Rejoice, young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth, and walk in the ways of your heart, and in the sight of your eyes; but know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment.
Parallel Translations
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Rejoice, young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth, and walk in the ways of your heart, and in the sight of your eyes; but know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment.
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Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes: but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment.
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Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thy heart, and in the sight of thine eyes; but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment.
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Questions where the Bible appears to say two different things, with the passages on each side set together.
Cross-references (37)
Passages linked to Ecclesiastes 11:9 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Ecclesiastes 12:14 For God will bring every work into judgment, with every hidden thing, whether it is good, or whether it is evil.
- 1 John 2:15-16 Don’t love the world or the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the Father’s love isn’t in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, isn’t the Father’s, but is the world’s.
- Ecclesiastes 12:1 Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come, and the years draw near, when you will say, “I have no pleasure in them;”
- Ecclesiastes 3:17 I said in my heart, “God will judge the righteous and the wicked; for there is a time there for every purpose and for every work.”
- Lamentations 3:27 It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.
- 2 Corinthians 5:10 For we must all be revealed before the judgment seat of Christ that each one may receive the things in the body according to what he has done, whether good or bad.
- Job 31:7 if my step has turned out of the way, if my heart walked after my eyes, if any defilement has stuck to my hands,
- Hebrews 9:27 Inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once, and after this, judgment,
- Romans 14:10 But you, why do you judge your brother? Or you again, why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.
- Ephesians 2:2-3 in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the children of disobedience. We also all once lived among them in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.
- Genesis 3:6 When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took some of its fruit, and ate. Then she gave some to her husband with her, and he ate it, too.
- Ecclesiastes 2:10 Whatever my eyes desired, I didn’t keep from them. I didn’t withhold my heart from any joy, for my heart rejoiced because of all my labor, and this was my portion from all my labor.
- Matthew 5:28 but I tell you that everyone who gazes at a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart.
- Romans 2:5-11 But according to your hardness and unrepentant heart you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath, revelation, and of the righteous judgment of God; who “will pay back to everyone according to their works:” to those who by perseverance in well-doing seek for glory, honor, and incorruptibility, eternal life; but to those who are self-seeking, and don’t obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, will be wrath, indignation, oppression, and anguish on every soul of man who does evil, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. But glory, honor, and peace go to every man who does good, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For there is no partiality with God.
- Revelation 20:12-15 I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and they opened books. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged out of the things which were written in the books, according to their works. The sea gave up the dead who were in it. Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them. They were judged, each one according to his works. Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. If anyone was not found written in the book of life, he was cast into the lake of fire.
- Genesis 6:2 God’s sons saw that men’s daughters were beautiful, and they took any that they wanted for themselves as wives.
- Numbers 15:30 “ ‘But the soul who does anything with a high hand, whether he is native-born or a foreigner, blasphemes Yahweh. That soul shall be cut off from among his people.
- Psalms 50:4-6 He calls to the heavens above, to the earth, that he may judge his people: “Gather my saints together to me, those who have made a covenant with me by sacrifice.” The heavens shall declare his righteousness, for God himself is judge.
- Numbers 15:39 It shall be to you for a fringe, that you may see it, and remember all Yahweh’s commandments, and do them; and that you don’t follow your own heart and your own eyes, after which you used to play the prostitute;
- Deuteronomy 29:19 and it happen, when he hears the words of this curse, that he bless himself in his heart, saying, “I shall have peace, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart,” to destroy the moist with the dry.
- 2 Samuel 11:2-4 At evening, David arose from his bed and walked on the roof of the king’s house. From the roof, he saw a woman bathing, and the woman was very beautiful to look at. David sent and inquired after the woman. One said, “Isn’t this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, Uriah the Hittite’s wife?” David sent messengers, and took her; and she came in to him, and he lay with her (for she was purified from her uncleanness); and she returned to her house.
- Psalms 81:12 So I let them go after the stubbornness of their hearts, that they might walk in their own counsels.
- Jeremiah 7:24 But they didn’t listen or turn their ear, but walked in their own counsels and in the stubbornness of their evil heart, and went backward, and not forward.
- Jeremiah 23:17 They say continually to those who despise me, ‘Yahweh has said, “You will have peace;” ’ and to everyone who walks in the stubbornness of his own heart they say, ‘No evil will come on you.’
- Luke 15:12-13 The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of your property.’ He divided his livelihood between them. Not many days after, the younger son gathered all of this together and traveled into a far country. There he wasted his property with riotous living.
- 1 Corinthians 4:5 Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord comes, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and reveal the counsels of the hearts. Then each man will get his praise from God.
- 2 Peter 3:7 But the heavens that exist now and the earth, by the same word have been stored up for fire, being reserved against the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.
- Numbers 22:32 Yahweh’s angel said to him, “Why have you struck your donkey these three times? Behold, I have come out as an adversary, because your way is perverse before me.
- Joshua 7:21 When I saw among the plunder a beautiful Babylonian robe, two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold weighing fifty shekels, then I coveted them and took them. Behold, they are hidden in the ground in the middle of my tent, with the silver under it.”
- 1 Kings 18:12 It will happen, as soon as I leave you, that Yahweh’s Spirit will carry you I don’t know where; and so when I come and tell Ahab, and he can’t find you, he will kill me. But I, your servant, have feared Yahweh from my youth.
- 1 Kings 18:27 At noon, Elijah mocked them, and said, “Cry aloud; for he is a god. Either he is deep in thought, or he has gone somewhere, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he sleeps and must be awakened.”
- 1 Kings 22:15 When he had come to the king, the king said to him, “Micaiah, shall we go to Ramoth Gilead to battle, or shall we forbear?” He answered him, “Go up and prosper; and Yahweh will deliver it into the hand of the king.”
- Jeremiah 44:16-17 “As for the word that you have spoken to us in Yahweh’s name, we will not listen to you. But we will certainly perform every word that has gone out of our mouth, to burn incense to the queen of the sky, and to pour out drink offerings to her, as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings and our princes, in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem; for then had we plenty of food, and were well, and saw no evil.
- Acts 14:16 who in the generations gone by allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways.
- Acts 24:25 As he reasoned about righteousness, self-control, and the judgment to come, Felix was terrified, and answered, “Go your way for this time, and when it is convenient for me, I will summon you.”
- 1 Peter 4:3-4 For we have spent enough of our past time doing the desire of the Gentiles, and having walked in lewdness, lusts, drunken binges, orgies, carousings, and abominable idolatries. They think it is strange that you don’t run with them into the same excess of riot, blaspheming.
- Acts 17:30-31 The times of ignorance therefore God overlooked. But now he commands that all people everywhere should repent, because he has appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he has ordained; of which he has given assurance to all men, in that he has raised him from the dead.”
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (17 sources)
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Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain He derideth them that set their delight in worldly…
He derideth them that set their delight in worldly pleasures, as though God would not call count.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Ecc 11:9 Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth;…
Ecc 11:9 Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes: but know thou, that for all these [things] God will bring thee into judgment.
Ver. 9. Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth,] i.e., Do if thou darest; like as God said to Balaam, "Rise up and go to Balak" {Num 22:20} - that is, go if thou thinkest it good; go since thou wilt need to go; but thou goest upon thy death. Let no man imagine that it ever came into the Preacher’s heart here, oleum camino addere, to add fuel to the fire of youthful lusts, to excite young people, unruly enough of themselves, to take their full swing in sinful pleasures. Thus to do might better befit a Protagoras, of whom Plato {a} reports, that he many times boasted, that whereas he had lived sixty years, forty of those sixty he had spent in corrupting those young men that had been his pupils; or that old dotterel in Terence, that said, Non est mihi, crede, flagitium adolescentem helluari, potare, scortari, fores effringere: I hold it no fault for young men to swagger, drink, drab, revel, &c. Solomon in this text, either by a mimesis brings in the wild younker thus bespeaking himself, Rejoice, my soul, in thy youth, &c., and then nips him on the crown again with that stinging "but" in the end of the verse; or else, which I rather think, by an ironic concession he bids him "rejoice," &c., yields him what he would have, by way of mockage and bitter scoff; like as Elijah jeered the Baalites, bidding them cry aloud unto their drowsy or busy god; or as Micaiah bade Ahab, by a holy scoff, go up against Ramothgilead and prosper; or as our Saviour bade his drowsy desciples, "Sleep on now, and take your rest," {Mar 14:41} viz., if you can at least, or have any mind to it, with so many bills and halberds about your ears.
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And let thine heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth.] In diebus electionum tuarum, so Arias Montanus reads it; In the days of thy choosings - that is, when thou followest the choice and the chase of thine own desires, and doest what thou wilt without control. {Luk 12:45}
Walk in the way of thine heart.] Which bids thee eat, drink, and be merry, and had as lief be knocked on the head as do otherwise. Hence fasting is called an "afflicting of the soul"; and the best find it no less grievous to go about holy duties, than it is to children to be called from their sports, and set to their books.
And in the sight of thine eyes.] Those windows of wickedness, and loop holes of lust.
But know.] Here is that which mars all the mirth, here is a cooler for the younker’s courage, sour sauce to his deserts, for fear he should surfeit. Verba haec Solomonis valde ernphatica sunt, saith Lavater. There is a great deal of emphasis in these words of Solomon. Let me tell thee this as a preacher, saith he; and oh that I could get words to gore the very soul with smarting pain, that this doctrine might be written in thy flesh!
That for all these things.] These tricae, as the world accounts them; these trifles and tricks of youth, which Job and David bitterly bewailed as sore businesses.
God will bring thee to judgment.] Either in this life, as he did Absalom and Adonijah, Hophni and Phinehas, Nadab and Abihu, or infallibly at thy death’s day, which indeed is thy dooms day; then God will bring thee perforce, be thou never so loath to come to it; he will hail thee to his tribunal, be it never so much against thy heart, and against the hair with thee. And as for the judgment what it shall be, God himself shows it in Isa 28:17, "Judgment will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet, and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding place." Where, what is the hail, saith one, but the multitude of accusations which shall sweep away the vain hope that men have, that the infinite mercy of God will save them, howsoever they live? And what is the hiding place, but the multitude of excuses which men are ready to make for themselves, and which the waters of God’s justice shall quite destroy and overthrow? Young men, of all men, are apt to make a covenant with death, and to put far away from them the thought of judgment. But it moves them not so to do; for Senibus mors in ianuis, adolescentibus in insidiis, saith Bernard. Death doth not always knock at the door, but comes often like a lightning or thunderbolt; it blasteth the green grain, and consumeth the new and strong building. Now at death it will fare nothing better with the wild and wicked youngster, than with that thief, that having stolen a gelding, rideth away bravely mounted, till such time as being overtaken by hue and cry, he is soon afterwards sentenced and put to death.
