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;”
Parallel Translations
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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;”
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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;
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Remember then thy Creator in the days of thy youth, before the evil days come, and the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say: 'I have no pleasure in them';
Cross-references (34)
Passages linked to Ecclesiastes 12:1 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Lamentations 3:27 It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.
- Ecclesiastes 11:8 Yes, if a man lives many years, let him rejoice in them all; but let him remember the days of darkness, for they shall be many. All that comes is vanity.
- Psalms 71:17-18 God, you have taught me from my youth. Until now, I have declared your wondrous works. Yes, even when I am old and gray-haired, God, don’t forsake me, until I have declared your strength to the next generation, your might to everyone who is to come.
- Proverbs 22:6 Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.
- Luke 18:16 Jesus summoned them, saying, “Allow the little children to come to me, and don’t hinder them, for God’s Kingdom belongs to such as these.
- Psalms 34:11 Come, you children, listen to me. I will teach you the fear of Yahweh.
- 2 Timothy 3:15 From infancy, you have known the holy Scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus.
- 1 Samuel 16:12-13 He sent, and brought him in. Now he was ruddy, with a handsome face and good appearance. Yahweh said, “Arise! Anoint him, for this is he.” Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the middle of his brothers. Then Yahweh’s Spirit came mightily on David from that day forward. So Samuel rose up and went to Ramah.
- Psalms 90:10 The days of our years are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty years; yet their pride is but labor and sorrow, for it passes quickly, and we fly away.
- Ecclesiastes 11:10 Therefore remove sorrow from your heart, and put away evil from your flesh; for youth and the dawn of life are vanity.
- Luke 2:40-52 The child was growing, and was becoming strong in spirit, being filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him. His parents went every year to Jerusalem at the feast of the Passover. When he was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem according to the custom of the feast, and when they had fulfilled the days, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. Joseph and his mother didn’t know it, but supposing him to be in the company, they went a day’s journey, and they looked for him among their relatives and acquaintances. When they didn’t find him, they returned to Jerusalem, looking for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the middle of the teachers, both listening to them, and asking them questions. All who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. When they saw him, they were astonished, and his mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us this way? Behold, your father and I were anxiously looking for you.” He said to them, “Why were you looking for me? Didn’t you know that I must be in my Father’s house?” They didn’t understand the saying which he spoke to them. And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth. He was subject to them, and his mother kept all these sayings in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.
- 2 Samuel 19:35 I am eighty years old, today. Can I discern between good and bad? Can your servant taste what I eat or what I drink? Can I hear the voice of singing men and singing women any more? Why then should your servant be a burden to my lord the king?
- 2 Chronicles 34:2-3 He did that which was right in Yahweh’s eyes, and walked in the ways of David his father, and didn’t turn away to the right hand or to the left. For in the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet young, he began to seek after the God of David his father; and in the twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem from the high places, the Asherah poles, the engraved images, and the molten images.
- Proverbs 8:17 I love those who love me. Those who seek me diligently will find me.
- Psalms 22:9-10 But you brought me out of the womb. You made me trust while at my mother’s breasts. I was thrown on you from my mother’s womb. You are my God since my mother bore me.
- Genesis 39:2 Yahweh was with Joseph, and he was a prosperous man. He was in the house of his master the Egyptian.
- Genesis 39:8-9 But he refused, and said to his master’s wife, “Behold, my master doesn’t know what is with me in the house, and he has put all that he has into my hand. No one is greater in this house than I am, and he has not kept back anything from me but you, because you are his wife. How then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?”
- 1 Samuel 2:26 The child Samuel grew on, and increased in favor both with Yahweh and also with men.
- 1 Samuel 3:19-21 Samuel grew, and Yahweh was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground. All Israel from Dan even to Beersheba knew that Samuel was established to be a prophet of Yahweh. Yahweh appeared again in Shiloh; for Yahweh revealed himself to Samuel in Shiloh by Yahweh’s word.
- 1 Samuel 16:7 But Yahweh said to Samuel, “Don’t look on his face, or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for I don’t see as man sees. For man looks at the outward appearance, but Yahweh looks at the heart.”
- Genesis 39:23 The keeper of the prison didn’t look after anything that was under his hand, because Yahweh was with him; and that which he did, Yahweh made it prosper.
- Isaiah 26:8 Yes, in the way of your judgments, Yahweh, we have waited for you. Your name and your renown are the desire of our soul.
- Daniel 1:8-9 But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the king’s dainties, nor with the wine which he drank. Therefore he requested of the prince of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself. Now God made Daniel find kindness and compassion in the sight of the prince of the eunuchs.
- Daniel 1:17 Now as for these four youths, God gave them knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom; and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams.
- Luke 1:15 For he will be great in the sight of the Lord, and he will drink no wine nor strong drink. He will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb.
- Ephesians 6:4 You fathers, don’t provoke your children to wrath, but nurture them in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
- 1 Samuel 2:18 But Samuel ministered before Yahweh, being a child, clothed with a linen ephod.
- 1 Kings 3:6-12 Solomon said, “You have shown to your servant David my father great loving kindness, because he walked before you in truth, in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart with you. You have kept for him this great loving kindness, that you have given him a son to sit on his throne, as it is today. Now, Yahweh my God, you have made your servant king instead of David my father. I am just a little child. I don’t know how to go out or come in. Your servant is among your people which you have chosen, a great people, that can’t be numbered or counted for multitude. Give your servant therefore an understanding heart to judge your people, that I may discern between good and evil; for who is able to judge this great people of yours?” This request pleased the Lord, that Solomon had asked this thing. God said to him, “Because you have asked this thing, and have not asked for yourself long life, nor have you asked for riches for yourself, nor have you asked for the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern justice; behold, I have done according to your word. Behold, I have given you a wise and understanding heart; so that there has been no one like you before you, and after you none will arise like you.
- 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 Samuel 1:28 Therefore I have also given him to Yahweh. As long as he lives he is given to Yahweh.” He worshiped Yahweh there.
- 1 Samuel 17:36-37 Your servant struck both the lion and the bear. This uncircumcised Philistine shall be as one of them, since he has defied the armies of the living God.” David said, “Yahweh who delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear, he will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine.” Saul said to David, “Go! Yahweh will be with you.”
- Job 30:2 Of what use is the strength of their hands to me, men in whom ripe age has perished?
- Hosea 7:9 Strangers have devoured his strength, and he doesn’t realize it. Indeed, gray hairs are here and there on him, and he doesn’t realize it.
- 1 Kings 14:13 All Israel will mourn for him and bury him; for he only of Jeroboam will come to the grave, because in him there is found some good thing toward Yahweh, the God of Israel, in the house of Jeroboam.
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John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Ecc 12:1 Remember now thy Creator in the days…
Ecc 12:1 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;
Ver. 1. Remember now thy Creator.] Heb., Creators - scil., Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, called by Elihu, Eloa Gnosia, "God my makers," {Job 35:10} and by David, the "Makers of Israel." {Psa 149:2} So Isa 54:5, "Thy makers is thine husbands." "Let us make man"; {Gen 1:26} and, {Gen 1:1} Dii creavit. Those three in one, and one in three, made all things; but man he made "fearfully and wonderfully"; {Psa 139:14} the Father did it; {Eph 3:9} the Son; {Heb 1:8; Heb 1:10 Col 1:16} the Holy Ghost. {Psa 33:6; Psa 104:30 Job 36:13; Job 33:4} To the making of man a council was called. {Gen 1:29} Sun, moon, and stars are but the "work of his fingers"; {Psa 8:3} but man is the "work of his hands." {Psa 139:14} "Thine hands have made me," or took special pains about me, "and fashioned me," saith Job. {Job 10:8} Thou hast formed me by the book, saith David. {Psa 139:16} Hence the whole Church so celebrates this great work with crowns cast down at the Creator’s feet. {Rev 4:10-11} And hence young men also, who are mostly most mindless of anything serious, for childhood and youth are vanity, are here charged to remember their Creator - that is, as dying David taught his young son Solomon, to know, love, and "serve him, with a perfect heart, and a willing mind," {1Ch 28:9} for words of knowledge in Scripture imply affection and practice. Tam Dei meminisse opus est quam respirare, To remember God is every whit as needful as to draw breath, since it is he that gave us being at first, and that still gives us ζωην και πνοην, "life and breath." {Act 17:25} "Let everything therefore that hath breath, praise the Lord," even so long as it hath breath; yea, let it spend and exhale itself in continual sallies, as it were, and egressions of affection unto God, till it hath gotten, not only a union, but a unity with him. Of all things, God cannot endure to be forgotten.
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In the days of thy youth,] Augustus began his speech to his mutinous soldiers with Audite senem, iuvenes, quem iuvenem senes audierunt, You that are young hear me that am old, whom old men were content to hear when I was but young. And Augustine beginneth one of his sermons thus, Ad vos mihi sermo, O iuvenes, flos aetatis, periculum mentis, To you is my speech, O young men, the flower of age, the danger of the mind. To keep them from danger, and direct them to their duty, it is that the Preacher here exhorts them to remember God betimes, to gather manna in the morning of their lives, to present the firstfruits to God, whose "soul hath desired the first ripe fruits," {Mic 7:1} and who will "remember the kindness of their youth, the love of their espousals." {Jer 2:2} God of old would be honoured with the firstlings of men and cattle, by the firstfruits of trees, and of the earth, in the sheaf, in the threshingfloor, in the dough, in the loaves. He called for ears of corn dried by the fire, and wheat beaten out of the green ears, {Lev 2:14} to teach men to serve him with the primrose of their childhood. Three sorts there were of firstfruits: First, Of the ears of grain offered about the passover; secondly, Of the loaves offered about pentecost; lastly, About the end of the year, in autumn. Now of the first two God had a part, but not of the last. He made choice of the almond tree, {Jer 1:11} because it blossometh first; so of Jeremiah from his infancy, Timothy from his mother’s breasts, &c. He likes not of those arbores autumnales autumnal trees {Jdg 1:13} which bud at latter end of harvest. He cares not for such loiterers as come halting in at last cast to serve God, when they can serve their lusts no longer. The Circassians, a kind of mongrel Christians, are said {a} to divide their life between sin and devotion - dedicating their youth to rapine, and their old age to repentance. "But cursed be that deceiver," saith the prophet, "that hath a male in his flock, and yet offereth to the Lord a corrupt thing." {Mal 1:14} Wilt thou give God the dregs, the bottom, the snuffs, the very last sands, thy dotage, which thyself and friends are weary of? Shall thine oil, which should have been fuel for thy thankfulness, increase the fire of thy lusts, and thy lusts consume all? {Jas 4:3} How much better were it to sacrifice early, with Abraham, the young Isaacs of thine age? to bring as he did young rams unto the Lord, and even, while thou art yet a lad, a stripling, to "take heed to thy ways according to God’s Word." {Psa 119:9} Ye shall not see my face, saith Christ, as once Joseph, except you bring your younger brother with you.
While the evil days come not,] viz., Of old age and misery; for these are seldom separated. Senectus, ut Africa, semper aliquid novi adportat, As Africa is never without some monster, so neither is old age ever without some ailment. Multa senem circumveniunt incommoda, {b} Many are the inconveniences that do encompass an old man. Solet senectus esse deformis, infirma, obliviosa, edentula, lucrosa, indocilis, et molesta, saith Cato in Plutarch, {c} Old age useth to be deformed, weak, forgetful, toothless, covetous, unteachable, unquiet. Now shall any man be so besotted and bewitched as to make that the task of his old age which should be the trade of his whole life? and to settle his everlasting only surest making or marring upon so sinking and sandy a foundation? A ship, the longer it leaks, the harder it is to be emptied; a land, the longer it lies, the harder it is to be ploughed; a nail, the further it is driven in, with the greater difficulty it is pulled out. And shall any man think that the trembling joints, the dazzled eyes, the fainting heart, the failing hands, the feeble legs of strengthless, drooping, untractable, wayward, froward old age can break up the fallow ground, can ever empty and pluck out the leaks and nails of so many years flowing and fastening?
{a} Breerwood’s Inquiry, 135.
{b} Horat.
{c} Plut. in Apoph. Rom.
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 Remember, to wit, practically, or so as to fear,…
Remember, to wit, practically, or so as to fear, and love, and faithfully serve and worship him, which when men do not they are said to forget God, Psa 9:17; 106:21, and in many other places.
Thy Creator; the first author and continual preserver of thy life and being, and of all the perfections and enjoyments which accompany it, to whom thou hast the highest and strongest obligations to do so, and upon whom thou hast a constant and necessary dependence, and therefore to forget him is most unnatural, and inhuman, and disingenuous.
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In the days of thy youth; for then thou art most able to do it, and thou owest the best of thy time and strength to God; then thou hast opportunity to do it, and thou mayst not live to old age; then it will be most acceptable to God, and most comfortable to thyself, as the best evidence of thy sincerity, and the best provision for old age and death; and then it is most necessary for the conquering those impetuous lusts and passions which drown so many thousands of young men in perdition, both in this life and in that to come.
The evil days; the time of old age, which is evil, i.e. burdensome and calamitous in itself, and far more grievous and terrible when it is loaded with the sad remembrance of a man’s youthful follies and lusts, and with the dreadful prospect of approaching death and judgment, which makes him see that he cannot live, and yet dare not die, and with the consideration and experience of the hardness of his heart, which in that age is rarely brought to true repentance, and so generally expires either in vain presumption, or in hellish desperation.
I have no pleasure in them; my life is now bitter and burdensome to me, and worse than death; which is frequently the condition of old age.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain Here is, I. A call to young people to…
Here is, I. A call to young people to think of God, and mind their duty to him, when they are young: Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth. This is, 1. The royal preacher's application of his sermon concerning the vanity of the world and every thing in it. "You that are young flatter yourselves with expectations of great things from it, but believe those that have tried it; it yields no solid satisfaction to a soul; therefore, that you may not be deceived by this vanity, nor too much disturbed by it, remember your Creator, and so guard yourselves against the mischiefs that arise from the vanity of the creature." 2. It is the royal physician's antidote against the particular diseases of youth, the love of mirth, and the indulgence of sensual pleasures, the vanity which childhood and youth are subject to; to prevent and cure this, remember thy Creator. Here is, (1.) A great duty pressed upon us, to remember God as our creator, not only to remember that God is our Creator, that he made us and not we ourselves, and is therefore our rightful Lord and owner, but we must engage ourselves to him with the considerations which his being our Creator lay us under, and pay him the honour and duty which we owe him as our Creator. Remember thy Creators; the word is plural, as it is Job 35:10, Where is God my Makers? For God said, Let us make man, us, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. (2.) The proper season for this duty - in the days of thy youth, the days of thy choice (so some), thy choice days, thy choosing days. "Begin in the beginning of thy days to remember him from whom thou hadst thy being, and go on according to that good beginning. Call him to mind when thou art young, and keep him in mind throughout all the days of thy youth, and never forget him. Guard thus against the temptations of youth, and thus improve the advantages of it."
II. A reason to enforce this command: While the evil days come not, and the years of which thou shalt say I have no pleasure in them.
