Ecclesiastes 12

Ecclesiastes 12:1

12:1 The doleful picture of age and senility is a warning to young people to remember their Creator in the days of their youth. Notice Solomon does not say their Lord or Savior or Redeemer but their Creator. That is the only way Solomon could know God from his vantage point under the sun. But even at that, the advice is good. Young people should remember their Creator . . . before the sunset time of life, when the days are difficult and cruel and the years are totally lacking in pleasure and enjoyment. The aspiration of every young person should be that which is expressed in the following lines: Lord, in the fullness of my might, I would for Thee be strong; While runneth o’er each dear delight, To Thee should soar my song. I would not give the world my heart, And then profess Thy love; I would not feel my strength depart, And then Thy service prove. I would not with swift winged zeal On the world’s errands go: And labor up the heav’nly hill With weary feet and slow. O not for Thee my weak desires, My poorer baser part! O not for Thee my fading fires, The ashes of my heart. O choose me in my golden time, In my dear joys have part! For Thee the glory of my prime The fullness of my heart. Thomas H. Gill12:2 Old age is the time when the lights grow dim, both physically and emotionally. The days are dreary, and the nights are long. Gloom and depression settle in. Even in earlier years, there was a certain amount of rain, that is, trouble and discouragement. But then the sun would emerge and the spirit would quickly bounce back. Now it seems that the sunny days are gone, and after each spell of rain, the clouds appear with the promise of more. Youth is the time to remember the Creator because then the sun, . . . moon, and . . . stars are not darkened, and the clouds do not return after the rain.12:3 Now the body of the old man is presented under the figure of a house. The keepers of the house are the arms and hands, once strong and active, now wrinkled, gnarled, and trembling with Parkinson’s disease. The strong men are the legs and thighs, no longer straight and athletic, but bowed like parenthesis marks, as if buckling under the weight of the body. The grinders cease because they are few, that is, the teeth are no longer able to chew because there are too few uppers to meet the remaining lowers. The dentist would say there is inadequate occlusion. Those that look through the windows grow dim. The eyes have been failing steadily. First they needed bifocals, then trifocals, then surgery for cataracts. Now they can only read extra large type with the use of a magnifying glass. 12:4 The doors on the street are shut. This refers, of course, to the ears. Everything has to be repeated over and over. Loud noises, like the grinding of the mill, are very low and indistinct. The old man suffers from insomnia; he rises up bright and early, when the first bird begins to chirp or the rooster crows. All the daughters of music are brought low; the vocal chords are seriously impaired. The voice is crackling and unsteady, and song is out of the question. 12:5 They develop acrophobia, that is, they are afraid of height, whether ladders, views from tall buildings, or plane rides. And terrors are in the way. They have lost self-confidence, are afraid to go out alone, or to go out at night. The blossoming almond tree is generally taken to picture the white hair, first in rich profusion, then falling to the ground. The grasshopper may be interpreted in two ways. First, the grasshopper is a burden, that is, even the lightest objects are too heavy for the old person to carry. Or, the grasshopper dragging itself along (NASB) caricatures the old man, bent over and twisted, inching forward in jerky, erratic movements. Desire fails in the sense that natural appetites diminish or cease altogether. Food no longer has flavor or zest, and other basic drives peter out. Sexual vigor is gone. This degenerative process takes place because man is going to his long-lasting home of death and the grave, and soon his funeral procession will be moving down the street. 12:6 And so the advice of the wise man is to remember the Creator before the silver cord is snapped, or the golden bowl is broken, or the pitcher is shattered at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern. It is difficult to assign precise meanings to all of these figures. The snapping of the silver cord probably refers to the breaking of the tender thread of life when the spirit is released from the body. The blind poet apparently understood it in this way when she wrote: Some day the silver cord will break And I no more as now shall sing But oh the joy when I shall wake Within the palace of the King. Fanny J. CrosbyThe golden bowl has been understood to mean the cranial cavity, and its breaking to be a poetic picture of the cessation of the mind at the time of death. The broken pitcher and wheel taken together could be a reference to the circulatory system with the breakdown of systolic and diastolic blood pressure. 12:7 Rigor mortis sets in. Then the body begins its return to dust, while the spirit returns to God who gave it. Or so it seemed to Solomon. In the case of a believer, his conclusion is true. But in the case of an unbeliever, the spirit goes to Hades, there to await the Great White Throne Judgment. Then the spirit will be reunited with the body and the entire person cast into the lake of fire (Rev_20:12-14). 12:8 And so the Preacher comes full-circle to where he beganwith the basic tenet that life under the sun is vanity, meaningless, futile, and empty. His pathetic refrain reminds us of the little girl who went to the fair and stayed too long. I wanted the music to play on foreverHave I stayed too long at the fair? I wanted the clown to be constantly cleverHave I stayed too long at the fair? I bought me blue ribbons to tie up my hair, But I couldn’t find anybody to care. The merry-go-round is beginning to slow now, Have I stayed too long at the fair? I wanted to live in a carnival city, with laughter and love everywhere. I wanted my friends to be thrilling and witty. I wanted somebody to care. I found my blue ribbons all shiny and new, But now I’ve discovered them no longer blue. The merry-go-round is beginning to taunt meHave I stayed too long at the fair? There is nothing to win and no one to want meHave I stayed too long at the fair? Billy BarnesAs we come here to Solomon’s last reference to the emptiness of life under the sun, I am reminded of a story which E. Stanley Jones used to tell. On board ship he saw a very corpulent couple, their faces bovine, who lived from meal to meal. They were retired on plentyand nothing. They were angry with the table stewards for not giving them super-service. They seemed to be afraid they might starve between courses. Their physical appetites seemed the one thing that mattered to them. I never saw them reading a book or paper. They sat between meals and stared out, apparently waiting for the next meal. One night I saw them sitting thus and staring blankly, when a bright idea flashed across the dull brain of the man.