{a} Plato in Meneu.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain This verse is to be understood either,
This verse is to be understood either,
1. As a serious advice to this purpose, Seeing life is short and transitory, improve it to the best advantage, take comfort in it whilst you may, only do it with moderation, and the fear of God. Or rather,
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2. As an ironical concession, such as are usual both in Scripture, as 1Ki 18:27; 22:15; Eze 28:3,4; Mt 26:45, and in other authors; for this agrees much better with the context, and with the expressions here used. And so the sense is, I foresee what evil use some men will make of what I have now said. Things being thus, let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we shall die; as they also reasoned, 1Co 15:32.
O young man; he speaks to young men particularly, because they have both the greatest ability and the strongest inclinations to pursue sensual pleasures, and are most impatient either of restraint or admonition.
Let thy heart cheer thee; indulge thy frolic and jolly humour, and take thy fill of delights.
Walk in the way of thy heart, and in the sight of thine eyes; whatsoever thine eye or heart lusteth after, deny it not to them; as this phrase is taken. Num 15:39, nor is it ever used in a good sense. Compare Job 31:7; Psa 81:12; Jer 18:12; 2Pe 2:14; 1Jo 2:16. But know thou; but in the midst of thy feastings and jollity it will become thee, if thou art a reasonable creature, to consider thy reckoning, and whether thou dost not purchase thy gold too dear.
For all these things, for all thy follies and sinful lusts, which thou slightest as tricks of youth,
God will bring thee into judgment; will force thee to appear before his judgment-seat, to give a serious account of all thy youthful and exorbitant courses, and to receive that sentence which thy own conscience will then say thou dost justly deserve. And if thou likest thy sensuality upon these terms, much good may it do thee; I do not envy thee, nor desire to partake of thy delicates.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth,.... This advice…
Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth,.... This advice may be considered as serious; and either as relating to natural, corporeal, and temporal delight and pleasure, under due limitations; that as mirth and cheerfulness, or a free use of the creatures of God, with moderation and temperance, is allowable to all men in common, and is spoken of throughout this book as commendable, and is healthful and profitable to men; so it is particularly suitable to the youthful age, whose natural desires may be enjoyed, and their outward senses may be gratified, in a lawful way, so far as is consistent with the fear of God, and the expectation of a future judgment: or it may be considered with respect to religious and spiritual exercises; as young men should remember their Creator in the days of their youth, as it follows; so they should rejoice in God their Maker, Psa 149:2; they should rejoice not to do evil, to which human nature is inclined, especially in youth, but to do good; should rejoice, not in the ways of sin, but in the ways of wisdom; not in any outward attainment of beauty, wit, strength, or riches, but in the grace of God; not in themselves, or their boastings, but in Christ, his person, righteousness, and salvation; not in the things of time and sense, but in hope of the glory of God;
and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth; here is a different word for youth than the former, which Alshech distinguishes thus; the first designs the time to the age of thirteen, and this from thence to twenty. Or, "let thine heart do thee good", so the Septuagint. The Targum is,
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"and let thine heart be good in thee.''
Symmachus renders it, "and let thine heart be in good"; the thoughts of thine heart be employed about that which is good, spiritual, heavenly, and divine; the affections of thine heart set thereon; and the will and desires of thine heart be drawn out after such things: let thine heart prompt and put thee on doing that which is good, with delight and pleasure; but, in order, to all this, the heart must be made good by the spirit and grace of God;
and walk in the ways of thy heart; being created a clean one, sprinkled, purged, and purified by the blood of Christ; in which the fear of God is put; the laws of God are written; where Christ is formed, and his word dwells richly, and he himself by faith, where the Spirit of God and his graces are: and then to walk in the ways of such a heart is to walk in the fear of God, according to his word, as Christ is an example; and to walk after the spirit, and not after the flesh. The Septuagint and Arabic versions are, "and walk in the ways of thine heart unblamable": the Targum,
"and walk in humility in the ways of thine heart:''
which all agree with the sense given: so Alshech interprets the ways of the heart; of the ways of the good imagination of good men;
and in the sight of thine eyes; as enlightened by the Spirit of God, directing and guiding in the way in which a man should walk; looking unto Jesus, all the while he is walking or running his Christian race; and walking in him, as he has received him; pressing towards him, the mark, for the prize of the high calling. The Targum is,
"and be cautious of the sight of thine eyes, and look not upon evil.''
The Septuagint and Arabic versions insert the negative; "and not in the sight of thine eyes". Most interpreters understand all this its an ironic concession to young men, to indulge themselves in carnal mirth, to take their swing of sinful pleasures, to do all their corrupt hearts incline them to; and to gratify their outward senses and carnal lusts to the uttermost; even the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye and the pride of life, which young men are most addicted to: do all this, as if it was said, and see what will be the issue of it; or, do all this if you can, with this one thing bore in mind, a future judgment; like those expressions in Kg1 22:15; and to this sense the following clause is thought most to incline: and the rather, as the above phrases are generally used in a bad sense;
but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment; not temporal, but eternal; not in this present life, but in the world to come; the judgment that will be after death, the last and awful judgment; and which is certain, may be known; of which a man may be assured from the light of nature, and from divine revelation; See Gill on Ecc 3:17; into which all men will be brought, even whether they will or not; and every work shall be brought into it, good or bad, open or secret, Ecc 12:14. Wherefore "these things" may respect either; and the consideration of a future judgment should influence the lives of men, and engage them both to perform acts of piety and religion in youth, and throughout the whole of life, and to shun and avoid everything that is evil. Herodotus (y) speaks of a custom among the Egyptians, at their feasts; that, just at the close of them, one carries about in a coffin the image of a dead man, exactly like one, made of wood, the length of a cubit or two, showing it to all the guests; saying, look upon it, drink, and take pleasure, for such shalt thou be when dead.
(y) Euterpe, sive l. 2. c. 78.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain Rejoice - Indulge thy humour, and take thy fill…
Rejoice - Indulge thy humour, and take thy fill of delights. And walk - Whatsoever thine eye or heart lusteth after, deny it not to them. But know - But in the midst of thy jollity consider thy reckoning.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 9. Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth]…
Verse 9. Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth] Youth is devoid of cares; and, consequently, of many perplexities and distresses. Were it not so, we should have no old men; nay, perhaps not one even of middle age. It is in the order of a most gracious God, that the young should rejoice in their youth; but they should make such a moderate use of all their enjoyments, that they may not be confounded in the day of judgment. But, O young man, if thou wilt follow the propensities of thy own heart, the noisy mirth of the fool, and the dissipation of the profligate - go on; take thy full swing; but take this with thee, that "for all these things, God will judge thee;" and if the righteous are scarcely saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Ecc 11:9. Rejoice, &c. — This is an ironical…
Ecc 11:9. Rejoice, &c. — This is an ironical concession, like many which occur in the Scriptures, (see 1Ki 18:27; 1Ki 22:15; Eze 28:3-4; Mat 26:45,) and in other authors: O young man, in thy youth — He speaks to young men particularly, because they have both the greatest ability and the strongest inclination to pursue sensual pleasure, and are most impatient, either of restraint or admonition, Let thy heart cheer thee, &c. — Indulge thy humour. and take thy fill of delights. And walk in the way of thy heart, &c. — Whatsoever thine eye or heart lusteth after, deny it not to them. But know thou — But in the midst of thy feasting, jollity, and mirth, consider thy reckoning, and whether thou dost not purchase thy delights at too high a price: that for all these things — For all thy sinful lusts and follies; God will bring thee to judgment — Will force thee to appear before his judgment-seat, to account for all thy forgetfulness of him, and neglect of his service, thy misemployment of thy time and talents, and of all the gifts of his providence and grace, and for all thy carnal mirth, sensual pleasures, and the extravagances and exorbitances of thy youthful days, as well as of thy riper years.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain Eyes. He speaks ironically, (Calmet) or exhorts to spiritual…
Eyes. He speaks ironically, (Calmet) or exhorts to spiritual joy and moderation. (St. Gregory, Mor. xxiv.)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain Rejoice--not advice, but warning. So Kg1 22:15, is irony;…
Rejoice--not advice, but warning. So Kg1 22:15, is irony; if thou dost rejoice (carnally, Ecc 2:2; Ecc 7:2, not moderately, as in Ecc 5:18), &c., then "know that . . . God will bring thee into judgment" (Ecc 3:17; Ecc 12:14).