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1. Do it quickly, (1.) "Before sickness and death come. Do it while thou livest, for it will be too late to do it when death has removed thee from this state of trial and probation to that of recompence and retribution." The days of sickness and death are the days of evil, terrible to nature, evil days indeed to those that have forgotten their Creator. These evil days will come sooner or later; as yet they come not, for God is long-suffering to us-ward, and gives us space to repent; the continuing of life is but the deferring of death, and, while life is continued and death deferred, it concerns us to prepare, and get the property of death altered, that we may die comfortably. (2.) Before old age comes, which, if death prevent not, will come, and they will be years of which we shall say, We have no pleasure in them, - when we shall not relish the delights of sense, as Barzillai (Sa2 19:35), - when we shall be loaded with bodily infirmities, old and blind, or old and lame, - when we shall be taken off from our usefulness, and our strength shall be labour and sorrow, - when we shall either have parted with our relations, and all our old friends, or be afflicted in them and see them weary of us, - when we shall feel ourselves die by inches. These years draw nigh, when all that comes will be vanity, the remaining months all months of vanity, and there will be no pleasure but in the reflection of a good life on earth and the expectation of a better life in heaven.
2. These two arguments he enlarges upon in the following verses, only inverting the order, and shows,
(1.) How many are the calamities of old age, and that if we should live to be old, our days will be such as we shall have no pleasure in, which is a good reason why we should return to God, and make our peace with him, in the days of our youth, and not put it off till we come to be old; for it will be no thanks to us to leave the pleasures of sin when they have left us, nor to return to God when need forces us. It is the greatest absurdity and ingratitude imaginable to give the cream and flower of our days to the devil, and reserve the bran, and refuse, and dregs of them for God; this is offering the torn, and the lame, and the sick for sacrifice; and, besides, old age being thus clogged with infirmities, it is the greatest folly imaginable to put off that needful work till then, which requires the best of our strength, when our faculties are in their prime, and especially to make the work more difficult by a longer continuance in sin, and, laying up treasures of guilt in the conscience, to add to the burdens of age and make them much heavier. If the calamities of age will be such as are here represented, we shall have need of something to support and comfort us then, and nothing will be more effectual to do that than the testimony of our consciences for us that we begin betimes to remember our Creator and have not since laid aside the remembrance of him. How can we expect God should help us when we are old, if we will not serve him when we are young? See Psa 71:17, Psa 71:18.
[1.] The decays and infirmities of old age are here elegantly described in figurative expressions, which have some difficulty in them to us now, who are not acquainted with the common phrases and metaphors used in Solomon's age and language; but the general scope is plain - to show how uncomfortable, generally, the days of old age are. First, Then the sun and the light of it, the moon and the stars, and the light which they borrow from it, will be darkened. They look dim to old people, in consequence of the decay of their sight; their countenance is clouded, and the beauty and lustre of it are eclipsed; their intellectual powers and faculties, which are as lights in the soul, are weakened; their understanding and memory fail them, and their apprehension is not so quick nor their fancy so lively as it has been; the days of their mirth are over (light is often put for joy and prosperity) and they have not the pleasure either of the converse of the day or the repose of the night, for both the sun and the moon are darkened to them. Secondly, Then the clouds return after the rain; as, when the weather is disposed to wet, no sooner has one cloud blown over than another succeeds it, so it is with old people, when they have got free from one pain or ailment, they are seized with another, so that their distempers are like a continual dropping in a very rainy day. The end of one trouble is, in this world, but the beginning of another, and deep calls unto deep. Old people are often afflicted with defluxions of rheum, like soaking rain, after which still more clouds return, feeding the humour, so that it is continually grievous, and therein the body, as it were, melts away. Thirdly, Then the keepers of the house tremble. The head, which is as the watch-tower, shakes, and the arms and hands, which are ready for the preservation of the body, shake too, and grow feeble, upon every sudden approach and attack of danger. That vigour of the animal spirits which used to be exerted for self-defence fails and cannot do its office; old people are easily dispirited and discouraged. Fourthly, Then the strong men shall bow themselves; the legs and thighs, which used to support the body, and bear its weight, bend, and cannot serve for travelling as they have done, but are soon tired. Old men that have been in their time strong men become weak and stoop for age, Zac 8:4. God takes no pleasure in the legs of a man (Psa 147:10), for their strength will soon fail; but in the Lord Jehovah there is everlasting strength; he has everlasting arms. Fifthly, Then the grinders cease because they are few; the teeth, with which we grind our meat and prepare it for concoction, cease to do their part, because they are few. They are rotted and broken, and perhaps have been drawn because they ached. Some old people have lost all their teeth, and others have but few left; and this infirmity is the more considerable because the meat, not being well chewed, for want of teeth, is not well digested, which has as much influence as any thing upon the other decays of age. Sixthly, Those that look out of the windows are darkened; the eyes wax dim, as Isaac's (Gen 27:1), and Ahijah's, Kg1 14:4. Moses was a rare instance of one who, when 120 years old, had good eye-sight, but ordinarily the sight decays in old people as soon as any thing, and it is a mercy to them that art helps nature with spectacles. We have need to improve our sight well while we have it, because the light of the eyes may be gone before the light of life. Seventhly, The doors are shut in the streets. Old people keep within doors, and care not for going abroad to entertainments. The lips, the doors of the mouth, are shut in eating, because the teeth are gone and the sound of the grinding with them is low, so that they have not that command of their meat in their mouths which they used to have; they cannot digest their meat, and therefore little grist is brought to the mill. Eightly, Old people rise up at the voice of the bird. They have no sound sleep as young people have, but a little thing disturbs them, even the chirping of a bird; they cannot rest for coughing, and therefore rise up at cock-crowing, as soon as any body is stirring; or they are apt to be jealous, and timorous, and full of care, which breaks their sleep and makes them rise early; or they are apt to be superstitious, and rise up as in a fright, at those voices of birds, as of ravens, or screech-owls, which soothsayers call ominous. Ninthly, With them all the daughters of music are brought low. They have neither voice nor ear, can neither sing themselves nor take any pleasure, as Solomon had done in the days of his youth, in singing men, and singing women, and musical instruments, Ecc 2:8. Old people grow hard of hearing, and unapt to distinguish sounds and voices. Tenthly, They are afraid of that which is high, afraid to go to the top of any high place, either because, for want of breath, they cannot reach it, or, their heads being giddy or their legs failing them, they dare not venture to it, or they frighten themselves with fancying that that which is high will fall upon them. Fear is in the way; they can neither ride nor walk with their former boldness, but are afraid of every thing that lies in their way, lest it throw them down. Eleventhly, The almond-tree flourishes. The old man's hair has grown white, so that his head looks like an almond-tree in the blossom. The almond-tree blossoms before any other tree, and therefore fitly shows what haste old age makes in seizing upon men; it prevents their expectations and comes faster upon them than they thought of. Gray hairs are here and there upon them, and they perceive it not. Twelfthly, The grasshopper is a burden and desire fails. Old men can bear nothing; the lightest thing sits heavily upon them, both on their bodies and on their minds, a little thing sinks and breaks them. Perhaps the grasshopper was some food that was looked upon to be very light of digestion (John Baptist's meat was locusts), but even that lies heavily upon an old man's stomach, and therefore desire fails, he has no appetite to his meat, neither shall he regard the desire of woman, as that king, Dan 11:37. Old men become mindless and listless, and the pleasures of sense are to them tasteless and sapless.
[2.] It is probable that Solomon wrote this when he was himself old, and could speak feelingly of the infirmities of age, which perhaps grew the faster upon him for the indulgence he had given himself in sensual pleasures. Some old people bear up better than others under the decays of age, but, more or less, the days of old age are and will be evil days and of little pleasure. Great care therefore should be taken to pay respect and honour to old people, that they may have something to balance these grievances and nothing may be done to add to them. And all this, put together, makes up a good reason why we should remember our Creator in the days of our youth, that he may remember us with favour when these evil days come, and his comforts may delight our souls when the delights of sense are in a manner worn off.
(2.) He shows how great a change death will make with us, which will be either the prevention or the period of the miseries of old age. Nothing else will keep them off, nor any thing else cure them. "Therefore remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth, because death is certainly before thee, perhaps it is very near thee, and it is a serious thing to die, and thou shouldst feel concerned with the utmost care and diligence to prepare for it." [1.] Death will fix us in an unchangeable state: Man shall then go to his long home, and all these infirmities and decays of age are harbingers of and advances towards that awful remove. At death man goes from this world and all the employments and enjoyments of it. He has gone for good and all, as to his present state. He has gone home, for here he was a stranger and pilgrim; both soul and body go to the place whence they came, Ecc 12:7. He has gone to his rest, to the place where he is to fix. He has gone to his home, to the house of his world (so some), for this world is not his. He has gone to his long home, for the days of his lying in the grave will be many. He has gone to his house of eternity, not only to his house whence he shall never return to this world, but to the house where he must be for ever. This should make us willing to die, that, at death, we must go home; and why should we not long to go to our Father's house? And this should quicken us to get ready to die, that we must then go to our long home, to an everlasting habitation. [2.] Death will be an occasion of sorrow to our friends that love us. When man goes to his long home the mourners go about the streets - the real mourners, and those, as now with us, distinguished by their habits as they go along the streets, - the mourners for ceremony, that were hired to weep for the dead, both to express and to excite the real mourning. When we die we not only remove to a melancholy house before us, but we leave a melancholy house behind us. Tears are a tribute due to the dead, and this, among other circumstances, makes it a serious thing to die. But in vain do we go to the house of mourning, and see the mourners go about the streets, if it do not help to make us serious and pious mourners in the closet. [3.] Death will dissolve the frame of nature and take down the earthly house of this tabernacle, which is elegantly described, Ecc 12:6. Then shall the silver cord, by which soul and body were wonderfully fastened together, be loosed, that sacred knot untied, and those old friends be forced to part; then shall the golden bowl, which held the waters of life for us, be broken; then shall the pitcher with which we used to fetch up water, for the constant support of life and the repair of its decays, be broken, even at the fountain, so that it can fetch up no more; and the wheel (all those organs that serve for the collecting and distributing of nourishment) shall be broken, and disabled to do their office any more. The body shall become like a watch when the spring is broken, the motion of all the wheels is stopped and they all stand still; the machine is taken to pieces; the heart beats no more, nor does the blood circulate. Some apply this to the ornaments and utensils of life; rich people must, at death, leave behind them their clothing and furniture of silver and gold, and poor people their earthen pitchers, and the drawers of water will have their wheel broken. [4.] Death will resolve us into our first principles, Ecc 12:7. Man is a strange sort of creature, a ray of heaven united to a clod of earth; at death these are separated, and each goes to the place whence it came. First, The body, that clod of clay, returns to its own earth. It is made of the earth; Adam's body was so, and we are of the same mould; it is a house of clay. At death it is laid in the earth, and in a little time will be resolved into earth, not to be distinguished from common earth, according to the sentence (Gen 3:19), Dust thou art and therefore to dust thou shalt return. Let us not therefore indulge the appetites of the body, nor pamper it (it will be worms' meat shortly), nor let sin reign in our mortal bodies, for they are mortal, Rom 6:12. Secondly, The soul, that beam of light, returns to that God who, when he made man of the dust of the ground, breathed into him the breath of life, to make him a living soul (Gen 2:7), and forms the spirit of every man within him. When the fire consumes the wood the flame ascends, and the ashes return to the earth out of which the wood grew. The soul does not die with the body; it is redeemed from the power of the grave (Psa 49:15); it can subsist without it and will in a state of separation from it, as the candle burns, and burns brighter, when it is taken out of the dark lantern. It removes to the world of spirits, to which it is allied. It goes to God as a Judge, to give account of itself, and to be lodged either with the spirits in prison (Pe1 3:19) or with the spirits in paradise (Luk 23:43), according to what was done in the body. This makes death terrible to the wicked, whose souls go to God as an avenger, and comfortable to the godly, whose souls go to God as a Father, into whose hands they cheerfully commit them, through a Mediator, out of whom sinners may justly dread to think of going to God.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy…
Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth,.... Or "Creators" (b); as "Makers", Job 35:10; for more than one were concerned, as in the creation of all things in general, so of man in particular, Gen 1:26; and these are neither more nor fewer than three; and are Father, Son, Spirit; the one God that has created men, Mal 2:10; the Father, who is the God of all flesh, and the Father of spirits; the former both of the bodies and souls of men, Jer 31:27; the Son, by whom all things are created; for he that is the Redeemer and husband of his church, which are characters and relations peculiar to the Son, is the Creator, Isa 43:1; and the Holy Spirit not only garnished the heavens, and moved upon the face of the waters, but is the Maker of men, and gives them life, Job 33:4. Now this God, Creator, should be "remembered" by young men; they should remember there is a God, which they are apt to be forgetful of; that this God is a God of great and glorious perfections, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, holy, just, and true; who judgeth in the earth, and will judge the world in righteousness, and them also; and that he is in Christ a God gracious, merciful, and pardoning iniquity, transgression, and sin: they should remember him under this character, as a "Creator", who has made them, and not they themselves; that they are made by him out of the dust of the earth, and must return to it; that he has brought them into being, and preserved them in it, and favoured them with the blessings of his providence, which are all from him that has made them: and they should remember the end for which they are made, to glorify him; and in what state man was originally made, upright, pure, and holy; but that he now is a fallen creature, and such are they, impure and unrighteous, impotent and weak, abominable in the sight of God, unworthy to live, and unfit to die; being transgressors of the laws of their Creator, which is deserving of death: they should remember what God their Creators, Father, Son, and Spirit, must have done or must do for them, if ever they are saved; the Father must have chosen them in Christ unto salvation; must have given his Son to redeem, and must send his Spirit into their hearts to create them anew; the Son must have been surety for them, assumed their nature, and died in their room and stead; and the Spirit must regenerate and make them new creatures, enlighten their minds, quicken their souls, and sanctify their hearts: they should remember the right their Creator has over them, the obligations they are under to him, and their duty to him; they should remember, with thankfulness, the favours they have received from him, and, with reverence and humility, the distance between him, as Creator, and them as creatures: they should remember to love him cordially and sincerely; to fear him with a godly fear; to worship him in a spiritual manner; to set him always before them, and never forget him. And all this they should do "in the days their youth"; which are their best and choicest day in which to serve him is most desirable by him, acceptable to him; who ordered the first of the ripe fruits and creatures of the first year to be offered to him: and then are men best able to serve him, when their bodies are healthful, strong, and vigorous; their senses quick, and the powers and faculties of their souls capable of being improved and enlarged: and to delay the service of him to old age, as it would be very ungrateful and exceeding improper, so no man can be sure of arriving to it; and if he should, yet what follows is enough to determine against such a delay;
while the evil days come not; meaning the days of old age; said to be evil, not with respect to the evil of fault or sin; so all days are evil, or sin is committed in every age, in infancy, in childhood, in youth, in manhood, as well as in old age: but with respect to the evil of affliction and trouble which attend it, as various diseases; yea, that itself is a disease, and an incurable one; much weakness of body, decay of intellects, and many other things, which render life very troublesome and uncomfortable (c), as well as unfit for religious services;
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nor the years draw nigh, when thou shall say, I have no pleasure in them; that is, corporeal pleasure; no sensual pleasure; sight, taste, and hearing, being lost, or in a great measure gone; which was Barzillai's case, at eighty years of age: though some ancient persons have their senses quick and vigorous, and scarce perceive any difference between youth and age; but such instances are not common: and there are also some things that ancient persons take pleasure in, as in fields and gardens, and the culture of them, as Cicero (d) observes; and particularly learned men take as much delight in their studies in old age as in youth, and in instructing others; and, as the same writer (e) says,
"what is more pleasant than to see an old man, attended and encircled with youth, at their studies under him?''
and especially a good man, in old age, has pleasure in reflecting on a life spent in the ways, work, and worship of God; and in having had, through the grace of God, his conversation in the world in simplicity and godly sincerity; as also in present communion with God, and in the hopes and views of the glories of another world: but if not religious persons, they are strangers to spiritual pleasure, which only is to be had in wisdom's ways; such can neither look back with pleasure on a life spent in sin; nor forward with pleasure, at death and eternity, and into another world; see Sa2 19:35.