He went to the mantelpiece and picked up the vases, and looked into them, and then returned to his wife with the news: “They’re empty!” I came very near laughing. He was right; “They’re empty!” But it wasn’t merely the vases! The souls and brains of both of them were empty. They had much in their purses, but nothing in their persons; and that was their punishment. They had security with boredomno adventure. They had expanding girths and narrowing horizons.

Ecclesiastes 12:9

IV. EPILOGUE: THE BEST THING UNDER THE SUN (12:9-14)12:9 Besides being wise himself, the Preacher shared his knowledge with others. He sought to transmit his wisdom in the form of proverbs, after carefully weighing them and testing them for accuracy. 12:10 He chose his words carefully, trying to combine what was comforting, pleasant, and true. It was like preparing a nutritious meal, then serving it with a sprig of parsley. 12:11 The teachings of the wise are like sharp, pointed instruments, plain, direct, and convincing. And the collected sayings from the one Shepherd are like well-driven nails or pins that give stability to a tent. They provide strength and are also pegs on which we may hang our thoughts. Most Bible versions capitalize the word Shepherd, indicating that the translators understood it as referring to God. However, it should also be remembered that in Eastern thought, a king is looked on as a shepherd. Homer said, “All kings are shepherds of the people.” So it could be that King Solomon was referring to himself as the one shepherd. This interpretation fits into the context more smoothly. 12:12 There is no thought that Solomon had exhausted the subject. He could have written more, but he warns his readers that the conclusion would be the same. There is no end to the writing and publishing of books, and it would be exhausting to read them all. But why bother? All they could reveal would be the vanity of life. 12:13 His final conclusion may give the impression that he has at last risen above the sun. He says, “Fear God and keep His commandments, because this is the whole duty of man, man’s all.” But we must keep in mind that the fear of God here is not the same as saving faith. It is the slavish terror of a creature before His Creator. And the commandments do not necessarily mean the law of God as revealed in the OT. Rather they might mean any commands which God has instinctively written on the hearts of mankind. In other words, we need not assign a high degree of spiritual insight to Solomon’s words. They may be nothing more than what a wise person would conclude from natural intuition and from practical experience. This is man’s allnot just the whole duty but the basic elements that make for a full and happy life. 12:14 The motive for fearing and obeying God here is the certainty of coming judgment. We can be eternally grateful as believers that the Savior has delivered us from this kind of fear. “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love” (1Jo_4:18). We do not trust and obey because of fear but because of love. Through His finished work on Calvary, we have the assurance that we will never come into judgment but have passed from death into life (Joh_5:24). Now we can say: There is no condemnation, There is no hell for me, The torment and the fire My eyes shall never see; For me there is no sentence, For me there is no sting Because the Lord who loves me Shall shield me with His wing. Paul Gerhardt