youth . . . youth--distinct Hebrew words, adolescence or boyhood (before Ecc 11:10), and full-grown youth. It marks the gradual progress in self-indulgence, to which the young especially are prone; they see the roses, but do not discover the thorns, until pierced by them. Religion will cost self-denial, but the want of it infinitely more (Luk 14:28).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 9. Know thou, etc. — The writer now, like…
9. Know thou, etc. — The writer now, like a mariner, discerns a final guiding star. Having looked at human life from various points, and reasoned his way through many theories and suggestions, he sees that, crowning every consideration, however copious, of earthly good, the true restraint and hope and consolation of the soul, at every turn of its fortune, is in the future judgment of God. Lifting his eye above the sad uniformity of sorrow and death, he discerns the great event of the hereafter, and is comforted.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 9. Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth] Strictly…
9. Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth] Strictly speaking, as the beginning of the end, the opening of the finale of the book, these should be read in close connexion with chap. 12. The Debater turns with his closing counsel to the young. That counsel, like the rest of the book, has been very variously interpreted. (1) Men have seen in it the stern irony of the ascetic, killing the power of rejoicing in the very act of bidding men rejoice, holding before the young man the terrors of the Lord, the fires of Gehenna. Coarsely paraphrased, the counsel so given is practically this, “Follow your desires, take your fling, sow your wild oats, go forth on the voyage of life, ‘youth at the prow and pleasure at the helm,’ but know that all this, the ‘primrose path of dalliance,’ ends in Hell and its eternal fires.” It is not without significance, from this point of view, that the counsel given is almost in direct contradiction to the words of the Law, brought, we may believe, into notice by the growing stress laid on the use of phylacteries, on which those words were written, which warned men that they should not “seek after their own heart and their own eyes” (Num_15:39). (2) Men have also seen in it the unchastened counsel of the lowest form of Epicureanism, “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. Leave no desire ungratified, seek the maximum of intense enjoyment, crowd the sensations of a life-time into a few short years.” (3) Even the closing words have, by a strange ingenuity, been turned into a protest against asceticism. “God will judge you, if you slight His gifts. Self-denial is for Him no acceptable service. He rejoices in your joy, will punish the gloomy Pharisee or Essene who mortifies the flesh, by leaving him to his self-inflicted tortures.” Once again men have looked at the shield on its gold or its silver side: and the Truth is found in seeing it on both. Once again we may recognise the method of one who spoke φωνήεντα συνέτοισιν (“full of meaning to those who have eyes to see”), and uttered his precepts with a double sense as a test of the character of those who heard or read them. The true purport of the words seems to be as follows. After the manner of chs. Ecc_2:24, Ecc_3:12; Ecc_3:22, Ecc_5:18, Ecc_9:7, the Debater falls back on the fact that life is after all worth living, that it is wise to cultivate the faculty of enjoyment in the season when that faculty is, in most cases, as by a law of nature, strong and capable of being fashioned into a habit. So moralists in our own time, preachers of “sweetness and light,” have contrasted the gloomy plodding Philistinism or Puritanism of the English as a people, “qui s’amusent moult (= bien) tristement” (Froissart), with the brightness and gaiety of the French, and have urged us to learn wisdom from the comparison. In good faith he tells the young man to “rejoice in his youth,” to study the bent of his character, what we should call his æsthetic tastes, but all this is not to be the reckless indulgence of each sensuous impulse, but to be subject to the thought “God will bring thee into judgment.” What the judgment may be the Debater does not define. It may come in the physical suffering, the disease, or the poverty, or the shame, that are the portion of the drunkard and the sensualist. It may come in the pangs of self-reproach, and the memory of the “mala mentis gaudia.” “The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices make whips to scourge us.” It is singularly significant to find an echo of the precept so given in the teaching of the great Poet of the more atheistic type of Epicureanism, obliged, as in spite of himself, to recognise the fact of a moral order in the world:
“Inde metus maculat pœnarum præmia vitæ.
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Circumretit enim vis atque injuria quemque,
Atque, unde exorta est, ad eum plerumque revertit;
Nec facile est placidam ac pacatam degere vitam,
Qui violat facteis communia fœdera pacis.
Etsi fallit enim divom genus humanumque,
Perpetuo tamen id fore clam diffidere debet.”
“Hence fear of vengeance life’s best prizes mars;
For violence and wrong take him who works them,
As in a net, and to their source return.
Nor is it easy found for him who breaks
By deeds the common covenants of peace
To lead a placid and a peaceful life.
For grant he cheat the gods and all mankind,
He cannot hope the evil done will be
For ever secret.”
Lucr. De Rer. Nat. v. 1151.
Did the judgment of which the thinker speaks go beyond this? That question also has been variously answered. The Debater, it is obvious, does not draw the pictures of the Tartarus and Elysian Fields of the Greek, or of the Gehenna and the Paradise of which his countrymen were learning to speak, it may be, all too lightly. He will not map out a country he has not seen. But the facts on which he dwells, the life of ignoble pleasure, or tyranny, or fraud carried on successfully to the last, the unequal distribution of the pleasures and the pains of life, the obvious retort on the part of the evil-doer that if this life were all, men could take their fill of pleasure and evade the judgment of man, or the misery of self-made reproach and failure, by suicide, all this leads to the conclusion that the “judgment” which the young man is to remember is “exceeding broad,” stretching far into the unseen future of the eternal years. Faith at last comes in where Reason fails, and the man is bidden to remember, in all the flush of life and joy, that “judgment” comes at last, if not in man’s present stage of being, yet in the great hereafter.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (9) The beginning of the last chapter would more…
(9) The beginning of the last chapter would more conveniently have been placed here than where the division is actually made. It is hard to interpret the judgment spoken of in this verse of anything but future judgment, when we bear in mind how much of the book is taken up with the complaint that retribution does not take place in this life.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth. Koheleth continues…
Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth. Koheleth continues to inculcate the duty of rational enjoyment. "In youth" is during youth; not in the exercise of, or by reason of, thy fresh, unimpaired powers. The author urges his hearers to begin betimes to enjoy the blessing with which God surrounds them. Youth is the season of innocent, unalloyed pleasure; then, if ever, casting aside all tormenting anxiety concerning an unknown future, one may, as it is called, enjoy life. Let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth. Let the lightness of thy heart show itself in thy bearing and manner, even as it is said in Proverbs, (Pro_15:13) "A merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance." Walk in the ways of thine heart (comp. Isa_57:17) Where the impulses and thoughts of thy heart lead thee.The wording looks as if the personal identity, the "I," and the thought were distinct. We have a similar severance in Ecc_7:25, only there the personality directs the thought, not the thought the "I," And in the sight of thine eyes. Follow after that on which thy eyes fix their regard; (Ecc_2:10) for, as Job says, (Job_31:7) "The heart walketh after the eyes." The Septuagint, in deference to the supposed requirements of strict morality, has (at least according to the text of some manuscripts) modified the received reading, translating the passage thus: Kaitei ejn oJdoiv kardiav sou amwmov kai mhsei ojfqalmwn, "And walk in the ways of thine heart blameless, and not in the sight of thine eyes." But mh is omitted by A, C, S. Others besides the Seventy have felt doubts about the bearing of the passage, as though it recommended either unbridled license in youth, or at any rate an unhallowed Epicureanism. To counteract the supposed evil teaching, some have credited Koheleth with stern irony. He is not recommending pleasure, say they, but warning against it. "Go on your way," he cries, "do as you list, sow your wild oats, live dissolutely, but remember that retribution will some day overtake you." But the counsel is seriously intended, and is quite consistent with many other passages which teach the duty of enjoying life as man"s lot and part. (see Ecc_2:24 Ecc_3:12, Ecc_3:13, 22 5:18 8:15, etc.) The seeming opposition between the recommendation here and in Num_15:39 is easily reconciled. The injunction in the Pentateuch, which was connected with a ceremonial observance, ran thus: "Remember all the commandments of the Lord, and do them; and that ye go not about after your own heart, and your own eyes, after which ye used to go a-whoring." Here unlawful pleasures, contrary to the commandments, are forbidden; Ecclesiastes urges the pursuit of innocent pleasures, such as will stand scrutiny. Hoelemann, quoted by Wright, observes that this verse is the origin of a famous student-song of Germany, a stanza or two of which we may cite
Gaudeamus igitur, juvenes dum sumus; Post exactam juventutem, post melestam senectutem, Nos habebit humus....
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Vita nostra brevis est, brevi finietur, Venit mors velociter, rapit nes atrociter, Nemini parcotur.
It is not Epicureanism, even in a modified form, that is here encouraged. For moderate and lawful pleasure Koheleth has always uttered his sanction, but the pleasure is to be such as God allows. This is to be accepted with all gratitude in the present, as the future is wholly beyond our ken and our control; it is all that is placed in our power, and it is enough to make life more than endurable. And then to temper unmixed joy, to prove that he is not recommending mere sensuality, to correct any wrong impression which the previous utterances may have conveyed, the writer adds another thought, a somber reflection which shows the religious conclusion to which he is working up. But know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment (mishpat). It has been doubted what is meant by "judgment," whether present or future, men"s or God"s. It has been taken to mean God will make thy excesses prove scourges, by bringing on thee sickness, poverty, a miserable old age; or these distresses come as the natural consequences of youthful sins; or obloquy shall follow thee, and thou shall meet with deserved censure from thy fellow-men. But every one must feel that the solemn ending of this paragraph points to something more grave and important than any such results as those mentioned above, something that is concerned with that indefinable future which is ever looming in the dim horizon. Nothing satisfies the expected conclusion but a reference to the eternal judgment in the world beyond the grave. Shadowy and incomplete as was Koheleth"s view of this great assize, his sense of God"s justice in the face of the anomalies of human life was so strong that he can unhesitatingly appeal to the conviction of a coming inquisition, as a motive for the guidance of action and conduct. That in other passages he constantly apprehends earthly retribution, as the Pentateuch taught, and as his countrymen had learned to expect, (see Ecc_2:26 Ecc_3:17 Ecc_7:17, Ecc_7:18) is no argument that he is not here rising to a higher view. Rather, the fact that the doctrine of temporal reward and punishment is found by experience to fail in many cases (comp. Ecc_8:14) has forced him to state his conclusion that this life is not the end of-everything, and that there is another existence in which actions shall be tried, justice done, retribution awarded. The statement is brief, for he knew nothing more than the fact, and could add nothing to it. His conception of the soul"s condition in Sheol. (see Ecc_9:5, Ecc_9:6, Ecc_9:10) seems to point to some other state or period for this final judgment; but whether a resurrection is to precede this awful trial is left in uncertainty here, as elsewhere in the Old Testament. Cheyne and some other critics consider this last clause to be an interpolation, because it appears to militate against previous utterances; but this argument is unreasonable, as the paragraph comes in quite naturally as the needed conclusion, and without it the section would halt and be incomplete. A similar allusion is contained in the epilogue. (Ecc_12:14) A correcter, who desired to remove all seeming contradictions and discrepancies from the work, would not have been satisfied with inserting this gloss, but would have displayed his remedial measures in other places. Of this proceeding, however, no traces are discernible by an unprejudiced eye.
Vers. 9, 10.
Advice to a young man or woman.
I A GRAND PERMISSION to enjoy life. "Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth," etc.