(b) "Creatorum tuorum", Drusius, Gejerus, Rambachius; so Broughton. (c) Plautus in Aulular. Act. 1. Sc. 1. v. 4. Menaechm. Act. 5. Sc. 2. v. 6. calls old age, "mala aetas"; and the winter of old age, Trinummus, Act. 2. Sc. 3. v. 7. And Pindar, , Pyth. Ode 10. so Theognis, v. 272, 776, 1006. And Homer, Iliad. 10. v. 79. &. 23. v. 644. "Tristis senectus", Virgil. Aenid. 6. (d) De Seuectute, c. 14, 15. (e) Ibid. c. 8.
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 An exhortation to remember God in youth, enforced from…
An exhortation to remember God in youth, enforced from the calamities of old age, and the change which death will make, ver. 1-7. The conclusion, All is vanity, ver. 8. The preacher's end in this book, ver. 9-12. The sum of all, to fear God and keep his commandments, in consideration of the judgment to come, ver. 13, 14.
Now - For now thou art most able to do it; and it will be most acceptable to God, and most comfortable to thyself, as the best evidence of thy sincerity, and the best provision for old age and death. Evil days - The time of old age, which is evil; burdensome in itself, and far more grievous when it is loaded with the sad remembrance of youthful follies, and with the dreadful prospect of approaching death and judgment. No pleasure - My life Is now bitter and burdensome to me: which is frequently the condition of old age.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Youth should remember their Creator, 1.
CHAPTER XII
Youth should remember their Creator, 1.
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A description of old age and its infirmities, with the causes
of death and dissolution, 2-9.
How the Preacher taught the people knowledge, 9-11.
General directions, and conclusion of the work, 12-14.
NOTES ON CHAP. XII
Verse 1. Remember thy Creator] בוראיך Boreeycha, thy CREATORS. The word is most certainly in the plural number in all our common Hebrew Bibles; but it is in the singular number, בוראך Borecha, in one hundred and seventy-six of Dr. Kennicott's MSS., and ninety-six of De Rossi's; in many ancient editions; and in all the ancient versions. There is no dependence on the plural form in most of the modern editions; though there are some editions of great worth which exhibit the word in this form, and among them the Complutensian, Antwerp, Paris, and London polyglots.
The evidence, therefore, that this text is supposed to give to the doctrine of the ever blessed Trinity, is but precarious, and on it little stress can be laid; and no man who loves truth would wish to support it by dubious witnesses. Injudicious men, by laying stress on texts dubious in themselves, and which may be interpreted a different way, greatly injure the true faith. Though such in their hearts may be friends to the orthodox faith, they are in fact its worst friends, and their assistance is such as helps their adversaries.
But what does the text say? It addresses the youth of both sexes throughout the creation; and says in effect: -
I. You are not your own, you have no right to yourselves. God made you; he is your Creator: he made you that you might be happy; but you can be happy only in him. And as he created you, so he preserves you; he feeds, clothes, upholds you. He has made you capable of knowing, loving, and serving him in this world, and of enjoying him in his own glory for ever. And when you had undone yourselves by sin, he sent his Son to redeem you by his blood; and he sends his Spirit to enlighten, convince, and draw you away from childishness, from vain and trifling, as well as from sinful, pursuits.
II. Remember him; consider that he is your Creator, your loving and affectionate Father. In youth memory is strong and tenacious; but, through the perversion of the heart by sin, young people can remember any thing better than GOD. If you get a kindness from a friend, you can remember that, and feel gratitude for it; and the person is therefore endeared to you. Have any ever given you such benefits as your Creator? Your body and soul came from him; he gave you your eyes, ears, tongue, hands, feet, c. What blessings are these! how excellent! how useful! how necessary and will you forget HIM?
III. Remember him in thy YOUTH, in order that you may have a long and blessed life, that you may be saved from the corruption and misery into which young people in general run and the evils they entail upon themselves by giving way to the sinful propensities of their own hearts. As in youth all the powers are more active and vigorous, so they are capable of superior enjoyments. Faith, hope, and love, will be in their best tenor, their greatest vigour, and in their least encumbered state. And it will be easier for you to believe, hope, pray, love, obey, and bear your cross, than it can be in old age and decrepitude.
IV. Remember him NOW, in this part of your youth-you have no certainty of life; now is yours, to-morrow may not be. You are young; but you may never be old. Now he waits to be gracious; tomorrow may be too late. God now calls; his Spirit now strives; his ministers now exhort. You have now health; sin has not now so much dominion over you as it will have, increasing by every future moment, if you do not give up your hearts to your Maker.
V. There is another consideration which should weigh with you: should you live to old age, it is a very disadvantageous time to begin to serve the Lord in. Infirmities press down both body and mind, and the oppressed nature has enough to do to bear its own infirmities; and as there is little time, so there is generally less inclination, to call upon the Lord. Evil habits are strengthened by long continuance; and every desire and appetite in the soul is a strong hold for Satan. There is little time for repentance, little for faith, none for obedience. The evil days are come, and the years in which you will feelingly be obliged to say, Alas! "we have no pleasure in them;" and, what is worse, the heart is hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.
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 12:1. Remember — Namely, practically, so as to…
Ecc 12:1. Remember — Namely, practically, so as to fear, love, and faithfully serve him, which, when men do not, they are said to forget him: thy Creator — The first author and continual preserver of thy life and being, and of all the endowments and enjoyments which accompany it; to whom thou art under the highest and strongest obligations; and upon whom thou art constantly and necessarily dependant, and therefore to forget him is most unnatural and disingenuous. Now in the days of thy youth — For now thou art most able to do it; and it will be most acceptable to God, and most comfortable to thyself, as being the best evidence of thy sincerity, and the best provision for old age and death. While the evil days come not — The time of old age, which is evil; that is, burdensome and calamitous in itself, and far more grievous when it is loaded with the sad remembrance of youthful follies, and with the dreadful prospect of approaching death and judgment. When thou shalt say, I have no pleasure — My life is now bitter and burdensome to me: which is frequently the condition of old age.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain Remember now - Rather, And remember. The connection between…
Remember now - Rather, And remember. The connection between this verse and the preceding one is unfortunately interrupted by our division of chapters.
Creator - Gratitude to God as Creator is here inculcated, as just previously Ecc 11:9 fear of God as Judge. Godliness, acquired as a habit in youth, is recommended as the proper compensation for that natural cessation of youthful happiness which makes the days of old age more or less evil; more evil in proportion since there is less of godliness in the heart, and less evil where there is more godliness.
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While the evil days come not - Rather, before the evil days come.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain Not. Prevent old age, to procure a stock of…
Not. Prevent old age, to procure a stock of virtues. (Haydock) --- Solomon refutes the former sentiments of the wicked, which he had perhaps once entertained. (Calmet)
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).
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 1. Remember — Solemn reminder of what youth is…
1. Remember — Solemn reminder of what youth is inclined to forget.
Thy Creator — Who formed the frame described in Ecc_12:6, and will bring thee to judgment, Ecc_12:14. Now… thy youth — In emphatic contrast with thy gloomy old age, brought on by forgetting God, pictured in Ecc_12:2-5.
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when woe and care will render such piety difficult, and with that dissolution, (6, 7,) which make repentance impossible. Wretched is the man who gives his best days and strongest powers to the service of Satan, expecting to give God the dregs of his life, or to repent in the hour of death.
No pleasure — The freshness of life is gone; the world is dark and drear; and the soured spirit has no heart for devotion.
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 1. Remember now thy Creator in the days of…
1. Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth] The word for “Creator” is strictly the participle of the verb which is translated “create” in Gen_1:1; Gen_1:21; Gen_1:27, and as a Divine Name is exceptionally rare, occurring only here and in Isa_40:23; Isa_44:15. It is plural in its form, as Elohim (the word for God) is plural, as the “Holy One” is plural in Pro_9:10; Pro_30:3; Hos_12:1, as expressing the majesty of God. The explanations which have been given of the words as meaning (1) “thy fountain” in the sense of Pro_5:18, “thy well-spring of sensuous joy,” or (2) “thy existence,” are scarcely tenable philologically, and are altogether at variance with the context.
while the evil days come not] The description which follows forms in some respects the most difficult of all the enigmas of the Book. That it represents the decay of old age, or of disease anticipating age, ending at last in death, lies beyond the shadow of a doubt; but the figurative language in which that decay is represented abounds in allusive references which were at the time full of meaning for those that had ears to hear, but which now present riddles which it is not easy to solve. Briefly, the two chief lines on which commentators have travelled have been (1) that which starts as in the comment of Gregory Thaumaturgus (see Introduction, ch. vii.) from the idea of the approach of death as the on-coming of a storm; (2) that which assumes that we have as it were a diagnosis of the physical phenomena of old age and its infirmities, and loses itself in discussions as to what bodily organ, heart, brain, liver, gall-duct, or the like, is specially in the author’s mind. It will be seen, as the imagery comes before us in detail, how far either solution is satisfactory, how far they admit of being combined, or what other, if any, presents itself with stronger claims on our attention.
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The “evil days” are those which are painted in the verses that follow, not necessarily the special forms of evil that come as the punishment of sensual sins, but the inevitable accompaniment of declining years or of disease. There is the implied warning that unless a man has remembered his Creator in his youth, it will not then be easy to remember Him as for the first time in the “evil days” of age or infirmity. In those days it will be emphatically true that there will be no pleasure in them.
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 (1) Creator.—This occurs as a Divine name in Isa_40:23;…
XII.
(1) Creator.—This occurs as a Divine name in Isa_40:23; Isa_44:15. and elsewhere. Here it is in the plural, like the Divine name Elohim. (See also Note on Ecc_12:8.) We have “thy Maker” in the plural in Job_35:10; Psa_149:2; Isa_54:5; and “Holy One” in Pro_9:10; Pro_30:3; Hos_11:12.
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 The division into chapters is unfortunate here, as this…
The division into chapters is unfortunate here, as this verse is closely connected with ver. 10 of the preceding chapter. Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth. Set God always before thine eyes from thy earliest days; think who made thee, and what thou wast made for, not for self-pleasing only, not to gratify thy passions which now are strong; but that thou mightest use thy powers and energy in accordance with the laws of thy being as a creature of God"s hands, responsible to him for the use of the faculties and capacities with which he has endowed thee. The word for "Creator" is the participle of the Verb barn, which is that used in Gen_1:1, etc., describing God"s work. It is plural in form, like Elohim, the plural being that of majesty or excellence. (comp. Isa_54:5) It is used here as an appellation of God, becausethe young have to bethink themselves that all they are and all they have come from God. Such plurals are supposed by some to be divinely intended to adumbrate the doctrine of the Holy Trinity a dark saying containing a mystery which future revelation shoed explain. "He that made thee" is a common phrase in Ecclesiasticus. (Ecc_4:6 Ecc_7:3) It is to be noted that Gratz reads "cistern" or a fountain" in place of "Creator," and explains this term to mean "wife", as in Pro_5:15-18. But the alteration has nothing to support it, and is most unnecessary, though Cheyne was inclined to adopt it ("Job and Solomon," in loc.) While the evil days come not; i.e. before they come. "Days of evil"; aiJ hJmerai thv kakiav (Septugaint); (Mat_6:4) tempus afflictionis (Vulgate). The phrase refers to the grievances and inconveniences of old age, which are further and graphically described in the following verses, though whether the expressions therein used regard literal anatomical facts, or are allegorical representations of the gradual decay of the faculties, has been greatly disputed. Probably both opinions contain a partial truth, as will be noted in our Exposition. Ginsburg considers that the allusion is not to the ills that in the course of time all flesh is heir to, but rather to that premature decay and suffering occasioned by the unrestrained gratification of sensual passions, such as Cicero intimates ("De Senect.," 9:29), "Libidinosa et intemperans adulescentia effetum corpus tradit senectuti." There is nothing specially in the text to support this view, and it is most reasonable to see here generally a figurative description of decay, whatever may be the cause. I have no pleasure in them. Ere the time comes when a man shall say, "I have no pleasure in life." Thus the aged Barzillai asks, "Can I discern between good and evil? Can thy servant taste what I eat, or what I drink? Can I hear any more the voice of singing-men and singing-women?". (2Sa_19:35)
Ver. 1.
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Remember thy Creator.
I REMEMBER: WHOM? "Thy Creator." The language implies:
1. That man has a Creator. It would certainly be strange if he had not, seeing that all things else have. And that Creator is not himself, since he is at best a dependent creature; (Gen_3:19) or an inferior divinity, since there is none such (2Sa_7:22; Isa_44:6) but
1. God, the one living and true God, (1Th_1:9) the Almighty Maker of the universe (Gen_1:1; Exo_20:11; Psa_124:8; Isa_40:28; Jer_10:16) and therefore of (Gen_1:26; Deu_4:32; Psa_100:3; Act_17:25, Act_17:26, Act_17:28) and
2. Jesus Christ, the Image of the invisible God (2Co_4:4; Col_1:15) and the unbeginning Word of God, (Joh_1:1) by whom all things were made, (Joh_1:3) whether they be things in heaven or on earth, visible or invisible, (Col_1:16) and therefore from whom man derives his being.
2. That man originally knows God. That even in his fallen condition he is not entirely destitute of a knowledge of God not, perhaps, a knowledge clear and full, but still real and true appears to be the teaching of Scripture (Rom_1:21, Rom_1:28) as well as of experience, no man ever requiring to argue himself into a belief in God"s existence, though many try to reason themselves out of it.
3. That man may forget God. Moses was afraid lest Israel should be guilty of so doing, (Deu_6:12) in which case they would be no better than the heathen peoples around them. (Psa_9:17) Practically this is the world"s sin today, (1Jn_4:8) and the sin against which Christians have to guard. (Heb_3:12) It is specially the sin against which young persons should be warned, that of allowing the thought of God to slip out of their minds.
II REMEMBER: HOW?
1. By thinking of his Person. A characteristic of the wicked is that God is not in all their thoughts; (Psa_10:4) whereas a good man remembers God upon his bed, and meditates upon him in the night watches. (Psa_60:3)
2. By reflecting on his character. The Creator being neither an abstract conception nor an inanimate force, but a living and personal Intelligence, he is also possessed of attributes, the sum of which compose his character or name; and one who would properly remember him must frequently permit his thoughts to dwell on these, (Psa_20:7) as David (Psa_60:3) and Asaph (Psa_77:3) did on his holiness, his loving-kindness, his faithfulness, his truth, his wisdom, his justice, all of which have been revealed in Jesus Christ, and so made much more easily the subjects of study.
3. By acknowledging his goodness. God"s bounties in providence and mercies in grace must be equally recalled and thankfully retained before the mind, as David aptly said to himself (Psa_103:1, Psa_103:2) and protested before God. (Psa_42:6) One who simply accepts God"s daily benefits as the lower animals do, for consumption but not for consideration, is guilty of forgetting God; who knows about, but never pauses to thank God for his unspeakable grace in Christ, comes far short of what is meant by remem bering his Creator.
4. By meditating in his Word. Those who lovingly remember God will not forget that he has written to them in the Scriptures words of grace and truth, and will, like the good man of the Hebrew Psalter (1:2), meditate therein day and night. Where God"s Law, with its wise and holy precepts, is counted as a strange thing, (Hos_8:12) no further proof is needed that God himself is forgotten. The surest evidence that "no man remembered the poor wise man" was found in this, that his wisdom was despised, and his words were not heard. (Ecc_9:16)
5. By keeping his commandments. As Joseph"s recollection of Jehovah helped him to resist temptation and avoid sin Gen_39:9) so a sincere and loving remembrance of God will show itself in doing those things that are pleasing in his sight. When Christ asked his disciples to remember him, he meant them to do so, not simply by thinking of and speaking about him, or even by celebrating in his honor a memorial feast, (Luk_22:19) but also by doing whatsoever he had commanded them. (Joh_15:14)
III REMEMBER: WHEN? "In the days of thy youth.
