'Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil
days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no
pleasure in them; 2. While the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the
stars, be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain; 3. In
the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong
men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few,
and those that look out of the windows be darkened, 4. And the doors
shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low,
and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters
of musick shall be brought low; 5. Also when they shall be afraid of
that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree
shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire
shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go
about the streets: 6. Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden
bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel
broken at the cistern. 7. Then shall the dust return to the earth as
it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.... 13. Let
us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep His
commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. 14. For God shall
bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be
good, or whether it be evil.'--ECCLES. xii. 1-7,13,14.
The Preacher has passed in review 'all the works that are done under
the sun,' and has now reached the end of his long investigation. It
has been a devious path. He has announced many provisional
conclusions, which are not intended for ultimate truths, but rather
represent the progress of the soul towards the final, sufficient
ground and object of belief and aim of all life, even God Himself.
'Vanity of vanities' is a cheerless creed and a half-truth. Its
completion lies in being driven, by recognising vanity as stamped on
all creatures, to clasp the one reality. 'All is vanity' apart from
God, but He is fullness, and possessed and enjoyed and endured in Him,
life is not 'a striving after wind.' Leave out this last section, and
this book of so-called 'Wisdom' is one-sided and therefore error, as
is modern pessimism, which only says more feebly what the Preacher had
said long ago. Take the rest of the book as the autobiography of a
seeker after reality, and this last section as his declaration of
where he had found it, and all the previous parts fall into their
right places.
Our passage omits the first portion of the closing section, which is
needed in order to set the counsel to remember the Creator in its
right relation. Observe that, properly rendered, the advice in verse 1
is 'remember also,' and that takes us back to the end of the preceding
chapter. There the young are exhorted to enjoy the bright, brief
blossom-time of their youth, withal keeping the consciousness of
responsibility for its employment. In earlier parts of the book
similar advice had been given, but based on different grounds. Here
religion and full enjoyment of youthful buoyancy and delight in fresh,
unhackneyed, homely pleasures are proclaimed to be perfectly
compatible. The Preacher had no idea that a devout young man or woman
was to avoid pleasures natural to their age. Only he wished their joy
to be pure, and the stern law that 'whatsoever a man soweth that shall
he also reap' to be kept in mind. Subject to that limitation, or
rather that guiding principle, it is not only allowable, but
commanded, to 'put away sorrow and evil.' Young people are often
liable to despondent moods, which come over them like morning mists,
and these have to be fought against. The duty of joy is the more
imperative on the young because youth flies so fast, or, as the
Preacher says,' is vanity.'
Now these advices sound very like the base incitements to sensual and
unworthy delight which poets of the meaner sort, and some, alas! of
the nobler in their meaner moments, have presented. But this writer is
no teacher of 'Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,' and wicked trash of
that sort. Therefore he brings side by side with these advices the
other of our passage. That 'also' saves the former from being misused,
just as the thought of judgment did.
That possible combination of hearty, youthful glee and true religion
is the all-important lesson of this passage. The word for Creator is
in the plural number, according to the Hebrew idiom, which thereby
expresses supremacy or excellence. The name of 'Creator' carries us
back to Genesis, and suggests one great reason for the injunction. It
is folly to forget Him on whom we depend for being; it is ingratitude
to forget, in the midst of the enjoyments of our bright, early days,
Him to whom we owe them all. The advice is specially needed; for youth
has so much, that is delightful in its novelty, to think about, and
the world, on both its innocent and its sinful side, appeals to it so
strongly, that the Creator is only too apt to be crowded out of view
by His works. The temptation of the young is to live in the present.
Reflection belongs to older heads; spontaneous action is more
characteristic of youth. Therefore, they specially need to make
efforts to bring clearly to their thoughts both the unseen future and
Him who is invisible. The advice is specially suitable for them; for
what is begun early is likely to last and be strong.
It is hard for older men, stiffened into habits, and with less power
and love of taking to new courses, to turn to God, if they have
forgotten Him in early days. Conversion is possible at any age, but it
is less likely as life goes on. The most of men who are Christians
have become so in the formative period between boyhood and thirty.
After that age, the probabilities of radical change diminish rapidly.
So, 'Remember ... in the days of thy youth,' or the likelihood is that
you will never remember. To say, 'I mean to have my fling, and I shall
turn over a new leaf when I am older,' is to run dreadful risk.
Perhaps you will never be older. Probably, if you are, you will not
want to turn the leaf. If you do, what a shame it is to plan to give
God only the dregs of life! You need Him, quite as much, if not more,
now in the flush of youth as in old age. Why should you rob yourself
of years of blessing, and lay up bitter memories of wasted and
polluted moments? If ever you turn to God in your older days, nothing
will be so painful as the remembrance that you forgot Him so long.
The advice is further important, because it presents the only means of
delivering life from the 'vanity' which the Preacher found in it all.
Therefore he sets it at the close of his meditations. This is the
practical outcome of them all. Forget God, and life is a desert.
Remember Him, and 'the desert will rejoice and blossom as the rose.'
The verses from the middle of verse 1 to the end of verse 7 enforce
the exhortation by the consideration of what will certainly follow
youth, and advise remembrance of the Creator before that future comes.
