Ecclesiastes 12

Notes

Ver. 1. Now, in youth, seriously think of, believe in, and serve the Divine Persons, who made, preserve, and redeem men, before the disquieting and disqualifying infirmities of old age come upon you: 2. Before the comforts of life, which render it agreeable, be withdrawn, and the powers of your mind and senses of your body be rendered almost useless, and the calamities of old age rise successively one after another: 3. When your head, arms, and hands shall shake, through weakness or palsy; your once strong shoulders stoop, and your legs and thighs bow under their weight; your teeth be generally lost, and your eyes sunk in their sockets and become dim; 4. Before your lips be but a little opened to eat or talk, because of the loss or looseness of teeth; before you be incapable to walk in the streets; your rest broken, and every little noise awaken you; your lungs fail, your voice become inharmonious and harsh, and your ears dull and regardless of music; 5. Before you, unable to climb, become afraid to mount or move on high, nay, are afraid of falling in the common way; before your hair become white; the least noise or weight become burdensome, and the lightest food load your stomach; and there be no inclination to or delight in former pleasures, because you draw nigh to the grave and the other world, when your friends shall lament their loss, and the hired mourners publicly pour forth their pretended sorrows;—6. Remember your Creator, before the union between your soul and body be loosed, or the pith of your back and nerves be weakened; the vessel in which your brain and animal spirits are contained be rendered unfit for use; your veins and arteries, which convey the blood and vital spirits, be rendered unfit to convey them any more from the right or left ventricles of your heart; 7. And your body be laid in the grave, to moulder into dust, and your soul appear to be judged before God who formed it.—11. The words of the prophets, and other holy men of God, are fitted to excite men's attention, awaken their conscience, and quicken their affections; and to make a powerful and lasting impression on their hearts, and so settle and establish them in the truth;—being inculcated by zealous teachers of the church, sent and qualified by Jesus Christ, the alone Head of his church.

Ver. 3. Keepers. The hands become more or less paralytic. Strong men—the vertebræ of the upright youth shall bend. The grinders—the teeth, a name by which the double-teeth are familiarly known. Those that look out of the windows—the optic nerves and humours of the eye. C.

Ver. 5. Afraid of ascents, because of debility. 'The almond-tree shall flourish'—the hair shall become white as the almond-blossom; or rather, shall fall off. 'The grasshopper' or locust, almost light as air that needs not his support, and instantly flies away. 'Desire' of food, company, music, fair prospects, &c. C.

Ver. 11. In ver. 10 the Preacher bears testimony to the purity and truth, that is, the plenary inspiration of the book which he is now completing. In ver. 11 he takes in a wider range. He testifies to the perfection of 'the words of the wise,' that is, of the whole of the sacred books then in existence. They are as goads, piercing sharp and deep. The second clause of the verse is not so clear. It is probable that there is here an example of that parallelism which is characteristic of Hebrew poetry, and that this clause corresponds with the preceding. Its meaning may be: 'The participators in the collection;' i.e. those who wrote or compiled the collection of sacred books, 'are as nails driven in.' The last clause of the verse states the origin of both the sacred books and the sacred writers: 'they are given by one Shepherd,' by the Lord. P.

Reflections.—Necessary and pleasant is an early acquaintance with Christ and his ways. But very absurd and dangerous are delays of spiritual concerns till old age, which may never be seen, and is a season very improper for commencing such care. Thrice happy are they who encounter the unnumbered infirmities and troubles of old age, and the fears and pangs of death, in the full assurance that Jesus loved them, and gave himself for them! But, alas! how difficult is it to persuade us of the emptiness of all created things! This truth needs to be inculcated a thousand times over. Nor will that avail, unless the Holy Ghost inscribe it on our heart. It is necessary then that all preachers should be sent and qualified by Christ and his Spirit; and that, by every possible mean, they should labour to fix the truths of God in the consciences, understandings, affections, and memories of their hearers. And let us, in our religious course, attend chiefly to the principal points; and always act under the awe, and in the faith and hope, of the last judgment.