1. Not then only. The remembrance of God is a duty which extends along the whole course of life. No age can be exempted from it, as none is unsuitable for it. The notion that religion, while proper enough for childhood or youth, is neither demanded by nor becoming in manhood, is a delusion. The heart-worship and life-service of God and Jesus Christ are incumbent upon, needed by, and honorable to, old as well as young.
2. But then firstly. The reasons will be furnished below; meantime it may be noticed that Scripture writers may be said to be unanimous in recommending early piety; in teaching that youth, above all other periods, is the season for seeking God. Moses, (Deu_31:13) David, (Psa_34:11) Solomon, (Pro_3:1, Pro_3:2) and Jesus (Mat_6:33) combine to set forth the advantage as well as duty of giving one"s early years to God and religion.
IV REMEMBER: WHY?
1. Why remember one"s Creator?
(1) Because he is infinitely worthy of being remembered.
(2) Because he is entitled to be remembered on the simple ground of being Creator.
(3) Because without this remembrance of him both happiness is impossible here and salvation hereafter.
(4) Because the human heart is prone to forget him, and remember only either his creatures or his comforts.
2. Why remember him in the way above specified?
(1) Because any remembrance short of that is incomplete, insincere, formal, external, and therefore essentially worthless.
(2) Because the above is the sort of remembrance that is demanded by Scripture.
(3) Because only such remembrance is worthy of being presented to God.
3. Why remember him in youth?
(1) Because youth, as the first portion of a man"s life, is due to God.
(2) Because youth, as the formative period of life, is the most important time for acquiring religious habits. (Pro_22:6)
(3) Because youth, as the happiest season in life, is the time in which God can most easily be remembered. Then "the evil days" of business and worry, of temptation and sin, of affliction and sorrow, of disease and decay, have not come; and the soul, besides being comparatively disengaged, is also in a mood for yielding to devout and holy impressions.
(4) Because if God is not remembered in youth he is apt to be forgotten in age.
Learn:
1. The real essence of religion fellowship with God.
2. The dignity of man that he is capable of such fellowship.
3. The responsibility of youth for shaping all one"s after-life.
4. The evanescence of earthly joys all doomed to be eclipsed by the darkness of evil days.
HOMILIES BY D. THOMAS Ver. 1.
Youthful religion.
The Preacher spoke from a heart taught by long experience. Himself advanced in years, having enjoyed and suffered much, having long observed the growth of human character under diverse principles and influences, he was able to offer to the young counsel based upon extensive knowledge and deliberate reflection.
I THE DESCRIPTION HERE GIVEN OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. Amplifying this terse and impressive language, we may hear the wise man addressing the youthful, and saying, "Remember that thou hast a Creator; that thy Creator ever remembers thee; that he not only deserves, but desires, thy remembrance; that his character should be remembered with reverence, his bounty with gratitude, his Law with obedience and submission, his love with faith and gladness, his promises with prayerfulness and with hope.
II THE PERIOD HERE RECOMMENDED FOR THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. Religion is indeed adapted to the whole of our existence; and what applies to every age of life, applies with especial force to childhood and youth.
1. Youth has peculiar susceptibilities of feeling, and religion appeals to them.
2. Youth has especially opportunities of acquiring knowledge and undergoing discipline, and religion helps us to use them.
3. Youth has abounding energy, and religion assists us to employ this energy aright.
4. Youth is a time of great and varied temptations, and religion will enable us to overcome them.
5. Youth is introductory to manhood and to age; religion helps us so to live when young that we may be the better fitted for the subsequent stages of life"s journey.
6. Youth may be all of life appointed for us; in that case, religion can hallow those few years which constitute the earthly training and probation.
III THE SPECIAL REASONS FOR ATTENDING TO THIS ADMONITION.
1. It is a tendency of human nature to be so absorbed in what is present to the senses as to overlook unseen and eternal realities.
2. Our own age is peculiarly tempted to forget God, by reason of the prevalence of atheism, agnosticism, and positivism.
3. Youth is especially in danger of forgetting the Divine Creator, because the opening intelligence is naturally interested in the world of outward things, which presents so much to excite attention and to engage inquiry.
IV THE ADDITIONAL FORCE WHICH CHRISTIANITY IMPARTS TO THIS ADMONITION. The figure of our blessed Lord himself appears to the imagination, and we seem to hear his winning but authoritative voice pleading with the young, and employing the very language of the text. He who said, "Suffer the little children to come unto me," he who, beholding the young inquirer, loved him, draws near to every youthful nature, and commands and beseeches that reverent attention, that willing faith, that affectionate attachment, which shall lead to a life of piety, and to an immortality of blessedness. T.
HOMILIES BY W. CLARKSON
Ver. 1 with Ecc_11:10, latter part
The vanity and glory of youth.
I THE VANITY OF YOUTH. There is an aspect in which it is true that "childhood and youth are vanity.
1. Its thoughts are very simple; they are upon the surface, and there is no depth of truth or wisdom in them.
2. Its judgments are very mixed with error; it has to unlearn a great deal of what it learns; the young will have to find, later on, that the men of whom and the things of which they have made up their minds are different from what they think now; their after-days will bring with them much disillusion, if not serious disappointment. Much that they see is magnified to their view, and the colors, as they see them today, will look otherwise tomorrow.
3. Itself is constantly disappearing. Few things are more constantly disturbing, if not distressing, us than the rapid passage of childhood and youth. Sometimes the young life is taken away altogether the flower is nipped in the bud. But where life is spared, the peculiar beauty of childhood or of youth its simplicity, its trustfulness, its docility, its eagerness, its ardor of affection, its unreserved delights, this is perpetually passing and "fading into the light of common day." Yet is there and it is the truer and deeper thought
II THE GLORY OF YOUTH. Whatever may be said of youth in the way of qualification, there is one thing that may be said for it which greatly exalts it it may be wise with a profound and heavenly wisdom, for it may be spent in the fear and in the love of God. (see Pro_1:7; Job_28:28) To "remember its Creator," and to order its life according to that remembrance, is the height and the depth of human wisdom. Knowledge, learning, cunning, brilliancy, genius itself, is not so desirable nor so admirable a thing as is this holy and heavenly wisdom. To know, (Jer_9:24) to reverence him in the innermost soul, to love him with all the heart, (Mar_12:33) to be obedient to his commandments, to be patiently and cheerfully submissive to his will, to be honoring and serving him continually, to be attaining to his own likeness in spirit and character, surely this is the glory of the highest created intelligence of the noblest rank in heaven, and surely this is the glory of our human nature in all its ranks. It is the glory of our manhood, and it is the glory of youth. Far more than any order of strength, (Pro_20:29) or than any kind of beauty, (2Sa_14:25) or than any measure of acquisition, does the abiding and practical remembrance of its Creator and Savior glorify our youth. That makes it pure, worthy, admirable, inherently excellent, full of hope and promise. We may add, for it belongs to the text as well as to the subject
III THE WISDOM OF YOUTH. "While the evil days come not," etc. Let the young live before God while they are young; for:
1. It is a poor and sorry thing to offer to God, to a Divine Redeemer, the dregs of our days. To him who gave himself for us it becomes us to give, not our wasted and worn-out, but our best, our freest and freshest, our purest and strongest self.
2. To leave the consecration of ourselves to Christ to the time when faculty has faded, when the power of discernment and appreciation has declined, when sensitiveness has been dulled with long disuse, when the heavenly voices fall with less charm and interest on the ear of the soul, this is a most perilous thing. To hearken and to heed, to recognize and to obey, in the days of youth is the one wise thing. C.
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 Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy…
Ecc_12:1-7
Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth.
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The Creator remembered
How shall we understand this? Is it an allegory describing the weakening of the body? Is it a description of the Jews in captivity? Is it a dirge from some old book of hymns? The best explanation seems this: first, the Preacher describes old age as a stormy day; secondly, the figure changes to that of a palace going to ruin; then there is a reference to the seven evil days of spring in the Orient, which are thought particularly dangerous to the aged; and lastly the new figures of the lamp, the fountain, and the cistern come in. It is surely no strange thing to illustrate an idea with a variety of pictures. We may make a regular progression of the lessons taught in this passage.
1. There is a hereafter. Man is not made only for this life. What would we think of the pyramid builders if they scattered pyramids over a plain, but intentionally left every one of them unfinished, with the lines sloping together so as to prophesy of an apex which was never built? Such designed incompleteness is inconceivable, the human mind being what it is. No more can we conceive of Gods having scattered over the world all the beautiful and noble lives in history, yet so that none of them should be complete. There must be a finishing some time. We are made so as to expect it. We have an organ whose function it is to anticipate it. And that organ of the heart would be as inexplicable without a hereafter as an eye without light. Where we find eyes we can presume the existence of light at some time.
2. Man is a responsible being. He can do pretty much as he pleases, but he cannot by any possibility exempt himself from the consequences of what he does. Sometime the score must be settled.
3. Death ends mans work on earth. It is interesting to note that the terrors of death are not dwelt upon in the passage. The sombreness, the pain of it, are passed by. Writers often gloat over death; they force the melancholy of it home upon our hearts, they seem to say (as Dickens is accused of saying in effect in describing the death of little Nell), Now let us have a cry together. There is not the slightest touch of this in the ending of Ecclesiastes. If we have any plans for good, if we want to make this life a preparation for the glories of the future, how busy ought the thought and the sight of death to make us.
4. Reverent obedience to God is the only method of having a life that shall be worth living. God changes not, and we need not hope to change Him. He is a God of love always, but His love brings blessing only to those who seek to do His will. To those who disregard Him that same love becomes a condemnation. But how shall we keep Gods laws? Above all commands, He has given to us our final command, by keeping which we are led to keep all the rest; this is My beloved Son; hear ye Him. Therefore, trying to serve God while, rejecting Christ must lead to failure in Gods eyes.
5. Youth is the best time to begin serving God.
(1) It is easier to begin then. Habits are unformed, and will as easily take one shape as another. Once they are made, rearrangement comes only, as it were, by fracture.
(2) It is important to have the trend of life settled in favour of the good. You cannot do this except at the needless expense of great moral upheaval, at any time but in the early years.
(3) The more years of life consecrated to Christ, the more the quantity of good which can be done for Him. Every year away from His service is an empty year from the point of view of eternity
(4) The earlier one begins in the Christian life, the longer time he has for Christian growth. (D. J. Burrell, D. D.)
The Creator remembered
I. An early recognition of God will become the formative principle of character. The formation of character is the true business of life. Character is the individual, the man himself. No one can be greater than his character, and no one can be less. At the centre of character there is always a governing principle. This may be one thing or another--may be a remembrance of God or a regard for the devil, may be a holy resolution or a weak sentiment. Still, it is there, and it is influential. It resembles the point of crystallization around which cluster the strange forms and colours of Natures workmanship. Character will surely be determined by this central principle or supreme choice. Now, to remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth is to yield to God as He appears in Jesus Christ, or to become a Christian. This surrender enthrones God at the very centre of character. His word then becomes law. The holy life of His Son, our Redeemer, holds the attention. The formation of character proceeds as we grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
II. Childhoods remembrance of God becomes the perpetual recompense of service. We must bear one anothers burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. He went about doing good. He came not to be ministered unto, but to minister. Simple fidelities engaged Him. An hour of communion with His Father prepared Him for any conflict, and He often looked up into His Fathers face to gain new inspiration when He was weary or troubled. The possibility of this consciousness is the promise of the Bible. Again and again we are assured that God is interested in us. He wants to help us. He offers the confidence which Jesus knew. Now, if we can secure this confidence early in life, we shall be stronger and braver than we could otherwise be, for in every honest service we shall have the satisfaction of knowing that God is pleased. We may train ourselves to do all to the glory of God. If we undertake any service, we may perform it as unto Him, and net as unto our fellow-men; if we make a contribution of money, we may present it first of all to Him, and may then act as His stewards in its distribution; if we contemplate a new work, we may consult Him in prayer; if we are burdened with care, we may cast our care upon Him. At once there opens before us many rare privileges. Life with God in it moves safely.
III. The secure hope of sorrow and of death is obtained when the Creator is remembered. Hope thou in God is the psalmists exhortation. Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost, is the benediction of Paul. God is the God of hope. What a blessed truth that is! He meets us with hope, and He continues to afford hope even to the end of life. When sorrows come we are not shut up to the conviction that we are the victims of fate. There is an afterward to every chastisement, with peaceable fruit of righteousness. The end has not been reached. We are still at school. God is dealing with us as with sons. We shall bless Him by and by for lifes discipline. Meanwhile, He sustains and comforts us to such a degree that a man has even been known to say, It is good for me that I have been afflicted. God is with us. We shall surely reach port. We hope, in Him. And when we approach death, who but God can afford hope? (H. M. Booth, D. D.)
The Creator remembered
In any anthology upon old age this would easily rank first. Its cast is poetical, its substance the severest prose. In it the verdict of experience is given by one who has set himself to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. The Preacher has simply spoken for the silent multitudes. Will the youth be sane and listen and heed, or giddy and unbelieving, till at the end he too will remorsefully cry, Vanity of vanities, all is vanity? Certain truths and principles ought ever to be bound about his neck and written on the tables of his heart.
I. The youth is Gods creation. If he doubles or denies this he will live like the beasts that perish, and be ready after a while to say that he has not pre-eminence above them. The spirit of the age is hushing the demands of the Creator and magnifying those of the created. While it professes the deepest reverence for an insect form or faultless crystal or mote of star-dust, it shuts the senses to any call to penitence, or prayer, or trust, or sacrifice, since we cannot know if there be One supreme who has uttered it. The youth is in peril. God is--no question--no perhaps. He is thy Creator. Remember Him and that thou art His, not thine own. Thy intuitions are correct; they point thee to Him.
II. In the natural order of life age most come. The lambs that gambol over the fields, the birds that sing among the branches do net dream they will ever grow old. Not a hint of future decay comes to any animal. Only the present has any fears for them. But man cannot hide from himself the fact of limitations. Even the child perceives that in the far distant time its steps will totter, its form be bowed, and its face wrinkled. The youth knows that enthusiasm will wane as the evening of life deepens. The strong man is aware that the days of decline are nearing. The house in its every part seems tumbling in pieces. The heart labours in beating, like a worn ,engine, with much noise and frequent calls for relief and repair. The thread of life, most delicate, is parting strand by strand, and the golden bowl which hung by it, in which the light has burned for fourscore years, is soon to be dashed in fragments. And so, whether it be the pitcher that no longer fetches the breath, or the wheel whose tiresome rounds of being are spent, and which has broken in upon itself, it is the end. Life has gone, aa death has come, and each to its own. The dust claims its kindred; the Lord His.
III. The curse of age is what the youth has invited. His own selfishness has robbed him of helpers. Indolence has clothed him with rags. Deceit has made all wary and suspicious of him. The cruel tongue has slain his defenders. Profligacy has consumed flesh and body, surviving a little to be tortured. Hawthorne said, The infirmities that come with old age may be the interest on the debt of nature, which should have been more seasonably paid--often the interest will be a heavier payment than the principal. It will always be heavier for the bad.