1. Not a sanction to self-indulgence. The Preacher does not teach that a young man (or, indeed, any man) is at liberty to "make provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof"; (Rom_13:14) to have asserted or suggested that a youth was permitted by religion to follow his inclinations wherever they might lead, to plunge into sensuality, to sow his wild oats (as the phrase is), would have been to contradict the Law of God as given by Moses. (Num_15:39)
2. Not a protest (ironical) against asceticism. The Preacher does not say that God will judge men if they despise his gilts and refuse to enjoy them, Doubtless, in so far as asceticism springs from a contemptuous disregard of God"s providential mercies, it is sinful; but this is hardly the case the Preacher has in view.
3. But a warrant for reasonable pleasure. The young man or maiden is informed that he or she may enjoy the morning of life to the utmost of his or her bent, "walking in the ways of his or her heart, and in the sight of his or her eyes," provided always such pleasures as are sinful are eschewed. Moreover, the Preacher"s language appears to hint that such enjoyment as is here allowed is both appropriate to the season, the days of youth, and demanded by the nature of youth, being the legitimate gratification of the heart and eyes.
II A SOLEMN WARNING the certainty of judgment. But know thou that for all these things," etc. The judgment of which the Preacher speaks is:
1. Future. The great as size will be held, not on earth, but in the unseen world; not in time, but in eternity. That the Preacher had no clear perception of either the time, place, or nature of this judgment, is probably correct, but that he alluded to a dread tribunal in the great hereafter seems a legitimate conclusion from the circumstance that he elsewhere (Ecc_8:14) adverts to the fact that in this life men are not always requited either for their righteousness or for their wickedness. What was comparatively dark to the Preacher is to us clearly illumined, viz. that after death is the judgment. (Heb_9:27)
2. Divine. The Judge will not be man, but God (Ecc_3:17; Psa_62:12; Isa_30:18) This fully discovered in the New Testament, which states that God shall judge men by Jesus Christ (Rom_2:16; 2Ti_4:1)
3. Individual. The judgment will be passed, not upon mankind in the mass, or upon men in groups, but upon men as individuals. (2Co_5:10)
4. Certain. As the Preacher himself was not dubious, so would he have the young to know that the future judgment will be a momentous reality (Heb_12:23; 2Pe_2:9)
III AN URGENT DUTY to banish sorrow and evil.
1. To remove sorrow from the heart. Either
(1) the sorrow of vexation, in which case the counsel is to avoid cherishing a peevish, morose, or discontented spirit, such as arises from looking at the dark side of things, and to cultivate a cheerful disposition a state of mind which accepts whatever lot falls to it in providence. (Php_4:11) Or
(2) that which causes sorrow to the heart, viz. sin; in which case, again, the exhortation is to abstain from all ungodliness, the real root of heart-bitterness (Deu_29:18; Pro_1:31; Gal_6:8) and to follow holiness, which alone contains the secret of happiness (Psa_106:3; Isa_48:18)
2. To put away evil from the flesh. Doubtless
(1) physical evil, pain, suffering, affliction, whether occasioned by the self-inflicted tortures of asceticism or by the accidentally incurred strokes of disease a clear injunction to promote the body"s comfort and health. But also
(2) everything that may induce suffering or evil in the flesh; hence once more sin which, apart altogether from those wickednesses which are against the body, (1Co_6:15) has a tendency to engender disease and accelerate death.
IV A SERIOUS REASON the vanity of boyhood and manhood.
1. Both are transient. Youth and the prime of life will not last, but will pass away. Hence they should be kept as joyous and pure as possible. Only one thing more unfortunate for the after-development of the soul than a sunless youth, namely, a sinful youth. If the opening years of man"s pilgrimage on the earth should be radiant with happiness, much more should they be glorified with holiness.
2. Both are inexperienced. Hence their fervid impulses should be moderated and restrained by the solemn considerations that spring from the brevity of life and the certainty of a future judgment.
Learn:
1. That youth should be happy and serious.
2. That man"s existence has a future and a present.
3. That privilege and responsibility ever go together.
Vers. 9, 10.
In joy remember judgment!
There is certainly no asceticism in the teaching of this book. On the other hand, there is no commendation of worldliness and voluptuousness. Human nature is prone to extremes; and even religious teachers are not always successful in avoiding them. But we seem in this passage to listen to teaching which at once recognizes the claims of human nature and of the earthly life, and yet solemnly maintains the subordination of all our pleasures and occupations to the service of our Master, and to our preparation for the great account.
I THE DIVINE PROVISION OF LIFE"S JOYS. If this language be not the language of irony and it seems better to take it as sober serious truth, then we are taught that the delights of this earthly existence, however they are capable of abuse, are in themselves not evil, but proofs of the Creator"s benevolence, to be accepted with devout thanksgiving. In dealing with the young it is especially important to avoid warring with their innocent pleasures. These may sometimes seem to us trivial and unprofitable; but a juster view of human nature will convince us that they are wisely appointed to fulfill a certain place and office in human life.
II THE DIVINE APPOINTMENT OF FUTURE JUDGMENT. Conscience suggests that we are responsible beings, and that retribution is a reality. What conscience suggests revelation certifies. The Bible lays the greatest stress upon individual accountability. We are taught in the text that we are not only responsible for the work we do in life, but for the pleasures we pursue. Certainly it is of the greatest advantage that men should recollect in the days of happiness the assurances of Scripture, that God shall ere long bring them into judgment. Such recollection will check any inclination to unlawful enjoyments, and will prevent undue absorption in enjoyments which are in themselves lawful, but to which a disproportionate value may be attached. There is a sense in which, as we are here reminded, "youth and the prime of life are vanity." They will prove to be so to those who imagine that they will last, to these who pride themselves in them and boast of them, to those who use them only as the Opportunity of personal pleasure, to those who forget their Creator, neglect his Law, and despise his Gospel
III THE POSSIBILITY OF ACCEPTING GOD"S GIFTS AND OF USING THEM UNDER A SENSE OF RESPONSIBILITY, AND WITH A VIEW TO THE GREAT ACCOUNT. If every blessing in this life be taken as coming directly from the great Giver"s hand, as a token of his favor, and as the result of the mediation of his blessed Son, then may the very enjoyments of this life become to Christians the occasion of present grace and the earnest of fullness of joy. T.
Vers. 9, 10.
Human joy and Divine judgment.
That these words are not to be taken ironically is probable, if not certain, when we consider how frequently the Preacher had given substantially the same counsel before. (see Ecc_2:24 Ecc_3:12, 22 5:18 8:15 9:9) Moreover, we obtain an excellent meaning by taking them in their natural sense. We may indeed ask for
I THE NECESSITY FOR SUCH COUNSEL. It may be said What need is there for offering such an exhortation? Young manhood is certain to take all the indulgence which is good for it, without any man"s bidding; the danger is not on the side of defect, but of excess. That certainly is so generally. But there is the religious devotee, who thinks he is pleasing God by abstaining from all bodily comforts, and enduring all physical sufferings. There is also the ascetic moralist, who thinks that he is conforming to the highest standard of ethics when he practices a rigorous abstinence, and goes through life denying himself the delights to which outward nature and inward instincts invite him. There is also the man of prudent policy, who thinks that in a state of society such as that in which the Preacher lived and wrote, where there is no security for life or property, it is better not to enter into new relationships or to embark in great enterprises; let life be cut down to its smallest limits. Hence the necessity for such a cheery invitation as that in the text. But we must mark
II THE EXTENT TO WHICH IT GOES. Clearly the words must not be taken in their widest possible sense. That would be not liberty, but license; that would not encourage enjoyment, but sanction vice. The Preacher would have the young man, who is full of strength, energy, hope, affection, have the full heritage which the Father of spirits and Author of this world intended and provided for him. Let him give play to all the sound impulses of his nature; let him taste the exquisite enjoyment of a pure affection and of happy friendship; let him be an eager and earnest competitor in the contest of strength, of skill, of the studio, of the mart, of the council, of the senate; let him throw his full energies into the activities, recreations, ambitions, aspirations, of his time; let him play his part as his heart inclines and as his capacities enable him. But let him not cross the line which divides virtue from vice, wisdom from folly, conscientiousness from unscrupulousness. For there has to be taken into account
III ONE POWERFULLY RESTRAINING THOUGHT. God will bring him into judgment. And God"s judgment is threefold.
1. He judges us every moment, deciding whether our thought, our feeling, our action, is right or wrong; and he is thus continually approving or disapproving, and is constantly pleased or displeased. Surely this is not a Divine judgment to be disregarded.
2. He causes an evil habit to be visited, sooner or later, with the penalty which appropriately follows it sickness, feebleness, poverty, mental incapacity, human condemnation, ruin, death, as the case may be.
3. He reserves the day of trial and of account for the hour when life is over. C.
Ecc_12:7. Youth and age.
