead be buried in the earth,And whence each element first came to lightThither return, the spirit to the air,The body to the earth.”Eurip. Suppl. 529— or as Lucretius at a later date, “Cedit item retro, de terra quod fuit ante,In terras, et quod missum ’st ex ζtheris oris,Id rursum c�li rellatum templa receptant.”“That also which from earth first came, to earthReturns, and that which from the ether’s coastsWas sent, the vast wide regions of the skyReceive again, returning to its home.”De Rer. Nat. ii. 998. Or again, “Ergo dissolvi quoque convenit omnem animalNaturam, ceu fumus, in altas aλris auras.”“So must it be that, like the circling smoke,The being of the soul should be dissolved,And mingle with the breezes of the air.”Lucret. De Rer. Nat. iii. 455. Or Virgil, with a closer approximation to the teaching of the Debater, “Deum namque ire per omnesTerrasque tractusque maris, c�lumque profundum;Hinc pecudes, armenta, viros, genus omne ferarum,Quemque sibi tenues nascentem arcessere vitas;Scilicet huc reddi deinde, ac resoluta referriOmnia; nec morti esse locum; sed viva volareSideris in numerum, atque alto succedere c�lo.”“[They teach] that God pervades the world,The earth and ocean’s tracts and loftiest heaven,That hence the flocks and herds, and creatures wild,Each, at their birth, draw in their fragile life;That thither also all things tend at last,And broken-up return, that place for deathIs none, but all things, yet instinct with life,Soar to the stars and take their place on high.”Virg. Georg. iv. 220–227. We cannot ignore the fact that to many interpreters (including Warburton) the words before us have seemed to convey no higher meaning than the extracts just quoted.

The spirit - i. e., The spirit separated unto God from the body at death. No more is said here of its future destiny. To return to God, who is the fountain Psalms 36:9 of Life, certainly means to continue to live.

7. Dust… earth — Just as, Genesis 2:7, man was taken as dust from the ground, so now he returns to “dust.” And the spirit, then inbreathed from God, and thence forming a living person, returns unto God who gave it.