IV. The religious life is the true life. Man by birth and development is allied to God. He fills out the meaning of existence only by heeding the laws and impulses which the Lord gives. He shows his greatness above the creation simply by his regard for ideas and things which are not visibly one with it. Since it changes and perishes, he reaches up and grasps the unchangeable and eternal. He would not be the most distinguished object in it if he were not too distinguished for it, said the illustrious German. Along his divinely marked way he finds joy springing out of duties performed. The zest of building for immortality makes his slightest deed sublime.
V. The religious life prepares for the judgment. Here it would seem is the key to this treatise. Revelation must adapt itself to the capacity of the receiver. A gross mind and heart is only gradually led to more perfect Conceptions. Material things and events filled the vision of them to whom the message from heaven first came. Rewards and punishments were of a very practical nature. Food, offspring, and long life were offered to the dutiful and taken from the disobedient. It would pay to heed the commands of Jehovah. The Judge is the Lord, who has sustained and tested and known the doings of every one. The wicked must come with his daring crimes and his hidden deeds and answer therefor. That tribunal need have no terrors for the obedient. It is their vindication before any who questioned or exulted over them. And all shall see that the adjustments of another life will perfectly satisfy the inconsistencies of this. (Monday Club Sermons.)
Remember thy Creator
I. Remember--whom? Thy Creator. As we are indebted to God for our life, and health, and for the powers of the mind, it is most proper that we should remember Him. Will you not--
1. Remember Him and pray?
2. Remember Him and be thankful?
3. Remember Him and be obedient?
4. Remember Him and be watchful?
II. Remember--when?
1. Youth is the time to store the memory. Life is now comparatively free, and all the powers of body and mind are capable of easy development. Now is the time when you may get into the habit of thinking about God, and into the habit of praying, and into the habit of acting from principle and for the glory of God. If you form the habit now it will ever after be easier to do right.
2. Youthful piety will save you from many sins and sorrows.
3. Youthful piety will ennoble and beautify your life.
III. Remember--why? Because evil days will come, and a time draw nigh when you will find no pleasure in good things. O how sad it will be if you let the days of youth pass by without giving your heart to Christ! (W. Whale.)
The remembrance of our Creator
I. What is implied in the injunction to remember God as our creator.
1. We are to remember that He has made us, and not we ourselves.
2. We are to bear in mind the superintending care of His providence and the riches of His grace.
3. We are to remember the authority with which, by the right of creation, God is invested; an authority to call us to account for the use we make of the privileges bestowed upon us. To Him we are responsible, and He will bring us into judgment.
II. Some reasons why we ought to remember our creator in the days of our youth.
1. And here it may fairly be demanded, Can we remember Him at too early a period? Reason as well as Revelation point out to us that the service of God cannot begin too soon.
2. This duty is most practicable in youth.
3. A third reason for remembering our Creator in youth is the uncertainty of life.
4. The remembrance of our Creator in youth will provide a remedy for the evils of life,
5. The only remaining argument I shall mention for early piety is derived from the honour which will thus accrue to religion, and the effect it will have in promoting the glory of God.
III. The means of attaining and preserving the remembrance of our Creator.
1. Since we are by nature strangers to divine truth, let us be ready to receive instruction from those who are wiser and better than ourselves.
2. Let us search the Scriptures. They are the revelation of our Creator. They will not only remind us of Him, but they contain all the knowledge of Him which it is essential to acquire, and are able to make us wise unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
3. Let it be a fixed principle to avail ourselves of all other means of grace, of the ministration of the Word of God, of public and domestic worship.
4. Let us endeavour to form a habit of seeing the Creator in all things; of recognizing the hand of God in the works of nature and the course of events. If we make a right use of these great volumes which are open before us, we shall everywhere behold the agency of the Almighty.
5. We must keep a strict watch over our hearts and our conduct. (Christian Observer.)
Remembering God
That word remember, standing where it does, must mean a great deal. It must mean to keep in mind the thought of God as the shaping, constructive, sovereign influence in life. The idea of beauty the artist paints by; the idea of the special harvest the farmer tills the fields by; the chart the mariner sails by. So of the idea of God. We are to think by it; we are to feel in reference to it; we are to work under its inspiration; we are to live by the power of its life and incentive. The idea of God is illumination and power. It is interpretation, and it is the power of realization. Now for two or three thoughts urging us to this practice in youth.
1. First of all, youth is educable. If a man wants to be a mechanic, or a merchant, or a physician, he begins early. It is essential to the trade or the profession that it shall be so. If a man wants to Christianize his life, to make that life religious, ought he not to begin early, in analogy with other things which he does? Just as the hot wax receives the impression clearly and retains it lastingly, so the impressionable mind of youth receives the stamp of the character of God more clearly and retains it more lastingly than in the subsequent periods of life.
2. Then consider, too, how simple life is when we are young. Look at the business man of forty, and see how his life has left its original simplicity. He is no longer simply a son and a brother, a friend and a student: he is himself a husband and a father, and a business man with a hundred cares and responsibilities. His life has branched out into wonderful complexity. It is intricate, complicated, hard to manage. Now, suppose that the man of forty begins to be religious. How difficult is his problem--to take that single force of the grand idea of God and send it through all these relationships in which he stands! It is like an attempt to thread not one, or ten, or a score, but a hundred needles at once. But, if the man begins early, it is different. He is a son; and he lets the love of God bear upon that relation, and seeks for the power of God to realize the meaning of it. He is a brother, a friend, a student. These are the simple relations in which he stands. Let him bring these under the divine illumination, open his heart to the power that leads him to realize the divine meaning of existence. Then, when his life enlarges, it will be a process of assimilation. Life will be simply the growth of godliness.
3. Then, again, if a man wants to make any high attainment in religion, he must begin early. What is religion but the consecration and the perfection of human life? And, if it be the consecration and perfection of human life, ought not the passion of a mans heart to be for eminence in it?
4. If we begin early, we may expect finally the consummate blessing and power of the religious life--spontaneity in work, spontaneity in noble views of God, in noble views of men and of the future of the world, spontaneity in goodness. (G. A. Gordon.)
Human life
I. The successive stages of human life.
1. Here we have the growing stage. The days of thy youth. Beautiful period this! It is the opening spring, full of germinating force and rich promise.
2. Here we have the declining stage. While the evil days come, etc. The world, looked at through the eye of age, is a very different thing from what it is viewed through the eye of youth. There is no glow in the landscape, no streaks of splendour in the sky; there is a deep shadow resting over all.
3. Here we have the dissolving stage. Man goeth to his long home. The grave is the long home of his body, eternity the long home of his soul.
II. The sovereign obligation of human life. There is an obligation which runs through all these stages, meets man in every step he takes. What is it? Remember now thy Creator. Two things are necessary to the discharge of this obligation.
1. An intellectual knowledge of the Creator. Three ideas are included in our conception of this transcendent character.
(1) Absolute origination. We think of Him as one antecedent to all other existences, existing in the unbroken solitudes of immensity, having in Himself the archetypes of all that ever has been, of all that ever will be; and the power of giving them forms of existence distinct from Himself.
(2) Absolute proprietorship. What He has created is His unconditionally, and for ever His. All souls are mine, etc. There is yet another idea included in the conception of Creator.
(3) Absolute obedience. If we all have and are His, ought we not in all things to be regulated by His will? Ought not His will to be our sovereign law in all things?
2. A heart sympathy with Him. What has God done for us, and what has He promised to do? Let the heart be duly impressed with gratitude for the past, and with hope for the future, and we shall assuredly remember Him.
III. The choicest period of human life. Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth.
1. It is the best period for cultivating a godly life. Lusts lie comparatively dormant, habits are unformed, prejudices have attained no power; the conscience is susceptible, the heart is tender, the intellect is free, etc.
2. The cultivation of a godly life in youth will bless every subsequent period of being. Through manhood, through old age, through death, into eternity, and through all future times a godly life will ensure true blessedness of being. (Homilist.)
The irreligious youth
Remember now thy Creator.
I. Because those powers of the human spirit to which religion appeals are exercised and developed now. The youth cannot be in the same position as the infant of days, who cannot think, nor judge, nor will. The rational youth must stand on a footing different from the idiot youth. If God calls us to pursue a certain course, all who have faculties to pursue it, are, by virtue of the possession of these powers, under obligation; the possession of the powers being alike the foundation and the evidence of the claim.
II. Because Gods claims exist now. Thy Creator.
III. Because the season of youth is fleeting now. Infancy is gone; childhood is no more; but youth, even if but just come, is really going. Soon, therefore, it will be impossible to the irreligious youth to be a religious youth. He may become a godly man, but still he will have been an ungodly youth.
IV. Because days of evil are coming now.
1. The evil day of confirmed sinfulness is coming. Acts repeated, and states cherished, are habits. Oh, how mysterious and how mighty is the force of habit! It is a silken thread transformed by invisible processes into an iron chain.
2. The evil day of multiplied temptation is coming. The body daily grows, and with its growth may spring up some fleshly lust--it may be drunkenness, or grosser vice. The mind is gradually developed, and with its development may arise some spiritual temptation--it may be deceitfulness--scepticism--infidelity. Satan is concentrating force and power to stamp deep and clear this die--a sinful character.
3. The evil day of trouble is coming.
V. Death may be very near, and is surely coming now.
VI. Old age brings corresponding infirmities; and if it come to you, it will seem to have come but now. The evening of life is a common phrase for old age; let not this poetical phraseology mislead you. If old age be, in its calmness and stillness, like evening, remember that it has the duskiness and the chilliness of evening. Years blunt the bodily senses, and equally the susceptibilities of the soul. Who, therefore, in his right mind, will wait for old age, that in it he may work out his own salvation with fear and trembling?
VII. The greatest facilities exist now. I speak now of external advantages, I refer to the state of the spirit, and I assert that more aid is furnished by the state of the soul in youth than by the state of the soul in any other period of life. Habits are not so confirmed in youth as in more advanced years, because the confirmation of habits requires time, and much time has not yet been given.
VIII. Religion will give most joy, and it will secure most usefulness if commenced now.
1. It will give most pleasure. There is not so much to unlearn as when persons become godly late in life; and unlearning is an irksome process. If there be any pleasure in religion, the amount taken is increased by being tasted early.
2. It will secure most usefulness. Youthful piety exerts an influence peculiar to itself, and God seems to choose for usefulness chiefly those who are godly while young.
IX. Ruin may overtake a youth now. If ruin overtake you, it were better for you to have died in infancy; nay, it were better never to have been born. (S. Martin.)
Young persons exhorted to remember their Creator
I. The duty here enjoined.
1. The object is our Creator.
(1) There was a period when we had no being; had we always been in existence we could have had no Creator; but on the limited period of mortal life, both as it regards its commencement and close, the Scriptures are explicit (Job_8:9; Psa_39:5; Jam_4:14).
(2) We have a Creator, and therefore did not make ourselves; could we have given ourselves existence, the duty enjoined in the text would have referred only to ourselves; but no being can make itself, as that would suppose it acted prior to its existence, which is a manifest contradiction.
(3) Our Creator is God; this is one of the first truths of revealed religion (Gen_1:27; Gen_6:7; Deu_4:32; Mal_2:10).
2. The act of remembrance. To remember our Creator implies--
(1) A previous knowledge of Him. He has made Himself known unto us by the works of His hands (Psa_19:1; Rom_1:20); by the acts of His providence (Psa_104:27-28; Mat_10:30; Act_17:28). But more especially by the manifestations of His grace (Exo_34:6). As a God of grace He pardons our sins, renews our hearts; and to know Him in this character is to have a consciousness that He has actually done this for us. This knowledge can be obtained only by a Divine influence (Mat_11:27; Mat_16:17).
(2) The frequent recollection and actual consciousness of His divine presence; to set the Lord always before us, and to consider Him as a Being essentially present in all places. This remembrance should be--
(a) Reverential; His eternal Godhead, terrible justice, and wonderful acts should inspire us with the most profound sentiments of veneration.
(b) Affectionate; His infinite love in the gift of His Son, and His amazing mercy in pardoning sin, should lead us to remember Him with feelings of the most ardent attachment.
(c) Operative; we should evince that we do remember Him, by shunning all that He abhors, and following all that He enjoins.
II. The peculiar period when this duty is to be practised--Now, in the days of thy youth.
1. Because He is the most worthy object for our remembrance; and that which is most worthy has the first and highest claims upon our attention.
2. Because such a remembrance, at this time, is peculiarly acceptable to God. O how lovely is youthful piety! Under the law, the first-fruits and the first-born were Gods sole property; and the buds of being, and the earliest blossoms of youth, are the most acceptable sacrifice that we can offer to our Creator; and shall we neglect these offerings?
3. Because of the comparative ease with which it may be performed.
4. Because the present is the only certain time we can command for doing it; the past is gone, the future may never be ours.
5. From principles of justice: He is our Creator, and therefore justly claims the whole of our service.
6. From principles of gratitude; we owe our all to Him; tie remembered us in our low estate; He still remembers us; on the wings of every hour we read His patience. O what a mighty debt of gratitude is due to Him!
7. From principles of self-interest; to remember our Creator is the way to true wisdom, substantial honour, and unfading happiness. (Sketches of Four Hundred Sermons.)
Days of youth
We have here--
1. The successive stages of human life.
2. The primary obligation of human life. To remember the Creator. This remembrance of the Creator should be intelligent, loving, practical, permanent.
3. The choicest period of human life. The days of thy youth.
I. The days of youth are days of peculiar illusion. They live in romance. Their theory of life bears but little resemblance to stern reality. Their blooming landscape is but a mirage creation of their own fancy. Look at their views--
1. As to lifes happiness. In the home which they have painted for themselves there is no cloud, no storm, no blight. But how different they find the reality as they move on through the different stages to old age.
2. As to lifes length. Most young people put their death a long way further off than it is.
3. As to lifes improvability. Most youths feel that they ought to be religious, and they adjourn the work of spiritual culture till a time in the future, which they consider will be more convenient. But such a time never comes.
II. The days of youth are days of peculiar temptation.
1. Credulity. They are unsuspicious and confiding, and with minds but partially informed with the facts of existence, and untrained to the weighing of evidence, they are ready to accept almost any plausible proposition, especially when it is agreeable to their desires.
2. Carnality. In the first stages of human life animalism is the regnant power. All the pleasures are the pleasures of the sense.
3. Vanity. The conceit of youth is proverbial. They are vain of their appearance, their talents, if they have no wealth or ancestry.
4. Gregariousness. Strong is the tendency in young natures to follow and to blend with others.
III. The days of youth are days of peculiar value. Whilst all the years and hours of mans short life are of priceless value the time of youth is pre-eminently precious; its hours are golden. It is pre-eminently valuable--
1. Because of its fleetness. Youth, says John Foster, is not like a new garment which we can keep fresh by wearing sparingly, we must wear it daily, and it wears fast away. It is a flower that soon withereth.
2. Because of its possibilities. The possibilities of flowers, fruit, affluent orchards, and waving fields of golden harvest are all shut up in the spring; so it is with youth, the greatness of manhood is in youth. He who wishes to be a great citizen, orator, saint, must begin in youth. (Homilist.)
Youthful piety: described and inculcated
I. To say wherein youthful piety consists. It consists, you will find, in a ready, filial, and grateful remembrance of God--a remembrance which induces acquiescence in the Divine will and subjection to it.
II. To obviate some objections to it.
1. It is time enough yet, say some, for youth to think seriously and to be pious. This objection proceeds on the supposition that youth have yet many days and years to come; but how know we what a day or even an hour may bring forth?
2. Youth is the time of enjoyment, say others: young people should enjoy themselves. True; and is there nothing to enjoy in the favour and friendship of our Creator? Nothing to enjoy in freedom from the guilt and from the power of sin? Nothing to enjoy in being good and doing good? And is there any time comparable to youth for the enjoyment of these things?