The greater part of the Book of Ecclesiastes is of a somber character. It records the experiences of one who sought on all sides and with passionate eagerness for that which would satisfy the higher wants of his nature the hunger and thirst of the soul but who sought in vain. Ordinary coarse, sensual pleasures soon lost their charm for him; for he deliberately tried a dangerous experiment to see if in self-indulgence any real satisfaction could be found. From this failure he turned to a more promising quarter. He sought in "culture," the pursuit of beauty and magnificence in art, the pathway to the highest good, on the discovery of which his soul was set. He used his great wealth to procure all that could minister to a refined taste. He built palaces, planted vineyards and gardens and orchards; he filled his palaces with all that was beautiful and costly, and cultivated every pleasure which is within the reach of man. Whatsoever mine eyes desired," he says, I kept not from them, I withheld not my heart from any joy Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on all the labor that I had labored to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun." From this he turned to the joys and employments of an intellectual life acquired knowledge and wisdom, studied the works of nature, analyzed human character in all its phases, and applied himself to the solution of all those great problems connected with the moral government of the world and the destiny of the soul of man. Here he was baffled. The discoveries he made were he found, useless for curing any of the evils of life, and at every point he met with mysteries which he could not solve, and his sense of failure and defeat convinced him that though "wisdom excelleth folly, as far as light excelleth darkness," it does not satisfy the soul. "What, then, is the result of his inquiries, of his pain and labor in searching after the highest good? Do his withering speculations leave anything untouched which may reasonably be the object of our pursuit, and which may afford us the satisfaction for which he sought in vain in so many quarters? Does he decide that life is, after all, worth living, or is his conclusion that it is not? In the closing sections of his book some answer is given to these questions; something positive comes as a pleasing relief from all the negations with which he had shut up one after another of the paths by which men had sought and still seek to attain to lasting happiness. Two conclusions might have been drawn from the experience through which he had passed. "Since the employments and enjoyments of life are insufficient to give satisfaction to the soul"s craving, why engage in them, why not turn away from them in contempt, and fix the thoughts solely on a life to come?" an ascetic might ask. "Since life is so transitory, pleasure so fleeting, why not seize upon every pleasure, and banish every care as far as possible?" an Epicurean might ask. "Let us eat and drink; for to-morrow we die." Neither of these courses finds any favor in the mature judgment of Solomon, or of the writer who draws his teaching from the experience of the Jewish king. "Rejoice," he says, rebuking the ascetic; "know thou that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment," he adds, for the confusion of the Epicurean. He speaks with the authority of one who had fully considered the problems of life, and with the solemnity of one whose earthly career was hastening to its close; and he addresses himself to the young, as more likely to profit by his experience than those over whom habits of life and thought have more power. But of course all, both young and old, men and women, can learn from him if they will, according to the gospel precept, "become as little children," and listen with reverence and simplicity. The counsel which the Preacher has to give is bold and startling. "Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes: but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment." What does he mean? Are his words ironical, or spoken in sober earnest? A very long time ago they caused some perplexity to translators and commentators. In the earliest translation of this book into another language, that into Greek, this passage was considerably modified and toned down. The translator put in the word "blameless" after "walk," and the word "not" into the next part of the sentence. "Walk blameless in the ways of thine heart, and not after the sight of thine eyes." But any such tampering with the text was not only profane, but also senseless, for it simply destroyed the whole meaning of the passage. But granting that we have in our English a fair reproduction of the original, can there be any mistake about the interpretation of it? Is it possible that it may mean, "Rejoice if you will, follow your desires, have your fling, go forth on the voyage of life, " youth at the prow, and pleasure at the helm," but know that the end of it all are the penal flames"? Some have thought that that is the meaning of the words. But a little consideration of them, and comparison of them with other passages in the book, will show us that it cannot be. Our author on several occasions, after showing us the vanity of earthly pursuits, falls back on the fact that there are many alleviations of our lot in life, which it is true wisdom to make use of many flowers of pleasure on the side of the hard road which one may innocently pluck. Thus he says, (Ecc_2:24) "There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labor. This also I saw that it was from the hand of God." And again, (Ecc_9:7) "Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart; for God now accepteth thy works. Let thy garments be always white; and let thy head lack no ointment. Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of thy vanity for that is thy portion in this life." And the same lesson he repeats there, but in a tone of deeper solemnity, balancing and steadying the inclination to pleasure, which in few of us needs to be stimulated, with the thought that for every one of our actions we shall have to give an account at the judgment-seat of God. Surely this thought is a sufficient corrective to the abuse of the teaching which a perverse mind might make, and a proof that the enjoyments spoken of are such as do not degrade the soul. A gloomy asceticism which would unlawfully diminish human happiness is forbidden; a thankful acceptance of all the blessings God gives us, and a constant remembrance of our responsibility to him, is commended to us. With all the repugnance of a healthy mind, our author recoils from that narrow and self-righteous fanaticism which has done so much to deepen the gloom of life, and to turn religion into an oppressive yoke. He does not, however, go to the other extreme; but while he bids the young to enjoy the morning of life, he at the same time admonishes them in all things to have the fear of God before their eyes. Youth and manhood are vanity; their joys are fleeting, and will soon be past. Must we, therefore, neglect them, and indulge in equally vain and fleeting regrets? No; but rather put away all morose repining, and spare ourselves all unnecessary pain, and cultivate a cheerful contentedness with our lot. If the morning will soon be past, let us enjoy its light while it lasts, mindful of him who is the Giver of every good and perfect gift. The thought of him will not dull any innocent happiness, for he has made us capable of joy, and given us occasions of experiencing it. That no fears need be felt about the application of this teaching to actual life is abundantly proved by the words that follow, in the solemn and stately passage with which the twelfth chapter opens. The idea all through is that piety should be bound up with the whole life with the buoyancy and gaiety of youth, as well as with the decaying hopes and failing strength of age. That religion is not merely a consolation to which we may betake when all other things fail, but all through the food by which the soul is nourished. The fact is put very strongly. If in youth God is not remembered, it will be difficult in age, when the faculties begin to lose their vigor, to think of him for the first time, and consecrate one"s self to him. The mere accumulation of the weaknesses, both physical and mental, which attend the close of life will absorb the attention and Crowd out other thoughts. "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." And then he goes on to draw a picture, full of pathos sad solemnity, of the gradual dissolution of human life with the advance of age, of the decay and death into which the strongest fall, even if they endure for many years. One cannot make out all the successive images with equal clearness, but the evident purpose of the whole passage is clear enough. In the evil days the light of the sun, moon, and stars is darkened, and the sky is time after time overcast with returning clouds. The light of youth has fled, and with it the self-confidence and strength by which the life was sustained. Like some household in Egypt when the plague of darkness came down upon it and put an end to all tasks and pleasures, and filled every heart with a paralyzing terror, so is the state of man "perplexed with fear of change." "The keepers of the house tremble, the strong men bow themselves, the terrified servants cease their labor, none look out of the windows, the street doors are shut, the sound of human bustle and activity dies away, the shrill cry of the storm-bird is heard without, and all the daughters of music are hushed and silent." And then, in language still more enigmatical, other of the humiliating characteristics of old age are set forth its timidity and irresolution, the blanched hair, the failing appetite. These signs accumulate rapidly; for man goes to his long, his eternal home, and the procession of mourners is already moving along the street. "Remember," he says, "thy Creator ere the day of death; ere the silver cord be loosened which lets fall and shivers the golden bowl that feeds with oil the flame of life; ere the pitcher be shattered by the spring, and the fountain of life can no longer be replenished; ere the wheel set up with care to draw up from the depths of earth the cool waters give way and fall itself into the well. Therefore remember thy God, and prepare while here to meet him, before that the dust shall return upon the earth dust as it was; for the spirit shall then return to God who gave it." "It was a gift from him, that spirit. To him it will return. More he says not. Its absorption, the re-entering, of the human unit into the eternal and unknown Spirit, would be a thought, it would seem, alien to a Hebrew. But we must not press his words too far. As just now he spoke of a judgment, but gave us no picture of the sheep on the right hand and the goats on the left, so here he has no more to say, no clear and dogmatic assertion of a conscious and separate future life. Into thy hands I commend my spirit, said the trustful psalmist. "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit," said he who bowed his head upon the cross, who tasted death for our sakes. Our Preacher leaves the spirit with its God that is all, and that is much. "God will call us to judgment," he has said,and now he adds, "The body molders, the split passes back to the God who gave it" (Bradley). Many are the reasons which might be adduced to give weight to the admonition, "Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth. The uncertainty of life, e.g., renders it unwise in any who begin to realize their responsibilities, and to act for themselves, to postpone self-consecration to God. If not done now, when the affections are fresh, when habits are beginning to form, there is risk of its not being done at all. Certainly it is more difficult to make a change, and to enter upon the higher life when the heart is taken up with a love of other things, when the attention and interest are absorbed in other cares. Then, too, love of our Creator and service of him are due from us in the best of our days, in the time of our strength and energy, and not merely when we are weary and worn out with following our own devices, and are anxious merely to escape utter ruin and overthrow. True it is that the repentant prodigal is welcomed when he returns to his Father"s house; the worker beginning even at the eleventh hour receives his wages as though he had been the whole day in the vineyard. But their sense of gratitude, Wonder, and awe at the love which has overlooked their faults and shortcomings is the source of a joy far inferior to that of those who have never wandered, who have served faithfully with all the strength and all the day, upon whom the sunshine of God"s favor has ever rested. Another and final reason why it is wise to remember our Creator in the days of youth is that this is the secret of a happy life. The happiness which is disturbed by remembrance of God is not worth the name. That alone gives satisfaction the satisfaction after which the Preacher sought so long and in so many quarters which springs from communion with God. It alone is intense, it alone is lasting. Arising as it does from the relations of the spirit of man with him who created it, it is raised above all the accidents of time and change. The sooner, therefore, that we begin this life of holy communion and service, the longer period of happiness Shall we know, the surer will be our ground of confidence for the future, when the day comes for leaving the world. "Over against the melancholy circumstances of decay and decline, as the end of life draws on, will be set the bright memories of the past, the consciousness of present help, and the hope of a joyous immortality. Vanity of vanities; all is vanity!" was the sentence of one whose wisdom sprang only from his experience of an earthly life, and upon whose mind the burden lay of human sorrows and cares. But "a greater than Solomon," One whose wisdom is Divine, whose power to remove every burden is daily seen, has an infinitely more hopeful message for us. "Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father"s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.... I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. J.W.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth.
Ecc_11:9-10
Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth.