So much is clear, but the question of the precise meaning of these
verses is much too large for discussion here. The older explanation
takes them for an allegory representing the decay of bodily and mental
powers in old age, whilst others think that in them the advance of
death is presented under the image of an approaching storm. Wright, in
his valuable commentary, regards the description of the gradual waning
away of life in old age, in the first verses, as being set forth under
images drawn from the closing days of the Palestinian winter, which
are dreaded as peculiarly unhealthy, while verse 4_b_ and verse 5
present the advent of spring, and contrast the new life in animals and
plants with the feebleness of the man dying in his chamber and unable
to eat. Still another explanation is that the whole is part of a
dirge, to be taken literally, and describing the mourners in house and
garden. I venture, though with some hesitation, to prefer, on the
whole, the old allegorical theory, for reasons which it would be
impossible to condense here. It is by no means free from difficulty,
but is, as I think, less difficult than any of its rivals.
Interpreters who adopt it differ somewhat in the explanation of
particular details, but, on the whole, one can see in most of the
similes sufficient correspondence for a poet, however foreign to
modern taste such a long-drawn and minute allegory may be. 'The
keepers of the house' are naturally the arms; the 'strong men,' the
legs; the 'grinding women,' the teeth; the 'women who look out at the
windows,' the eyes; 'the doors shut towards the street,' either the
lips or, more probably, the ears. 'The sound of the grinding,' which
is 'low,' is by some taken to mean the feeble mastication of toothless
gums, in which case the 'doors' are the lips, and the figure of the
mill is continued. 'Arising at the voice of the bird' may describe the
light sleep or insomnia of old age; but, according to some, with an
alteration of rendering ('The voice riseth into a sparrow's'), it is
the 'childish treble' of Shakespeare. The former is the more probable
rendering and reference. The allegory is dropped in verse _5a_,
which describes the timid walk of the old, but is resumed in 'the
almond trees shall flourish'; that is, the hair is blanched, as the
almond blossom, which is at first delicate pink, but fades into white.
The next clause has an appropriate meaning in the common translation,
as vividly expressing the loss of strength, but it is doubtful whether
the verb here used ever means 'to be a burden.' The other explanations
of the clause are all strained. The next clause is best taken, as in
the Revised Version, as describing the failure of appetite, which the
stimulating caper-berry is unable to rouse. All this slow decay is
accounted for, 'because the man is going to his long home,' and
already the poet sees the mourners gathering for the funeral
procession.
The connection of the long-drawn-out picture of senile decay with the
advice to remember the Creator needs no elucidation. That period of
failing powers is no time to begin remembering God. How dreary, too,
it will be, if God is not the 'strength of the heart,' when 'heart and
flesh fail'! Therefore it is plain common sense, in view of the
future, not to put off to old age what will bless youth, and keep the
advent of old age from being wretched.
Verses 6 and 7 still more stringently enforce the precept by pointing,
not to the slow approach, but to the actual arrival of death. If a
future of possible weakness and gradual creeping in on us of death is
reason for the exhortation, much more is the certainty that the crash
of dissolution will come. The allegory is partially resumed in these
verses. The 'golden bowl' is possibly the head, and, according to
some, the 'silver cord' is the spinal marrow, while others think
rather of the bowl or lamp as meaning the body, and the cord the soul
which, as it were, holds it up. The 'pitcher' is the heart, and the
'wheel' the organs of respiration. Be this as it may, the general
thought is that death comes, shivering the precious reservoir of
light, and putting an end to drawing of life from the Fountain of
bodily life. Surely these are weighty reasons for the Preacher's
advice. Surely it is well for young hearts sometimes to remember the
end, and to ask, 'What will ye do in the end?' and to do before the
end what is so hard to begin doing at the end, and so needful to have
done if the end is not to be worse than 'vanity.'
The collapse of the body is not the end of the man, else the whole
force of the argument in the preceding verses would disappear. If
death is annihilation, what reason is there for seeking God before it
comes? Therefore verse 7 is no interpolation to bring a sceptical book
into harmony with orthodox Jewish belief, as some commentators affirm.
The 'contradiction' between it and Ecclesiastes iii. 21 is alleged as
proof of its having been thus added. But there is no contradiction.
The former passage is interrogative, and, like all the earlier part of
the book, sets forth, not the Preacher's ultimate convictions, but a
phase through which he passed on his way to these. It is because man
is twofold, and at death the spirit returns to its divine Giver, that
the exhortation of verse 1 is pressed home with such earnestness.
The closing verses are confidently asserted to be, like verse 7,
additions in the interests of Jewish 'orthodoxy.' But Ecclesiastes is
made out to be a 'sceptical book' by expelling these from the text,
and then the character thus established is taken to prove that they
are not genuine. It is a remarkably easy but not very logical process.
'The end of the matter' when all is heard, is, to 'fear God and keep
His commandments.' The inward feeling of reverent awe which does not
exclude love, and the outward life of conformity to His will, is 'the
whole duty of man,' or 'the duty of every man.' And that plain summary
of all that men need to know for practical guidance is enforced by the
consideration of future judgment, which, by its universal sweep and
all-revealing light, must mean the judgment in another life.
Happy they who, through devious mazes of thought and act, have
wandered seeking for the vision of any good, and having found all to
be vanity, have been led at last to rest, like the dove in the ark, in
the broad simplicity of the truth that all which any man needs for
blessedness in the buoyancy of fresh youthful strength and in the
feebleness of decaying age, in the stress of life, in the darkness of
death, and in the day of judgment, is to 'fear God and keep His
commandments'!