3. Religion is very well and suitable for old age and infirmity is an objection to youthful piety nearly allied to the foregoing. So it is: but is it, therefore, unsuitable to health and youth?
4. We can repent and be religious some future time, will young people themselves sometimes say, when exhorted to remember now their Creator. But to repent when we will is not in our power. Repentance is the gift of Jesus Christ, and He may righteously withhold to-morrow what we ungratefully refuse to-day.
5. Piety induces gloom and melancholy, it is often further urged. Who are they that say piety induces depression and gloom of spirit? Not the pious, but such as never felt the power of godliness or experienced the joy of faith. Are they, then, to-be believed who tell us of what they cannot possibly be judges?
6. Piety interferes with genteel and polite demeanour, it has, too, been said. This objection betrays in those who advance it great ignorance of Scripture and of scriptural character. No: the Gospel which we preach inculcates morals the most correct and chaste, tempers the most gracious, manner the most affable, behaviour the most courteous.
7. It will incur reproach, and possibly it may injure a young mans reputation; and consequently also may retard his advancement in life to be pious too soon, is the final objection to early piety we shall choose to notice. How sordid must be the views of a parent who seeks first for his children any object below the kingdom of God and His righteousness! And how must the honour which cometh of man be desired and valued above the honour which cometh of God only where there exists the fear of disrepute on account of religion!
III. To state some reasons for it.
1. It is reasonable in itself--that a creature should remember his Creator; a redeemed creature his Redeemer; and an immortal creature that immortality which awaits him. We execrate ingratitude one towards another: is there nothing offensive in an ungrateful forgetfulness of our Maker?
2. God requires it. Yet, ye have robbed Me, may God justly say to those of our youth who forget Him and refuse to Him the homage of their hearts.
3. The mind is more susceptible of impression when young.
4. Piety in youth gives a proper bias to the affections.
5. The world will be viewed in a true light.
6. Piety in youth lays a foundation for placidity and calmness in age.
7. Jesus Christ, our God and Saviour, will be more abundantly honoured by the devotion of our first years unto His service.
IV. To recommend it earnestly to the young among you. (W. Mudge, B. A.)
The days of thy youth
I. What these days are in themselves.
1. They are days most favourable for remembering the Lord. It was an appointment of the olden time that the manna was to be gathered in the morning, and for any that waited till late in the day there was none, embodying a lesson the young may well remember. The promise of the Lord is to them that seek Him early that they shall find Him.
2. They are the days of special privilege and promise. Think of some of the inspired biographies of some of the most eminent and what they show us of the days of their youth. Joseph, for instance, whose early days must have revealed the kindling purity and nobility that made his life such a power and his very bones an inspiration. Think of Samuel in the days of his youth, in which the mothers training and the Lords call show what shall be, as in after days his name stands upon the record of the worthies as Samuel among them that call upon His name. Turn to the Hebrew youths in Babylon, and, captives as they were, you see the power that gathered around them as in their self-denial they put aside the delicacies of the kings table rather than incur the possibility of sin, and braved the terrors of the lions den and the fiery furnace that they might be faithful to God.
3. The days of youth are days that are most receptive and most retentive of what may influence them. It follows from this that there should be all possible care that the good should be received and the evil excluded. It is what is first taken into the mind that sinks the deepest and lasts the longest.
II. What they shall be if rightly used.
1. They shall be days of real and rich blessing.
(1) In order to this, however, they must be days of response to the Divine call.
(2) There must also be the full acceptance of the Lord Jesus Christ as your portion. It may involve self-denial, and it will; the Lord lays it down at the very beginning of His service; but that is a noble exercise for the young under any conditions, and in connection with the service of the Lord will bring a rich blessing.
2. Being this, the days of your youth will be days of gracious promise for all the days after. The inspired description of the course is as the shining light, and not that only, but that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.
III. The right use should be made of these days at once.
1. It should, because of the proneness there is in youth to put off these things to the future, and how it will grow upon the man.
2. It should, too, because there are so many will seek to lead you into neglect and folly.
3. It should, too, because it will fill you with the divine portion from the beginning.
4. It should be, also, because it will not only give you a blessing for yourselves, but make you a blessing to others. (J. P. Chown.)
On the advantages of an early piety
I. The nature of the act or duty here enjoined; which is, to remember our Creator. To remember God is frequently, and in our most serious and retired thoughts, to consider that there is such a Being as God is; of all power and perfection, who made us and all other things, and hath given us laws to live by suitable to our natures; and will call us to a strict account for our observance or violation of them, and accordingly reward or punish us; very often in this world, and to be sure in the other. It is to revive often in our minds the thoughts of God and of His infinite perfections, and to live continually under the power and awe of these apprehensions.
II. What there is in the notion of God as our creator that is more particularly apt to awaken and oblige men to the remembrance of God.
1. Creation is of all others the most sensible and obvious argument of a Deity. Other considerations may work upon our reason and understanding, but this doth, as it were, bring God down to our senses.
2. The creation is a demonstration of Gods infinite power. And this consideration is apt to work upon our fear, the most wakeful passion of all others in the soul of man.
3. The creation is a demonstration of the goodness of God to His creatures. This consideration of God, as our Creator, doth naturally suggest to our minds that His goodness brought us into being; and that, if being a benefit, God is the Fountain and Author of it.
III. The reason of the limitation of this duty more especially to this particular age of our lives. Now, in the days of thy youth.
1. To engage young persons to begin this great and necessary work of religion betimes, and as soon as ever they are capable of taking it into consideration.
2. To engage young persons to set about this work presently, and not to defer it and put it off to the future, as most are apt to do.
3. And how much reason there is to press both these considerations upon young persons I shall endeavour to show in the following particulars.
(1) Because in this age of our lives we have the greatest and most sensible obligation to remember God our Creator: in the days of our youth, when the blessing and benefit of life is new, and the memory of it fresh upon our minds.
(2) The reason will be yet stronger to put us upon this, if we consider that, notwithstanding the great obligation which lies upon us to remember our Creator in the days of our youth, we are most apt at that time of all others to forget Him. For that which is the great blessing of youth is also the great danger of it, I mean, the health and prosperity of it; and, though men have then least reason, yet they are most apt to forget God in the height of pleasure and in the abundance of all things.
(3) Because this age is of all others the fittest and best to begin a religious course of life. And this does not contradict the former argument, though it seems to do so. For as it is true of children that they are most prone to be idle, and yet fittest to learn, so, in the case we are speaking of, both are true; that youth is an age wherein we are too apt, if left to ourselves, to forget God and religion, and yet at the same time fittest to receive the impressions of it.
(4) This is the most acceptable time of all others, because it is the first of our age. Our blessed Lord took great pleasure to see little children Come unto Him; an emblem of the pleasure He takes that men should list themselves betimes in His service. St. John was the youngest of all the disciples, and our Saviour had a very particular kindness and affection for him; for he is said to be the disciple whom Jesus loved.
(5) This age of our life may, for anything we know, be the only time we may have for this purpose; and if we cast off the thoughts of God and defer the business of religion to old age, intending, as we pretend, to set about it at that time, we may be cut off before that time comes, and turned into hell with the people that forget God. (J. Tillotson, D. D.)
The duty and advantages of early piety
1. Though we should begin to serve God even from our youth, our earliest service comes long after His favours. Before ever we come to years of discretion we have contracted a vast debt of gratitude to our Creator and Preserver; a debt which might make us very uneasy, because we can never discharge it, if there were not a pleasure in endeavouring to pay it, and if such endeavour were not all that God requires at our hands.
2. We should serve God in our youth, because that is the way to make the practice of our duty easy to us; and because, if we set out wrong, it is very hard afterwards to amend. It is true that persons have repented, though late, and have delivered themselves from the bondage of sin. There are examples of it, that none may despair; and those examples are few, that none may presume.
3. We should serve God in our youth, because, as virtue will have the first possession of us, we shall not be able to change for the worse without an uncommon resolution to do ill. The first love is usually the strongest and the most lasting.
4. Youth is also the time when, on several accounts, we are better able to serve God than we are in a more advanced age, if we have neglected our duty before. There are good qualities and favourable dispositions which often accompany it. Thus, in youth properly educated, there is a sincerity not yet lost by the practice of deceit and dissimulation; there is a modesty which is both a guard to virtue and a check to sinful actions; there is a respect for parents and masters, the natural result of a state of dependence; there is a flexibility and aptness to receive instruction, which lessens as we grow up, if self-love, pride, and conceit increase faster than understanding and judgment, and make us hasty, obstinate, and perverse; there is, lastly, a lively heat of temper, an activity both of body and mind, which, as it is dangerous when it is employed in the service of vice, so it can make a speedy progress in virtue.
5. Yet youth, with all its advantages, hath its disadvantages, and is the time when we are the most tempted to forget God; and therefore ought this precept to be inculcated upon that thoughtless age.
6. If there be joy in heaven over a sinner who repents, and God in the Scripture be represented under the image of the father in the parable, running forth to meet and to embrace his lost son as soon as he returns, yet it is very reasonable to conclude that the son who, from his youth, serves and never leaves his heavenly Father, must be dearer to Him. After we have sought happiness where happiness is not to be found, then to condemn our folly, to consider, to amend, and to bring forth the fruits of repentance is a wise part. But it is a wiser and a more generous behaviour to serve God before we have served other masters, not driven to Him, as to a last refuge, by afflictions, or disappointments, or by an immediate sense of danger, or by a weariness and dislike of the world.
7. Another reason for which youth should be well spent is the uncertainty of life.
8. We should serve God in our earlier days with a view to the ensuing days, which we may expect in the course of our life. Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, says Solomon, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them. They will certainly come sooner or later, unless sudden death prevent them; and, therefore, if we be wise, we shall in our youth, before they overtake us, prepare to meet them, and provide ourselves all the assistance which we can procure to lessen those evils, and to support and comfort us under them. And what can they be, unless the favour of God, and the sense of a life spent in laudable industry, in acquiring useful knowledge, in discharging our duty to our Creator, in doing kind offices to our neighbour, in amending our faults, and improving in virtue? These are a treasure of which force and fraud cannot deprive us; which lies out of the reach of all enemies and all accidents. The calamities which fall upon us will then lose much of their weight; old age will be unto us only a nearer approach to everlasting youth; and we shall meet death, if not with cheerfulness, at least with decency and resignation.
9. To these convincing reasons for an early piety I shall only add this, that it is in no respect hard and burthensome. Youth is cheerful; and so is religion. (J. Jortin, D. D.)
Early piety
I. It is the first advantage of early piety, and our first obligation to cultivate it, that our duty to our heavenly father is thereby rendered easy and pleasing to us. That custom and practice render everything easy, and most things pleasant to us, is universally known and confessed; and will in a peculiar degree be found true of piety towards God. In this case, in addition to the delight naturally arising from the performance of what is familiar to us, we shall have on the same side the approbation of our own hearts; the pleasure of habit improved by the consciousness of duty.
II. The power and effects of custom will furnish yet another argument in favour of early piety; for they will show the danger of contracting opposite habits by showing the difficulty of correcting them. The reproaches of a wounded conscience, the conviction of having offended God, the anxiety to be restored to His favour, and the uncertainty whether that favour can now be deserved and obtained; all these considerations alarm and oppress the mind of him who is grown old in transgression; and form so many difficulties in the way of his returning to the hallowed paths of virtue and religion. He has, indeed, a double task to perform, to cease to do evil, and to learn to do well; and the abuse of his youth and health in the service of sin has left this task, with all its difficulties, to infirmity and old age.
III. It will be another recommendation of early piety, that it is likely to become the most acceptable to its object; because the most suitable to his character and our own. In youth is generally found a sincerity and simplicity of heart, which recommend every part of human duty, and especially our duty to Him to whom all hearts are open. In youth, while not yet corrupted by intercourse with a corrupt world, are generally observed a diffidence and modesty, which not only form a constant guard to purity and integrity, but which bid fair to ripen into humility and devotion. In youth we find the greatest aptness to learn.
IV. One unfortunate quality in our youth, however, too often counteracts these favourable dispositions, and retards their progress in piety. Too many of them are careless and thoughtless, apt to neglect the serious consideration of their Maker and His laws. Too many of them show a levity and fickleness of mind and temper, which disinclines them to the solemn offices of religion, and prevents the performance of those offices with due fervency and steadiness.
V. It is another recommendation of early piety, and another obligation to the practice of it, that we shall thereby discharge, as far as we are required to discharge it, a debt of gratitude and justice. The first tribute of our faculties is naturally due to Him who gave them. Children, then, should be early taught to meditate upon the blessings of their Maker.
VI. Our last recommendation of early piety shall be drawn from a very obvious, but very interesting, source, the shortness and uncertainty of human life. Youth is not only the most proper season to engage in the service of our God, but perhaps the only season that may be allowed us. (W. Barrow, LL. D.)
An old sermon for young hearers
I. What is it that Solomon counsels young people to remember? He says, thy Creator: but what about God does he desire his hearers to keep in mind?
1. His existence, as He proves it. And He proves it most clearly by creating us; He is our Creator: He made us, every one of us, and He now owns us for His possession.
2. Gods character, as He exhibits it. The heathen think God is cruel; so they insist He must be propitiated and pleased by bloody sacrifices.
3. Gods providence, as He exercises it. Not a moment passes without our having His care. There was one very pleasant story told among the ancients about a person called Erichthonius: they said he was very comely in his body, from the waist upwards, but he had his thighs and legs like the tail of an eel, small and deformed; for a long time he did not understand that he was different from the rest of mankind, but as soon as he became conscious of his hateful weakness, he grew so melancholy that God pitied him; and then He showed him, in a dream, what gave him a fresh and splendid idea; that is to say, this poor shapeless creature was the inventor of the chariot or carriage, whereby his own want could be supplied; so God benefited him, and so he became a benefactor himself to men. Once when this story was related to a child, she suddenly said: I suppose it is not true exactly; but if it had been, it would have been very kind, add lust like God to do it, too.
4. Gods Word, as He has revealed it. The Bible is a message sent directly from our Maker; so He expects us all, young and old, to read it, and find out what it means. The Scriptures do principally teach what we are to believe concerning God, and what duty God requires of man.
5. Gods Church, as He has organized it. He gave His only begotten Son that He might be made Head over all things to the Church, which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.
II. When, specially, are we to remember our creator? Now, in the days of thy youth.
1. In the beginning, remember that the young can be Christians. Why not? All they have to do is to come and ask Christ to take them, and make them His children.
2. Remember, therefore, that it is easier for young people to be Christians than it is for others; The spirit of religion is precisely that of a little child, to start with; and a religious career is exquisitely in accordance with a youthful disposition (Mat_18:8).
3. Remember, once again, that the young have often become Christians. In the Scriptures we have the account of Jeremiah, of Pauls sisters son, of Timothy, of John Mark. In the primitive Church the names come to us of Polycarp, who must have loved Christ when he was four years old; and Justin Martyr has often been quoted as saying that there were many boys and girls who had been considered disciples of the Lord in their childhood, and continued uncorrupted all their lives. Later in history, we know Jonathan Edwards was converted before he was seven, and Matthew Henry before he was eleven years old, Isaac Watts before he reached nine.
4. Remember that the young ought always to be Christians. Many are the children of faithful training and of many prayers. God is true to His covenant, and the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call. (C. S. Robinson, D. D.)
The warning not to forget God
We ought to mind this warning--
I. For the Lords sake. I wish I could mind God as my little dog minds me, said a little boy, looking thoughtfully at his shaggy friend--he always seems so pleased to mind, and I dont. That little dog obeyed his young master for his masters sake. He really loved him, and tried to show this love by the cheerful, ready way in which he obeyed him. This was the right thing for him to do; and it is just what God expects us to do.