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Joy and judgment
Our translators have slipped in a but where there ought to be an and, and have thus made the Preacher set the joy of youth and the judgment of God over against each other: whereas, in fact, the judgment is put as part of the rejoicing: Rejoice in thy youth; and know that, respecting all these, God will bring thee into judgment. Let us look at the two parts of the text separately--joy and judgment; and then we shall see how they fit into each other, and are parts of one great truth. Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in thy youthful days, and pursue the ways of thine heart, and the things which are seen by the eyes. We are not listening to a Christian moralist: nevertheless, the sentiment is Christian. Childhood and youth, or youth and manhood, are fleeting; therefore, Banish sorrow from thy mind, and put away sadness from thy body. He evidently does not think that the brevity and transitoriness of a thing is a reason for despising it. Neither do you and I, when we deal with ordinary matters. The rose which you pluck in the morning withers before the next morning, but you delight yourself with its colour and perfume none the less while it lasts. Youth and fresh manhood are things only of a few years; but their brevity is, to the Preacher, the reason why they should be enjoyed. Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth. Youth is pointed back to his creation. What stamp did the Creator set upon it? What provision did He make for youth? What did He mean youth to be? Obedient, reverent, pure, diligent--all that certainly; yet as certainly fresh, joyous, vigorous. A joyless youth is as unnatural as ice in August: Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth. It may be said, At any rate, this aspect of the truth does not need pressing in our day, and it were better to warn youth against the coming judgment. And it seems to be assumed, moreover, that there is an antagonism between these two ideas of joy and judgment; that the thought of judgment is enough of itself to quench all rejoicing in youth. But the peculiarity of our text is, that it rejects this antagonism, and makes this coming judgment a cause of rejoicing--a stimulant of the joy of youth as well as a warning: Rejoice, and know that God will bring thee into judgment. Banish, therefore, sorrow from thy mind, and put away sadness from thy body. Whenever this book may have been written, we find in it numerous allusions to a state of society which give these words about a future judgment a peculiar meaning and force; for the book depicts a society under a capricious despotism, with all its corruptions and miseries. And as the book reveals this fearful social condition, so, likewise, it gives expression to the temper which grows up in mens minds after a long course of such oppressions--a kind of fatalism and hopelessness which tempts one to yield passively to the current of affairs; to believe that God has ceased to rule, and that order and right have vanished from the world; to snatch at every pleasure; to drown care in sensuality rather than try to maintain an integrity which is sure to be rewarded with personal and social ruin. That kind of temper, if it once gained headway, would affect all classes and ages. In the nobler and better-seasoned characters it would become a proud despair; in vulgar minds a bestial greed, and an untram-melled selilshness; in youth a prompter to unbounded sensuality. You can see, therefore, what a powerful antidote to this temper would be furnished by the truth of a future judgment. One can afford to be cheerful, oven amid oppressions and troubles like these, if the time is short, and a day coming in which wrong shall be righted, and worth acknowledged and fidelity rewarded. The judgment is a fact which confronts us as Christians--a fact emphasized by the words of Christ and of the apostles, and still further emphasized by the relation in which Christ puts Himself to it as the Judge of all men. And the attitude of even our Christian thought towards it is largely that of terror and apprehension. The element of solemnity must, in any case, dominate our thought of the last day. It cannot be other than a serious matter to appear before our Creator, and to give an account of the deeds done in the body. And assuredly it will be a day of wrath to rebels against God and to rejecters of Christ. But, withal, the truth has another side. It is not mere fancy which sees in the Judgment Day a day of consolation as well as of wrath. The Mediator is the Judge, and the blood of sprinkling has taken the terror out of judgment. Why, then, should a man, young or old, have the work or the pleasure peculiar to his age and circumstances clouded by the anticipation of judgment? Why may not the young man lawfully rejoice in his youth, provided he remembers his Creator? The mistake is in divorcing the Creator and Judge from the joy of life; whereas, God is the true joy of life. Whence come the pure pleasures of youth--its hopefulness, its energy, its mirth, its sense of beauty? Do they not come from God? Is He not the Creator of these as well as oil bone and muscle? And if these gifts are recognized as Gods, are they not at once sweetened, and guarded against abuse by that very fact? Christ tells us that one office of the Holy Spirit is to convince of judgment: that is, to show men clearly that all sin deserves and will receive the judgment of God. Is it not, then, a cause of rejoicing that God guards our pleasures against abuse, that He teaches us what true pleasure is, that He sets up a sign marked judgment at the border-line of excess? Is it not a real cause of rejoicing that God restrains us from incurring the judgment of sin? Can that be real pleasure which ends in rebuke and punishment? And, therefore, when we recognize our legitimate pleasures as Gods gift, our joy in them is heightened. We may enjoy without fear. God will not condemn what Himself has ordained and created; and when we look forward to the great judgment, the eternal life beyond, these very pleasures take on a prophetic character. They are foretastes, earnests of something better beyond. The pleasure at His right hand here promises fulness of joy at His right hand for evermore. (M. R. Vincent, D. D.)
Advice to youth
It is in this healthy, bracing tone, it is in these words of manly wisdom, that the Preacher brings to a close the volume of his confessions. His tone has not always been thus bright and hopeful. It has sometimes been melancholy, cynical, sceptical, all but despairing. Bitterness, disappointment, vanity, these had been the burden of his book. But he has learnt by Gods discipline the true wisdom, and he gives you the benefit of his experience. The book is that most touching of all autobiographies, the autobiography of a heart. The Preacher is a layman and an accomplished man of the world. This is no sour moralist of the schools, who condemns the vices go which he has felt no temptation, or who looks askance with an eye of something like half regret at the pleasures on which he frowns or the follies at which he sneers. Nor is he the stern ascetic who can make no allowance for human frailty and bids you crush with hand of iron the uprisings of human passion. Nor, again, is he, on the other hand, merely the sated voluptuary, who has drained the cup of pleasure to the dregs, and who, tired and disgusted with his own excesses, now with enfeebled frame and jaded appetite pronounces the mournful condemnation of his former self. He is the calm, prudent, philosophical man of the world. Such is the man. What is his teaching? What does this wise man, this man of knowledge and experience say, as, looking back at the end of the years, he sees others setting out on the voyage of life? How does he address the young? Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth. This is not, as some would persuade us, the language of cynical scorn. The Preacher does not hold up to you the empty shrivelled mask of the world that he may mock your joy. He does not take off the kingly crown and the robe of pride and show you the grinning deaths head and the ghastly skeleton beneath, and bid you rejoice if you can. He means what He says. There is the full sympathy with youth. He would not teach you else. This is the secret of all true teaching. You can never win others if you are not in sympathy with them. Your words may be wise and weighty; but they will not influence men unless you can make them feel that you and they have something in common. And above all this is true with the young. How often the austere voice of age chills and repels the youthful heart. It has bright visions, golden dreams, a future which seems boundless. It has no patience with your stern maxims and your cold preaching about duty. But go to it as the Preacher goes in this book, go to it with the frank sympathy and the affectionate voice which says, Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth. Be happy in youth, for not to be happy now would be to despise one of Gods best gifts of love. But will you go with him a step further? How would he ensure you this blessed gift of gladness and innocent mirth? How would he keep your heart fresh through all the coming years? By casting over it the shadow of judgment and the fear of God. Walk in the way of thine heart and in the sight of thine eyes, but know that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment. Remove sorrow from thy heart, and put away evil from thy flesh, for (without God) childhood and youth are vanity. Know that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment. Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth. He wants to see you happy. He wants you to put away sorrow from your heart and evil from your flesh. He wants you to spare yourself the misery of a wasted life, of an accusing conscience, of bitter, abiding remorse. That is why he says to you, Know that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment. That is why he bids you remember your Creator. It is not to deny you one innocent pleasure, it is not to make you gloomy, misanthropic, unsociable. It is to lead you to carry everywhere with you the thought of a love which shall be as music in your hearts, whatever labour may be given you and whatever sorrows may darken your path. This is a very simple elementary truth. But is it not a truth that is too much forgotten? Do we not need to make this the fundamental article of the religious teaching of the young? Ought we not to endeavour to stamp upon their hearts that old name of God, Thou God seest me? It is the appeal to the conscience before the conscience has been seared. Will you still say, I am young, let me enjoy myself, there is time enough to think about religion by and by? I know this is a common delusion. I know it is a delusion which is sometimes fostered by pernicious teaching. I do not limit the grace of God. He can change the heart of a sinner as He changed that of Saul of Tarsus, or of the robber on the cross. But such changes are the exception. And they at least had not known the truth and wilfully turned their backs upon the truth. And even if He should give you repentance, how bitter will it be. Think of the evil habits to be overcome. Think by how sharp and painful a process all those thick layers of evil which have gathered upon you must be cut away. How hard it is to begin late in life a habit of prayer, a habit of reading the Scriptures, a habit of self-examination, a habit of self-denial and self-sacrifice. Ii we would have a pure conscience and a strong faith and a clear hope, if we would save ourselves from bitter, bitter tears and a remorse which is agony, we must remember our Creator in the days of our youth. But once more the Preacher enforces his counsel, not only by the thought of judgment to come, but by the melancholy picture of an old age which can find no pleasure in earthly things and has no God to turn to. The Preacher does not threaten you with a short term of years, he does not dwell on the uncertainty of life. He knew well how easy it is to put away such a thought, how ready we all are to admit the possibility in every case but our own. He grants you the fourscore years you expect to reach. And he puts before you the picture of your then self. With that palsied frame, with those decaying faculties, with that impaired vigour, will you serve God better? Or when your whole life has been one long forgetfulness of Him, will you find it pleasant to remember Him? can you change all at once the current of your thoughts and your affections? Remember! How that word checks the heedlessness and thoughtlessness of youth. Remember! And to you that word comes with a sweeter and more solemn sound. You are invited to remember not One only whose power fashioned you, but One whose love redeemed you. (Bp. Perowne.)
A warning to youth
Youths have often been compared to trees in their bloom; but, like beautiful and promising blossoms, they often disappoint the hopes they inspire. It depends upon the principles they imbibe, and the courses they pursue, whether they shall or shall not be blessings to their parents, to their friends, and to their fellow-creatures.
I. The true import of the address to youth in the text.
1. Some suppose that Solomon means to express his approbation of young people in pursuing the innocent recreations and amusements of life. They consider him as representing religion as not only free from austerity and gloominess, but as productive of the purest happiness in the present as well as in the future state. And he often does paint virtue and piety in this amiable and beautiful form (Pro_3:17; Ecc_8:15; Ecc_9:7).
2. This does not appear to be Solomons meaning in the text. He is speaking to a careless, secure, unsanctified youth, who has no fear of God before his eyes. It is therefore beyond a doubt that he means to speak ironically, and to convey an idea directly contrary to what his words literally express. But new those who are in the morning of life may be ready to ask, Why should the wise man give us, in particular, such a solemn warning to live and act under a realizing view of the great and last day? Did he not know that such a view of future and eternal realities would disturb our peace and destroy all our pleasing hopes and prospects? Why did he not make this address to the aged, who have gone through the busy scenes of life, and are just ready to appear before the supreme tribunal of their final Judge?
II. To convince you who are ready to think and speak in this manner, of the propriety of the wise mans address, and of the importance of your living in a constant preparation for your final account, I will suggest the following things to your most serious consideration.