Concluding Remarks on the Book of Ecclesiastes.

The most common view of the Book of Ecclesiastes represents it as 'a philosophical inquiry after the summum bonum, or chief good of man; in which Solomon states the various opinions on the subject, the result of his own dear-bought experience in search of the respective enjoyments of human wisdom and human folly.' Without altogether excluding this view, others think Solomon's main design was to 'prove the immortality of the soul, or rather the necessity of another state after this life, by such arguments as may be deduced from reason and experience.'

Now, in all this, it is not a little remarkable—it is not a little lamentable—that it never seems to have occurred to the learned authors of these opinions, that Christ and his church formed any direct object of Solomon's investigation! Yet how strange if the wisest man could have written a book in which the 'Wisdom of God' obtained no place!

'Much of the obscurity, it has been observed, which is generally admitted to exist in the book of Ecclesiastes, arises from not attending to the train of argument proposed by Solomon, which difficulty the ordinary division of chapters and verses is supposed to have contributed to increase' (Horne's Introduction).

Now that, like other portions of Scripture, the book of Ecclesiastes contains some or many things 'hard to be understood,' cannot be denied. But has not its peculiar obscurities arisen from neglecting the beams of 'the Sun of Righteousness' shining so brightly in all its pages, rather than from any inattention to the mere train of a philosophical argument? That Ecclesiastes is a book of argument is admitted; but not in any other sense than that in which the Epistles to the Romans, Galatians, and Hebrews are books of argument. That is, the statements, illustrations, and conclusions are never of man, but from the Spirit of God.

If by 'wisdom' is to be understood anything less than the knowledge that 'God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself,' 2 Co. 5. 19, then, indeed, is the book of Ecclesiastes not only obscure, but often unintelligible. But if the 'wisdom' sought and commended by Solomon be the knowledge of 'Christ, the wisdom of God,' then the obscurity of the book becomes illuminated, and 'he may run that readeth it,' Hab. 2. 2.

Another source of its obscurity may be found in the principle of interpretation ordinarily adopted—a principle neither warranted by anything in the book itself, nor by authority of any other book of Holy Scripture. This principle is the assumption that the book 'was written by Solomon in his old age, after he had repented of his sinful practices; and when, having seen and observed much, as well as having enjoyed everything that he could wish, he was fully convinced of the vanity of everything but piety towards God' (Horne's Introduction). Now, that Solomon wrote the book at an advanced period of his reign, is obvious from ch. 2. 4-11; but though all his recorded labours terminate in 'vexation,' there is not one single reference to any special 'sinfulness' in his pursuits—an omission totally inconsistent with the genius of Scripture, which never fails in the most direct acknowledgment and condemnation of the sins of its chiefest characters. Had the book, therefore, been a confession of sin and retractation of error, these must have furnished its most plain and prominent statements. Sin would have been called sin, and not mere 'vanity and vexation of spirit;' for these words, however strong and expressive, come far short of that self-abasement and abhorrence which the consciousness of sin against God must produce, whenever his Spirit leads the sinner to repentance. The conclusion, therefore, is inevitable—Ecclesiastes is neither an acknowledgment nor retractation of sin in the inspired author, but an illustration of the insufficiency of all 'treasures on earth' for the purpose of inducing men to 'lay up their treasures in heaven,' to 'set their affections on things above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.'

But the chief source of obscurity may be detected in two principles that would reduce light itself into darkness,—the first, taking words in a sense the writer never intended,—the second, interpreting by figures of speech that he never employed. Examples of the first may be found in the meaning attached to 'good' in ch. 2. 24, and 3. 13, &c., where the real good intended is commonly referred to unlimited sensual indulgence; and the second is exemplified ch. 11. 9, where a plain and godly admonition is commonly interpreted as a bitter irony.

In the preceding notes these arbitrary principles of interpretation have been altogether rejected; and, in subordination to the teaching of the Spirit, the book has been treated as its own expositor.—C.