II. For our own sake. When we really begin to remember God, and to keep His commandments, God says to each of us, as He said to the Israelites in old time--from this day will I bless you. And Gods blessing is worth more to us than all the world besides. Remember now thy Creator, was once said to a little boy. Not yet, said the boy, as he busied himself with his bat and ball; when I grow older I will think about it. The little boy grew to be a young man. Remember now thy Creator, his conscience said to him. Not yet, said the young man; I am now about to begin my trade; when I see my business prosper, I shall have more time than I can command now. His business did prosper. Remember now thy Creator, his conscience whispered to him. Not yet, said the man of business; my children must now have my care; when they are settled in life, I shall be better able to attend to the claims of religion. He lived to be a grey-headed old man. Remember now thy Creator, was the voice which conscience once more addressed to him. Not yet, was still his cry; I shall soon retire from business, and then I shall have nothing else to do but read and pray. Soon after this he died, without becoming a Christian. He put off to another time what he should have attended to when young, and that caused the loss of his soul. Those two little words--Not yet--were his ruin.
III. For the sake of others. Gods promise to Abraham, when he began to serve Him, was that he should be a blessing. And God says the same thing to all His people. And not only by our words, but by our actions, and by our prayers, we may be doing good, all the time, to those about us. (R. Newton, D. D.)
The young mans task
To them which are young Solomon shows what advantage they have above the aged; like a ship, which, seeing another ship sink before her, looks about her, pulls down her sail, turneth her course, and escapes the sands which would swallow her as they had done the other. So they which are young need not try the snares and allurements of the world, or the issues and effects of sin, which old men have tried before them, but take the trial and experience of others, and go a nearer way to obtain their wished desires. That is this, saith Solomon: if thou woutdst have any settled peace or heart joy in this vain or transitory world, which thou hast been seeking all the time since thou wert born, thou must remember thy Creator, which did make thee, which hath elected thee, which hath redeemed thee, which daily preserveth thee, which will for ever glorify thee. And as the kind remembrance of a friend doth recreate the mind, so to think and meditate upon God will supply thy thoughts, dispel thy grief, and make thee cheerful, as the sight of the ark comforted David; for joy, and comfort, and pleasure is where God is, as light, and cheerfulness, and beauty is where the sun is. Now if thou wouldst have this joy, and comfort, and pleasure to be long, and wouldst escape those thousand miseries, vexations, and vanities, which Solomon, by many weary and tedious trials, sought to make naked before thee, and yet held all but vanity when he had found the way, thou must remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth at the first spring-time, and then thy happiness shall be as long as thy life, and all thy thoughts while thou remainest on earth a foretaste of the glory of heaven. This is the sum of Solomons counsel. Can a child forget his father? Is not God our Father? Therefore, who is too young to remember Him, seeing the child doth know his father? As the deepest wounds had need to be first tended, so the unstablest minds have need to be first confirmed. In this extremity is youth, as Solomon shows them before he teacheth them; for in the last verse of the former chapter he calleth youth vanity, as if he should speak all evil in a word, and say that youth is even the age of sin. Therefore, when he had showed young men their folly under the name of vanity, like a good tutor he taketh them to school, and teacheth them their duty, Remember thy Creator, as though all sin were the forgetfulness of God; and all our obedience came from this remembrance, that God created us after His own image, in righteousness and holiness, to serve Him here for a while, and after to inherit the joys which He hath Himself, which, if we did remember, doubtless it would make us ashamed to think, and speak, and do as we are wont. It is an old saying, Repentance is never too late; but it is a true saying, Repentance is never too soon. Therefore, we are commanded to run that we may obtain (1Co_9:24), which is the swiftest pace of man. The cherubims were portrayed with wings before the place where the Israelites prayed (Exo_25:20), to show how quickly they went about the Lords business. The hound which runs but for the hare, girds forth so soon as he sees the hare start; the hawk which flieth but for the partridge, taketh her flight so soon as she spieth the partridge spring; so we should follow the word so soon as it speaketh, and come to our Master so soon as He calleth. If our children be deformed in their youth, we never look to see them well favoured; so if the mind be planted in sin, seldom any goodness buddeth out of that stock. For virtue must have a time to grow, the seed is sown in youth, which cometh up in age. Try thy strength but with one of thy sins, and see what shifts, what excuses, what delays it will find, and how it will importune thee to let it alone, as the devil tormented the child before he went out; if thou canst not discharge one vice that thou hast accustomed thyself unto, when all thy vices are become customs, how wilt thou wrestle with them? Therefore we bend the tree while it is a twig, and break the horse while he is a colt, and teach the dog while he is a whelp, and tame the eagle while he is young. Youth is like the day to do all our works in. For when the night of age cometh, then every man saith, I might have been learned, I might have been a teacher, I might have been like him, or him, but the harvest was past before I began to sow, and winter is come, now my fruit should ripe. Thus every man that is old saith, he cannot do that which he thought to do, and crieth with Solomon, Catechize the child in his youth, and he will remember it when he is old; so corrupt him in his youth, and he will remember that too. There be not many Lots, but many linger like Lot, loath to depart, until they see the fire burn. If the angel had not snatched him away, Lot had perished with Sodom for his delay. There be not five foolish virgins and five wise, but five for one knock when the door is shut. There be not many Simeons, but many as old as Simeon, which never yet embraced Christ in their hearts. They thought to repent before they were so old, yet now they dear for age, they are not old enough to repent yet. Is this to seek the kingdom of heaven first, or last, or not at all? Woe to the security, woe to the stubbornness, woe to the drowsiness of this age. (H. Smith.)
While the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them.
Preparation for old age
Old age is a distant port for which the whole human race start, toward which they steer. More than half perish at the commencement of the voyage. Thousands and thousands are born who should have had a right in life, but whose hold is so brittle, that the first wind shakes them, and they fall like untimely fruit. Some fall by accident, some in the discharge of duties which call them to offer up their lives as a sacrifice for the common weal. The greatest number, however, are deprived of a good old age by their own ignorance or by their own misconduct; and those that reach that old age too often find that it is a land of sorrow. Now old age was not designed to be mournful but beautiful. It m the close of a symphony, beautiful in its inception, rolling on grandly, and terminating in a climax of sublimity. It is harmonious and admirable, according to the Scheme of nature. The charms of infancy, the hopes of the spring of youth, the vigour of manhood, and the serenity and tranquillity, the wisdom and peace of old age--all these together constitute the true human life, with its beginning, middle, and end--a glorious epoch. Every one of us, but especially those who are beginning in life, is aiming at a serene and happy old age, and I propose to put before you some considerations which shall direct your attention to the methods of attaining it.
1. There are many physical elements which enter into the preparation for a profitable and happy old age. The human body is an instrument of pleasure and use, built for eighty years wear. His body is placed in a world adapted to nourish and protect it. Nature is congenial. There are elements enough of mischief in it, if a man pleases to find them out. A man can wear his body out as quickly as he pleases, destroy it if he will; but, after all, the great laws of nature are nourishing laws, and, comprehensively regarded, nature is the universal nurse, the universal physician of our race, guarding us against evil, warning us of it by incipient pains, setting up signals of danger--not outwardly, but inwardly--and cautioning us by sorrows and by pains for our benefit. Every immoderate draft which is made by the appetites and passions is so much sent forward to be cashed in old age. You may sin at one end, but God takes it off at the other. I do not object to mirth or gaiety, but I do object to any man making an animal of himself by living for the gratification of his own animal passions. Excess in youth, in regard to animal indulgences, is bankruptcy in old age. For this reason, I deprecate late hours, irregular hours, or irregular sleep. People ask me frequently, Do you think that there is any harm in dancing? No, I do not. There is much good in it. Do you, then, object to dancing parties? No; in themselves, I do not. But where unknit youth, unripe muscle, unsettled and unhardened nerves, are put through an excess of excitement, treated with stimulants, fed irregularly and with unwholesome food, surrounded with gaiety which is excessive, and which is protracted through hours when they should be asleep, I object, not because of the dancing, but because of the dissipation. But there are many that I perceive are wasting their lives and destroying their old age, not through their passions, but through their ambition, and in the pursuit of laudable objects. I know of many artists that are wearing out their lives, day after day, with preternatural excitement of the brain; yet their aims are transcendently excellent. I know of musicians that are wearing out, night and day; yet their ambition is upward and noble. They are ignorant that they are wearing out their body by the excitement of their brains. While alcoholic stimulants waste and destroy life, and prevent a happy old age, the same thing is also done by moral stimulants. The latter is not as beastly, but it is just as wasteful of health. Whatever prematurely wears out the thinking machinery, or destroys health prematurely, carries bankruptcy into old age.
2. There ought, also, to be wisdom in secular affairs, in the preparation by the young for the coming of old age. Foresight is a Christian virtue. Every man should make such provision for himself as that he shall not be dependent upon others. Provision for moderate comfort in old age is wise. It is far better than an ambition for immoderate riches, which too often defeats itself. If men were more moderate in their expectations; if, when they had obtained a reasonable competency, they secured that from the perils of commercial reverses, more men, I think, would go into old age serene and happy.
3. In looking upon old age, we are forcibly struck with the necessity of taking pains early, and all the way through life, to accumulate stores for social enjoyment. Sociability is a part of Christian duty. Every man should take great care not to cut himself off from the sympathies of human life. Old men should take care that they be not deprived of enjoyment in the society of the young; and if a man would derive comfort from the young in his old age, he must cultivate an attachment for the young in his early life. In youth and middle age you are to secure the provision that shall supply you in old age, if you are to be nourished and made happy on such joys as these. Be not, then, selfish in your youth. Grow to your fellow-men, instead of growing away from them, and strive to live more and more in sympathy with them and for them.
4. Let me speak of the intellectual resources that are to help you in old age. Education has a more important relation to manhood than it has to the making of your outside fortune. If you are to be a lawyer, a physician, a minister, or a teacher, you need an education in order to succeed in your calling; but if you belong to none of these callings, you need an education to succeed in your manhood. Education means the development of what is in man; and every man ought to be developed, not because he can make money thereby, but because he can make manhood thereby. Education is due to your manhood. Keep your lamp full of oil, and lay up such stores of intellectual provision, that when you go into old age, if one resource fails you, you can try another. If you have learned to look under your feet every day while young, and to cull the treasures of truth which belong to theology, natural history, and chemistry; if every fly has furnished you a study; if the incrustation of the frost is a matter of interest; if the trees that come in spring, and the birds that populate them, the flowers of the meadow, the grass of the field, the fishes that disport themselves in the water--if all of these are so many souvenirs of the working hand of your God, you will find, when you come into your old age, that you have great enjoyment therein. Let me, therefore, recommend you to commit much to memory. Oh, how much a man may store up against old age! What a price is put into the hands of the young wherewith to get wisdom! What provisions for old age do they squander and throw away! It is a great thing so to have lived that the best part of life shall be its evening. October, the ripest month of the year, and the richest in colours, is a type of what old age should be.
5. I have reserved for the last the most important, namely, the spiritual, preparation for old age. It is a beautiful thing for a man, when he comes into old age, to have no more preparation to make. If piety is the garment you have worn through a long and virtuous life, you may stand in your old age in the certainty of faith, waiting only that you may pass from glory to glory. A part of this spiritual preparation consists, I think, in living all the time with the distinct consciousness that our life is a joined one; that the best part of it is that which lies beyond; and that we are not to live for the life that lies between one and eighty, but for that which lies between one and eternity. The habit of associating all your friends and friendships with this future life, while it will afford you great comfort and strength all the way through life, will give its choicest fruits and benefits in old age. As you grow old, childhoods companions die around you every year; but if you have been living a true Christian life, although the world may seem desolate for a time, yet your thought is this: My companions, my fellow-workers, have gone before me; I am left alone in the dreary world, but am every day being brought closer and closer to that world of everlasting blessedness. One has gone before; another has gone; the wife of my bosom, my eldest child, one after another of my children, and of their children, have gone; one after another of my neighbours and the friends of my youth have gone, and I am left behind; but I am close upon their steps. They are all there waiting for me. I have but a few days to wait, and I shall be blessed again with their high and holy society. (H. W. Beecher.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain Ecc_12:1. Thy Creator.] The Hebrew word is in the…
CRITICAL NOTES.—
Ecc_12:1. Thy Creator.] The Hebrew word is in the plural form, denoting the fulness and wealth of the Divine nature. While the evil days come not.] The time of joyless old age as contrasted with the glad season of youth.
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Ecc_12:2. While the sun, or the light, or the stars be not darkened.] The separate mention of the sun and light is not to be considered as tautology. Aben Ezra explains that by the light is signified the morning light, which, though identical with that proceeding from the sun, is yet poetically different. The darkening of these natural lights signifies the diminishing of joy and the coming of the season of adversity. (Isa_13:10, Amo_8:9, Eze_32:7.) Nor the clouds return after the rain.] A description of what often happens, in those countries, during the rainy season of winter. After a great discharge of rain, the clouds gather again, the signal for another storm. One trouble follows closely upon another.
Ecc_12:3. The keepers of the house shall tremble.] The human body, being the habitation of the soul, is often compared to a house or tent. (Job_4:19, Wis_9:15, Isa_38:12, 2Co_5:1, 2Pe_1:13.) The description given here is that of a rich mansion or castle, not that of an ordinary house. It is a house having the necessary things of war and luxury; soldiers to defend it and keep watch on the turrets; servants for attendance, and to prepare food for a large household. The furniture and surroundings are those of a magnificent and lordly dwelling—the hanging lamps, the golden bowl, the splendid fountain. (Ecc_12:6.) By “the keepers of the house” are signified the arms, one of whose chief uses is defence. In old age they become weak and tremulous. And the strong men shall bow themselves.] These are the legs which, from failing strength, bend under the weight of years. And the grinders cease because they are few.] The “millers” or “grinders” are the teeth, which in old age become few. They cease, in the sense of failing in ability to perform their proper function. In Hebrew, the form of the word is feminine, in allusion to the custom by which the grinding for the household was performed by female slaves. And those that look out of the windows be darkened.] Not ordinary windows, but some opening in a lofty part, such as a turret. The castle, which would have its “strong men,” would also have its watchers on the heights. These answer to the eyes, which are placed aloft as on a watch-tower. Dimness of sight is the common infirmity of old age.
Ecc_12:4. And the doors shall be shut in the streets.] Some expositors say that by “the doors” the mouth is intended. But this is scarcely likely, as the mouth had been sufficiently described before. The description answers better to the ears, for a double organ is plainly signified, and one by which we hold intercourse with the outer world. When the sound of the grinding is low.] This refers not to the failure of the powers of mastication, but to the failure of hearing. The old man but feebly hears the most familiar household sounds, such as those of the maids grinding corn. And he shall rise up at the voice of the bird.] In allusion, probably, to the sleeplessness of old men,
Ecc_12:5. Afraid of that which is high.] Referring to the difficulty which an old man feels in ascending a hill. Fears shall be in the way.] The smallest dangers are magnified by his weakness till they become formidable. The almond tree shall flourish.] The almond tree flourishes in the midst of winter, and bears its blossoms on a leafless stem. These blossoms, notwithstanding their red colour, have, as they fall, the appearance of white snow-flakes. Dry, bleak, barren old age, with its silvery hair, is thus represented. The grasshopper shall be a burden.] Some explain this of their singing and chirping, which may easily annoy the old man. Others—taking the word in the strictly literal sense of locust—say that the reference is to these as an article of food which is too strong for the impaired digestion of the aged. Others, again, say that they represent that which devours, hereby signifying those forces which are hostile to life. Various other interpretations are given, more or less fanciful, but all are foreign to the simplicity of the figure. Here, it will be found that the meaning that would occur to the simplest reader is the best. The old man cannot bear the least weight. Desire shall fail.] Every kind of desire, whether it be the appetite for food, or that of the sensual passions. Because man goeth to his long home.] Lit. “to his eternal house.” This is inserted parenthetically—all these things are signs that life is shortly about to cease. The expression is found in Tob_3:6, and was familiar to Roman literature. As the word rendered “eternal” also signifies the world, it may be that the idea of time is not prominent here, and that we have but a form of the phrase “the other world.”