1. Please to reflect upon your hearts, which you have carried about with you, and which you have found to be extremely corrupt and sinful. Can you conceive of any safety in trusting in such hearts, which you have found have so often betrayed, deceived, and well-nigh ruined you? Can you set any bounds to your progress in sinning? Is there any evil or danger to which you are not exposed? Is there not, then, a great propriety in the wise mans addressing you in particular; and in warning you not to walk in the ways of your hearts, which are the ways to certain and endless ruin?
2. Consider that the world in which you live, and through which you have to pass to your long home, is every way calculated to corrupt and destroy you.
(1) The things of the world are full of poison, and perfectly suited to increase and draw forth the native corruption of your hearts.
(2) Worldly employments, as well as worldly objects, are of a dangerous and ensnaring nature to your hearts.
(3) Besides, you are in no less danger from the men of the world than from its business and objects.
(4) Farthermore, the god of the world unites with the men of the world, and all its scenes and objects, to lead you in the broad road to ruin. Do you not need the admonition in the text; and all other friendly admonitions of danger? Can any thought be more proper to lie continually on your minds than your constant exposedness to live and die impenitent?
3. Bear it in your minds that you are now in a state of trial, and forming your characters for eternity.
4. Remember that God not only may, but must, call you to an account for all your conduct in this state of trial.
5. Consider whether your hearts can endure, or your hands be strong, in the day that God shall deal with you.
Improvement:
1. If there be a propriety in the solemn address to youth in the text, then it is very absurd for any to think that young people in particular may be excused for neglecting preparation for their future and eternal state.
2. If there be a propriety in the solemn address to youth in the text, then there is something very beautiful and amiable in becoming religious early in life. Piety adorns all persons who possees it; but it shines with peculiar lustre in youth, because it more clearly appears to be the effect of a change of heart than of a change of circumstances.
3. If there be a propriety in the pathetic address to the youth in the text, then there is a peculiar propriety in young persons remembering the Sabbath day and keeping it holy.
4. If it be proper to give young people such solemn warnings and admonitions as Solomon does in the text, then it must be extremely improper to provide for them and allow them in vain and sinful amusements. If one of these things is right, then the other is wrong.
5. It appears in the view of this subject that the death of young people is a very solemn and interesting event to the living, whether they leave the world prepared or unprepared. (N. Emmons, D. D.)
Youthful pleasures
I. Their authorization. Rejoice, O young man. God desires the happiness of youth, and has made abundant provision for it. Cheerful youth-hood is the condition of a healthy and vigorous manhood.
II. Their moderation. Know thou. Adam in his innocence had a limiting law. God gives vast scope for human action and enjoyment; but not unbounded.
1. He will judge you at the bar of your own experience. The young man who gives full play to his passions, yields himself up to intemperance and self-indulgence, will, by an immutable law, be made to endure, as years roll on, the penalties of his immoderation. God has brought him to judgment.
2. He will judge you at the bar of your own conscience. (Homilist.)
Know thou that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment.--
Remembrance in youth of judgment to come
I. The true interpretation of the text.
1. It has been viewed by some as grave advice: as though its purport were: youth is the time for gaiety within the bound of moderation; a certain decorum attends every age; there is a becoming grace and spirit in the gaiety of youth; let it be indulged only in consistency with the remembrance of God and judgment.
2. But to this interpretation it is objected by others that the terms used are too broad to allow of this passage being applied in such a serious meaning. The language in the former part of the sentence is merely ironical.
II. Enforce and illustrate this solemn warning. The heart of youth, if it goes in its own way, must go in a way full of moral disorder. Even if disgrace before men is escaped, there will be infinity of evil before God: neglect of God, of prayer, of self-examination, of Scripture. So much ingratitude and apostasy is there in neglect of God that a day of judgment is appointed for its punishment, With respect to this judgment, remember--
1. Its extent. All these things are involved in it.
2. The character of the Judge.
3. The severity of this judgment.
4. This judgment will be final and ultimate.
5. Its certainty, God will bring thee into judgment.
Heaven and earth may pass away, and shall; but not a word of God can fail. As sure as death is appointed unto all, is judgment also. (R. Hall, M. A.)
The judgment to come
I. The judgment to come is certain, and cannot be avoided. The very heathens had some notices of it; and the consciences of mankind in general forespeak it (Psa_73:1-28.). And the scriptures of truth clearly and fully confirm the certainty of the future judgment.
II. The judgment to come is a just, strict, and impartial judgment.
III. The consequences of that judgment are most important and eternal. They are either life, or death; unutterable joy and blessedness, and that not for a year, an age, or but a few ages, but for ever and ever.
IV. This awful judgment will quickly come. You may put the evil day far from your thoughts, or look upon it as at a vast distance; but it wilt quickly overtake you, and may come upon you before you are aware. There will then be an eternal entire end of all your sinful pleasing vanities; but not an end, happy would it be for you if there were, of your bitter remembrances of them; of your stinging reflections upon them, and of your overwhelming sufferings for them; these will stick close by you, and abide for ever with you. (J. Guyse, D. D.)
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The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain Ecc 11:9; Ecc 12:1.
Ecclesiastes
A NEW YEARS SERMON TO THE YOUNG
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Ecc 11:9; Ecc 12:1.
This strange, and in some places perplexing Book of Ecclesiastes, is intended to be the picture of a man fighting his way through perplexities and half-truths to a clear conviction in which he can rest. What he says in his process of coming to that conviction is not always to be taken as true. Much that is spoken in the earlier portion of the Book is spoken in order to be confuted, and its insufficiency, its exaggerations, its onesidedness, and its half-truths, to be manifest in the light of the ultimate conclusion to which he comes. Through all these perplexities he goes on ‘sounding his dim and perilous way,’ with pitfalls on this side of him and bogs on that, till he comes out at last upon the open way, with firm ground under foot and a clear sky overhead. These phrases which I have taken are the opening sentences and the final conclusion on which he rests. How then are they meant to be understood? Is that saying, ‘Rejoice, O young man! in the days of thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart and in the sight of thine eyes,’ to be taken as a bit of fierce irony? Is this a man taking the maxims of the foolish world about him and seeming to approve of them in order that he may face round at the end with a quick turn and a cynical face and hand them back their maxims along with that which will shatter them to pieces-as if he said, ‘Oh, yes! go on, talk your fill about making the best of this world, and rejoicing and doing as you like, dancing on the edge of a precipice, and fiddling, like Nero, whilst a worse fire than that of Rome is burning’? Well, I do not think that is the meaning of it. Though there is irony to be found in the Bible, I do not think that fierce irony like that which might do for the like of Dean Swift, is the intention of the Preacher. So I take these words to be said in good faith, as a frank recognition of the fact that, after all we have been hearing about vanity and vexation of spirit, life is worth living for, and that God means young people to be glad and to make the best of the fleeting years that will never come back with the same buoyancy and elasticity all their lives long. And then I take it that the words added are not meant to destroy or neutralise the concession of the first sentence, but only to purify and ennoble a gladness which, without them, would be apt to be stained by many a corruption, and to make permanent a joy which, without them, would be sure to die down into the miserable, peevish, and feeble old age of which the grim picture follows, and to be quenched at last in death. So there are three words that I take out of this text of mine, and that I want to bring before my young friends as exhortations which it is wise to follow. These are Rejoice, Reflect, Remember. Rejoice-the fitting gladness of youth; reflect-the solemn thought that will guard the gladness from stain; remember-the religion which will make these things ever last.
First of all ‘Rejoice.’ Do as you like, for that is the English translation of the words, ‘Walk in the ways of thine heart and in the sight of thine eyes.’ Buoyantly and cheerfully follow the inclinations and the desires which are stamped upon your nature and belong to your time of life. All young things are joyful, from the lamb in the pastures upwards, and are meant to be so. The mere bounding sense of physical strength which leads so many of you young men astray is a good thing and a blessed thing-a blessing to be thankful for and to cherish. Your smooth cheeks, so unlike those of old age, are only an emblem of the comparative freedom from care which belongs to your happy condition. Your memories are not yet like some-a book written within and without with the records of mourning and disappointment and crosses. There are in all probability long years stretching before you, instead of a narrow strip of barren sand, before you come to the great salt sea that is going to swallow you up, as is the case with some of us. Christianity looks with complacency on your gladness, and does not mean to clip the wing of one white-winged pleasure, or to breathe one glimmer of blackness on your atmosphere. You are meant to be glad, but it is gladness in a far higher sense that I want to secure for you, or rather to make you secure for yourselves. God delights in the prosperity and light-hearted buoyancy of His children, especially of His young children. Ah! but I know there are young lives over which poverty or ill-health or sorrows of one kind or another have cast a gloom as incongruous to your time of life as snow in the garden in the spring, that pinches the crocuses and weighs down young green beech-leaves, would be. And if I am speaking to any young man or young woman at this time who by reason of painful outward circumstances has had but a chilling spring and youth, I would say to them, ‘don’t lose heart’; a cloudy morning often breaks into a perfect day. It is good for a man to have to ‘bear the yoke in his youth,’ and if you miss joy, you may get grace and strength and patience, which will be a blessing to you all your days. For all that, the ordinary course of things is that the young should be glad, and that the young life should be as the rippling brook in the sunshine. I want to leave upon your minds this impression, that it is all right and all in the order of God’s providence, who means every one of you to rejoice in the days of your youth. The text says further, ‘Walk in the ways of thine heart.’ That sounds very like the unwholesome teaching, ‘Follow nature; do as you like; let passions and tastes and inclinations be your guides.’
Well, that needs to be set round with a good many guards to prevent it becoming a doctrine of devils. But for all that, I wish you to notice that that has a great and a religious side to it. You have come into possession of this mystical life of yours, a possession which requires that you must choose what kind of life you will follow. Every one has this awful prerogative of being able to walk in the way of their heart. You have to answer for the kind of way that is, and the kind of heart out of which it has come. But I want to go to more important things, and so with a clear understanding that the joy of youth is all right and legitimate, that you are intended to be glad, and to feel the physical and intellectual spring and buoyancy of early days, let us go on to the next thing. ‘Rejoice,’ says my text, and it adds, ‘Reflect.’ It is one of the blessings of your time of life, my young friends, that you do not do much of that. It is one of your happy immunities that you are not yet in the habit of looking at life as a whole, and considering actions and consequences. Keep that spontaneity as long as you can; it is a good thing to keep. But for all that, do not forget this awful thing, that it may turn to exaggeration and excess, and that it needs, like all other good things, to be guarded and rightly used. And so, ‘Rejoice,’ and ‘walk in the sight of thine eyes’; but-’know that for all these things God will bring thee to judgment.’ Well, now, is that thought to come in {I was going to say, like a mourning-coach driven through a wedding procession} to kill the joys we have been seeming to receive from the former words? Are we taking back all that we have been giving, and giving out instead something that will make them all cower and be quiet, like the singing birds that stop their singing and hide in the leaves when they see the kite in the sky? No, there is no need for anything of the sort. ‘For all these things God will bring thee to judgment’: that is not the thought that kills, but that purifies and ennobles. Regard being had to the opinions expressed at various points in the earlier portion of this Book, we may be allowed to think of this testimony as having reference to the perpetual judgment that is going on in this world always over every man’s life. A great German thinker has it, in reference to the history of nations, that the history of the world is the judgment of the world, and although that is not true if it is a denial of a physical day of judgment, it is true in a very profound and solemn sense with regard to the daily life of every man, that whether there be a judgment-seat beyond the grave or not, and whether this Preacher knew anything about that or no, there is going on through the whole of a man’s life, and evolving itself, this solemn conviction, that we are to pass away from this present life. All our days are knit together as one whole. Yesterday is the parent of today, and today is the parent of all the tomorrows. The meaning and the deepest consequence of man’s life is that no feeling, no thought that flits across the mirror of his life and heart dies utterly, leaving nothing behind it. But rather the metaphor of the Apostle is the true one, ‘That which thou sowest, that shalt thou also reap.’ All your life a seed-time, all your life a harvest-time too, for the seed which I sow today is the seed which I have reaped from all my former sowings, and so cause and consequence go rolling on in life in extricable entanglement, issuing out in this, that whatever a man does lives on in him, and that each moment inherits the whole consequence of his former life. And now, you young men and women, you boys and girls, mind! this seed-time is the one that will be most powerful in your lives, and there is a judgment you do not need to die to meet. If you are idle at school, you will never learn Latin when you go to business. If you are frivolous in your youth, if you stain your souls and soil your lives by outward coarse sin here in Manchester in your young days, there will be a taint about you all your lives. You cannot get rid of that brave law that ‘Whatever a man sows, that, thirtyfold, sixtyfold, an hundredfold, that shall he also reap’-the same kind, but infinitely multiplied in quantity. Let me therefore name some of the ways in which your joys or pleasures, as lads, as boys and girls, as growing young men and women, will bring you to judgment. Health, that is one; position, that is two; reputation, that is three; character, that is four. Did you ever see them build one of those houses they make in some parts of the country, with concrete instead of stones? Take a spadeful of the mud, and put it into a frame on the wall. When it is dry, take away the frame and the supports, and it hardens into rock. You take your single deeds-the mud sometimes, young men!-pop them on the wall, and think no more about it. Ay, but they stop there and harden there, and lo! a character-a house for your soul to live in-health, position, memory, capacity, and all that. If you have not done certain things which you ought to have done, you will never be able to do them, and there are the materials for a judgment. That is going on every moment, and especially is it going on in the region of your pleasures. If they are unworthy, you are unworthy; if they are gross, and coarse, and low, and animal, they are dragging you down; if they are frivolous and foolish, they are making you a poor butterfly of a creature that is worth nothing and will be of no good to anybody; if they are pure, and chaste, and lofty, and virginal and white, they will make your souls good and gracious and tender with the tenderness and beauty of God.
But that is not all. I am not going to travel beyond the limits of this present life with any words of mine, but as I read this final conclusion in this Book of Ecclesiastes, I think I can perceive that the doubts and the scepticisms about a future life, and the difference between a man and a beast which are spoken of in the earlier chapters, have all been overcome, and the clear conviction of the writer is expressed in these twofold great sayings: ‘The spirit shall return unto God who gave it, and the words with which He stamps all His message upon our hearts, the final words of His book’; ‘God shall bring every work into judgment with every secret thing.’ And I come to you and say, ‘I suppose you believe in a state of retribution beyond?’ I suppose that most of the young folk I am speaking to now at all events believe that ‘Thou wilt come to be our judge,’ as the Te Deum has it; and that it is this same personal self of mine that is to stand there who is sitting here? God shall bring thee into judgment. Never mind what is to come of the body, the quivering, palpitating, personal centre. The very same self that I know myself to be will be carried there. Now, take that with you and lay it to heart, and let it have a bearing on your pleasure. It will kill nothing that deserves to live, it will take no real joy out of a man’s life. It will only strain out the poison that would kill you. You turn that thought upon your heart, my friends. Is it like a policeman’s bull’s-eye turned upon a lot of bad characters hiding under a railway arch in the corner there? If so, the sooner you get rid of the pleasures and inclinations that slink away when that beam of light strikes their ugly faces, the better for yourselves and for your lives. ‘Rejoice in the way of thine heart and, that thy joy may be pure, know that for all this God will bring thee into judgment.’
And now my last word, ‘Remember God,’ says my text. The former two sayings, if taken by themselves, would make a very imperfect guide to life. Self-indulgence regulated by the thought of retribution is a very low kind of life after all. There is something better in this world, and that is work; something higher, and that is duty; something nobler than self-indulgence, and that is self-sacrifice. And so no religion worthy the name contents itself by saying to a man, ‘Be good and you will be glad’; but, ‘Never mind whether you are glad; be good at any rate, and such gladness as is good for you will come to you, and you can want the rest.’ ‘Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth.’ Recall God to your thoughts, and keep Him in your mind all the day long. That is wonderfully unlike your life, is it not? Remember thy Creator; shift the centre of your life. What I have been saying might be true of a man, the centre of whose life was himself, and such a man is next door to a devil, for, I suppose, the definition of devil is ‘self-engrossed still,’ and whosoever lives for himself is dead. Don’t let the earth be the centre of your system, but the sun. Do not live to yourselves, or your pleasures will all be ignoble and creeping, but live to God. ‘Remember.’ Well, then, you and I know a good deal more about God than the writer of the Book of Ecclesiastes did-both about what He is and how to remember Him. I am not going to content myself by taking his point of view, but I must take a far higher and a far better one. If he had been here he would have said ‘Remember God.’ He would have said, ‘Look at God in Jesus Christ, and trust Him and love Him; go to Him as your Saviour, and take all the burden of your past sin and lay it upon His merciful shoulders, and for His dear sake look for forgiveness and cleansing; and then for His dear sake live to serve and bless Him. Never mind about yourself, and do not think much about your gladness. Follow in the footsteps of Him who has shown us that the highest joy is to give oneself utterly away. Love Jesus Christ and trust Him and serve Him, and that will make all your gladness permanent.’ There is one thing I want to teach you. Look at that description, or rather read when you go home the description which follows my text, of that wretched old man who has got no hope in God and no joy, feeble in body, going down to the grave, and dying out at last. That is what rejoicing in the days of thy youth, and walking in the ways of thine own heart, come to when you do not remember God. There is nothing more miserable on the face of this earth than an ill-conditioned old man, who is ill-conditioned because he has lost his early joys and early strength, and has got nothing to make up for them. How many of your joys, my dear young friends, will last when old age comes to you? How many of them will survive when your eye is no longer bright, and your hand no longer strong, and your foot no longer fleet? How many of them, young woman! when the light is out of your eye, and the beauty and freshness out of your face and figure, when you are no longer able for parties, when it is no longer a pastime to read novels, and when the ballroom is not exactly the place for you,-how many of your pleasures will survive? Young man! how many of yours will last when you can no longer go into dissipation, and stomach and system will no longer stand fast living, nor athletics, and the like? Oh! let me beseech thee, go to the ant and consider her ways, who in the summer layeth up for the winter; and do ye likewise in the days of your youth, store up for yourselves that which knows no change and laughs at the decay of flesh and sense. A thousand motives coincide and press on my memory if I had words and time to speak them. Let me beseech you-especially you young men and women of this congregation, of some of whom I may venture to speak as a father to his children, whom I have seen growing up, as it were, from your mothers’ arms, and the rest of you whom I do not know so well-Oh! carry away with you this beseeching entreaty of mine at the end. Love Jesus Christ and trust to Him as your Saviour; serve Him as your Captain and your King in the days of your youth. Do not offer Him the fag end of a life-the last inch of the candle that is burning down into the socket. Do it now, for the moments are flying, and you may never have Him offered to you any more. If there is any softening, any touch of conscience in your heart, yield to the impulse and do not stifle it. Take Christ for your Saviour, take Him now-’Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 Take joy, young man, in your youth, and let…
Take joy, young man, in your youth, and let your heart be joyful in the days of your youth
These two phrases mean basically the same thing and are combined to emphasize that the man should be happy while he is young. (See: Parallelism)
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let your heart be joyful
Here the word "heart" represents the emotions. AT: "be joyful" (See: Metonymy)
Pursue the good desires of your heart
Here the word "heart" may represent the mind or emotions. AT: "Pursue the good things that you desire" or "Pursue the good things that you have determined to pursue" (See: Metonymy)
whatever is within the sight of your eyes
Here "eyes" represent the whole person. AT: "whatever you see that you desire" or "whatever you see to be best" (See: Synecdoche)
God will bring you into judgment for all these things
The abstract noun "judgment" can be stated as "judge" or "make you account" AT: "God will judge you for all these things" or "God will make you account for all of your actions" (See: Abstract Nouns)
Drive anger away from your heart
Refusing to be angry is spoken of as if anger were something that can be forced away. Also, "heart" represents a person's emotions. AT: "Refuse to be angry" (See: Metaphorand Metonymy)
because youth and its strength are vapor
The authors speaks of things as being useless and meaningless as if they were "vapor" Just as vapor disappears and does not last, the author speaks of things having no lasting value. See how you translated "vapor" in Ecclesiastes 1:14. AT: "because youth and its strength will not last forever" or "because you will not be young and strong forever" (See: Metaphor)
translationWords
joy
heart
know
God
judge
anger
strength
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 11:9 Young people are encouraged to enjoy their youth…
11:9 Young people are encouraged to enjoy their youth to the fullest. They should also remember that they will give an account to God and should therefore avoid foolish behavior.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.