Ecc_12:6. Or ever the silver cord be loosed.] Man’s living organism is here described by a new figure. It is now a golden lamp, hanging by a silver cord. Hereby is signified the thread of life, and that life is a noble and precious thing. Or the golden bowl be broken.] The vessel containing the oil which supports the flame. This answers to the brain, the organ of the noblest functions of man, and also the source of that stimulus by which all the processes of the body are carried on. Or the pitcher be broken at the fountain.] This gives a different idea from the golden bowl, and evidently refers to that organ which draws nourishment from something outside the body. Like the broken pitcher, the lungs are no longer able to draw in the vital air. Or the wheel broken at the cistern.] The same figure as the last, but representing a different part of the arrangement for drawing water—the cistern wheel for raising and lowering the bucket. Life is represented under the image of a wheel in constant motion. This, probably, suggested Jas_3:6, “The wheel of nature.”
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Ecc_12:1-7
INCITEMENTS TO EARLY PIETY
The Royal Preacher now leaves speculation, as leading to no substantial result, and turns, with better hopes, to practical matters. He had observed much of this scene of man, and thought deeply upon the mysteries of life and destiny; but he has no brilliant discovery of ultimate wisdom to announce which could settle these questions. He is more inclined to give those few and simple counsels which are far more profitable for himself and for all who hear him. A man always returns gratefully to these when he has grown tired of the conflict of thought and controversy. Thus the Epistles of “Paul the Aged” deal more with the “faithful sayings” than with the deep things of doctrine. Experience teaches a man to rely only upon what is sure. As a master in the school of heavenly wisdom, Solomon calls his young friends around him, exhorting and entreating them to early piety. He lays before them those motives and reasons which commend the fear of God to youth.
I. It is a Rational Duty. (Ecc_12:1.) The whole of what we understand by piety is made to consist of the remembrance of our Creator. Nor is this too narrow a basis: it really includes all duty. The fact that God is our Creator is the foundation fact upon which lies all what we know and feel, or are capable of. Practically, to recognise our relationship to God herein is the sum of all duty. If God is our Creator, He will make provision for our sustenance, for our preservation, for our spiritual education and improvement. After the reflection, “Thy hands have made me and fashioned me,” how natural is the prayer, “give me understanding that I may learn thy commandments.” (Psa_119:73.) To remember God is to keep Him always before us, to be mindful of what He is, to obey His will, and to pay Him thanks. It is like the son’s remembrance of his father’s home, bringing back tender associations fresh to his mind, acting as a restraint from evil ways, and strengthening the motives of filial duty. God as our Creator has certain rights which we must acknowledge. The only rational service for man is to do what is right in accordance with the relations in which he is placed. This makes early piety the only consistent and reasonable course. All late coming to the knowledge of a God is a culpable forgetfulness. Though the mercy of God be not hereby overtasked, there is in this tardy recognition of duty something ungracious.
1. God has a right to our entire and life-long service. The obligation to the loving service of our Creator never ceases for a moment, but always remains with us. Why should we either heedlessly thrust that obligation aside, or keep it in abeyance until we are sated with the world’s pleasures, and fondly hope to return to it as a last resource when all else has failed? The service of God should fill the whole area of duty, and the whole course of our time. The true and complete model of the religious life—God’s ideal of humanity—is that which was manifested in Christ, whose whole life was devoted to His “Father’s business.” In that life there were no violent changes, no painful struggles to recover lost ground; but from the earliest dawn of thought and feeling, duty was accepted, and the communication with Heaven kept open. The perfection of this model should not appal us, for it is our duty to make as near an approach to it as possible. “The measure of Christ” is the limit to which we ought to tend, though that limit stretches so far beyond us.
2. God has a right to our constant love and gratitude. His character is such as to demand and win our love. He does not use the instruments of terror to lash us into a tender regard for Himself, but seeks to attract us by His loving kindness. Therefore, our love to Him should be deep, simple, and free, as nature. In O.T. times, the love of such an awful Being would be that of a distant, reverential love, represented by the phrase (which is there the prevailing element) “the fear of God”—that wholesome dread of offending Him. But in the latter revelation, mediation comes to our help; and in Christ, God is brought closer to our human heart and sympathy. We are drawn “with the cords of a man, with the bands of love.” (Hos_11:4.) Hence our heart is under the stronger obligation to answer back to God. As we were made in His image, we are capable of these high favours and solemn duties. Gratitude is but one of the forms of love. It is love contemplating favours, and grasping the hand that blesses. The energy of the living God still goes forth, working in nature, Providence, and grace. Hence the demand upon our gratitude is constant, and ever will be so while our relations with our Creator last. It is irrational to deprive Him of this service during any part of our lives.
3. God has a right to be glorified in us. “The heavens declare the glory of God,” because they are obliged to obey those eternal conditions which he has laid upon them. They have no power to resist His will, or to conspire against universal order. But man glorifies God, not as conquered by force, but as submissive to His will. Our nature should act as a mirror to the Divine nature, reflecting His truth, His love, His righteousness. When we shine with that heavenly light, thus falling upon our soul, God is glorified. We return, though somewhat dim and impaired, the graces of His image. God has a right to find in every man an answering mind and heart. To refuse the homage of these is to expose ourselves to the penalty of Divine judgments, by which it is likewise possible for God to be glorified in us. Early piety avoids so disastrous a risk.
4. It is not a reasonable thing that we should give the mere dregs of our life to God. It is not grateful conduct towards the Author of our being to drive a close bargain with Him, practically asking the question, How little service can we render consistent with our final safety? This is base ingratitude, sins against every law of love, and lacks that nobility of spirit which is essential to our true dignity. If we put off the service of God till it is late in our day of life, and troubles thicken, and we are cut off from consolations elsewhere, we are but offering to Him a miserable remnant—a wasted heritage—what is blind, halt, and lame. Besides, we cannot be sure that even this shall be possible to us. The most ardent and vigorous youth cannot reckon with certainty upon long life. Hence, if delay shows a will most incorrect to heaven, it is also dangerous. The uncertainty of life, as well as the reason of the thing, preaches early piety.
II. It Assuages the Sorrows of Age. (Ecc_12:2-6.) In youth, the power to taste pleasure is strong. The more complicated evils of life—sorrowful regrets, the sense of loss and failure, dissatisfaction with the world—as yet lie far in the future. But they will come, those “evil days” that yield no pleasure. The joyous light within will grow dim, darkening and rendering cheerless the world without. The summer of life was not quite free from troubles, but these were slight and passing as a summer shower. The clouds quickly opened again, and there was the “clear shining after rain.” But it is far otherwise in winter. The storm is gloomier and more sweeping now, and the brief pauses of it are but the preparation for a more merciless deluge of rain, for a louder and more melancholy wailing of the winds. In old age, troubles come apace. Even before this time there are evil days and the light begins to fail. (Ecc_12:1-2.) The description of old age given here is general, being in certain respects true of all, but the picture is too dark and melancholy to represent the old age of the righteous. The character which the writer had in view is evidently that of a man of the world, who had lived for pleasure, who is now no longer able to enjoy, and who has no consolations within to assuage his sorrows. Such, at least, is the original of the picture; yet it may be considered as aptly describing the main features of old age, as they appear to an ordinary spectator. These infirmities and calamities lead to the outer chambers of death, where man awaits his conflict with the last enemy.
1. Death approaches the aged with many terrors. To the young man whose strength is overwhelmed by violence, death is indeed terrible. But to old age, death seems to come with all the refinements of slow torture.
(1.) There is the failure of those powers which carry out the purposes of human activity. The arms, those “keepers of the house,” so valuable for defence, now begin to tremble, and are powerless against the foe. They were once able to shape the stubborn material around to the mind’s purpose and design, but now they have lost their cunning. The legs, which once ministered swiftly to the will, stood firm against assault, imparted the sense of freedom, and gave a man sovereign command over the whole area of his work, now bow themselves for very feebleness.
(2.) The failure of the nobler senses. The eyes—those windows by which the soul looks upon the outer world—are darkened, for the old man brings to them no longer the power of seeing. The ears—one of the entrances for intelligence, and ways of communication with the world outside—are closed, so that they obstruct the paths of sound. The most familiar sounds are scarcely distinguished, the sweet music of speech at length dies away, and the old man becomes completely shut up within himself.
(3.) The failure of the powers of enjoyment. The power to taste all pleasures, coarse or refined, now fails. Savoury meats and luscious entertainments now pall upon the sense. Singing men and singing women cease to charm.
(4.) The increased power of little things to annoy. The grasshopper is now a burden, the slightest obstacle is magnified into an object of dread, and every little hill becomes a mountain of difficulty. Short breath, dim eyes, failing limbs, give man a painful sense that he is vanquished by nature.
2. The event of death to the aged suggests the most melancholy images to the mind. It is the destruction of the palace of the soul, with all its appliances for defence and luxury. It is the breaking of the golden lamp of life. It is the fatal arrest of that revolving wheel by which we draw what is to us the water of life. The permanent cessation of motion in physical nature means death. The exact meaning of this is, that the body as an organism ceases to exist. There are other movements set up, even when the body lies still in death. “The dust returns to the earth as it was.” Of the earthly side of man’s nature, we have here an end. The grave is the goal of all that is mortal. The body goes a progress from dust to dust, from a lowly origin to cold dishonour.
3. Without spiritual consolations the condition of old age is most lamentable. The perpetual joy that reigns in the breast of the godly man can mitigate the sorrows of old age. The worst evils become disarmed when we can afford to set them at naught by the consciousness of strong consolation within. When the eye grows dim, and the ear ceases to be charmed by sweet sounds, celestial light shines inward with richer effulgence, and the soul listens to diviner harmonies. With the spiritual man, the power to enjoy God increases as his human strength decays. Godliness even modifies some of the physical conditions of age by saving a man from the penalties of sensuality and vice. He who has learned to preserve the honour of his body by temperance and sobriety of behaviour, when he comes to grey hairs will not be such a deplorable ruin as the sinner who has grown old in sin. Thus early piety assuages the sorrows of age, and raises a joy within the breast which no calamities can dislodge.
III. It Deprives of Terror the Soul’s Inevitable Appearance before God. (Ecc_12:7.)
1. To appear before God is the destination of every human soul. The flesh ends in dust. Man sinks down to that from which he arose. But man is made in the image of God, and therefore in the image of His immortality. There is a part of him that can never die. While the flesh goes down to dust, there is another movement of the spirit upward to God. Each human soul must take that solemn journey to God. However much it may dread the meeting, it cannot pass one side of Him, or in any way avoid Him, but must go straight into His presence. In their “long home”—that other house of life—all men, for good or ill, must await God.
2. That appearance must bring the ungodly into conflict with the Divine Judgments. Sin leaves a mark upon the soul that death itself is not able to efface. God “changes man’s countenance and sends him away,” but the spiritual character of the soul cleaves to it still. Man in that other world must for ever live with himself; and what he is, so shall be his condition. None but the pure and holy can remain in God’s sight, and enjoy the comfort of His presence. If a man has not answered the purpose intended by his Creator, he cannot be approved, but must suffer the Divine displeasure.
3. The godly will come to his Creator in peace. To be summoned into the presence of God is sufficiently solemn, even for the purest and holiest of mankind. But such will come, not to an offended, but to a reconciled God. The solemn meeting will be peace, and prosperity, and endless refreshment. In the dread passage out of life into eternity, the good man learns to say, “Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.” And when his spirit takes its everlasting flight unto Him who gave it, he shall find that the light which was sown for him springs up into a harvest of blessedness. He who has remembered his Creator in the days of his youth shall be able, in his time of age and decay, to utter with confidence the prayer, “Lord, remember me.” Early piety is the only perfectly graceful conduct towards the Author of our being, the most acceptable sacrifice, the best provision against the sorrows of life, and the terrors of the last trial. The soul needs the strongest ground for courage and hope when this present world vanishes, and there is nothing to intercept its vision of the throne of God.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Ecc_12:1. Practically considered, the root of all moral evil is forgetfulness of God.
Remembrance imparts to great facts and impressions the beauty and influence of presence. Thus the truth of God’s nature and our duty comes upon us with fresh power.
The mention of the Creator, here, shows the right which He has in us, and our obligation.
Your own happiness is concerned in your compliance with this counsel. That happiness is unworthy of the name which is disturbed by the remembrance of God. The contemplation, and enjoyment, and service of the Divine Being, must be the honour and the blessedness of every rational nature. There is a propriety, a beauty, and a glory in early piety [Wardlaw].
Of his last years this old man says, “I have no pleasure in them.” Once on a time existence was a gladness, and the exuberant spirits overflowed in shouts and songs of hilarious ditties. So abundant was the joy of life, that, like the sunbeams in a tropic clime, it was needful to shade it, and with a Venetian lattice of imagined sorrows and tragic tales, the young man assuaged the over-fervid beams of his own felicity. Now there is no need of such artificial abatements. It is not easy for the old man to get a nook so warm that it will thaw the winter of his veins. To say nothing of a song, it is not easy for him to muster up a smile; and as he listens with languid interest to the news of the day, and, in subtile sympathy with his own failing faculties, as he disparages this modern time and its dwindled men, it is plain that, as for the world, its avocations and amusements, its interests and its inhabitants, he has little pleasure in them [Dr. J. Hamilton].
Ecc_12:2. The conditions of external nature, in their aspect towards ourselves, are determined by our own state. Nature is gay, or sad, or languishing, according to the several moods of our soul. When we lose the power of enjoying it, the world itself may be said to pass away.
As the light declines, the gayest colours of life fade, and, at length, all is reduced to a dreary blank. So it shall be with the youth who vainly depends upon the continuance of the world’s happiness.
He only is preserved from bitter disappointments and long regrets, who seeks that light of heavenly joy which increases while all other lights grow dim.
We should use our mercies and privileges which are common to us with other men, to wit, our bodily sight, our reason, and all other comforts, which may be signified by the lights here mentioned, so as we may be still mindful of the decay and failing of them at death; and often think with ourselves what a comfort it will be to see by faith Him that is invisible favourable to us, to behold Christ the Sun of Righteousness shining in mercy upon us, and to have the Day-Star, His Spirit, arising in our hearts never to set again, even when all other lights and outward comforts will be darkened [Nisbet].
In youth, troubles come like rain, which, though inconvenient while it lasts, leaves no devastation behind. But in age, troubles are like rain falling upon a flood already threatening and which, at length, carries away man’ into eternity (Psa_90:5).
Old age is a Tierra del Fuego—a region where the weather never clears. Once, when a trivial ailment came, the hardy youth could outbrave it, and still go on with his daily duties. But now, every ailment is important, and they are never like to end. The cough is cured only to be succeeded by an asthma, and when the tender eyes have ceased to trickle, the ears begin to tingle. Once upon a time a few drops might fall into the brightest day, like a settling shower in June; and there were apt to be hurricanes, equinoctial gales, great calamities, drenching and devastating sorrows. But now, the day is all one drizzle, and life itself the chief calamity, and there is little space for hope where the weather is all either clouds or rain [Dr. J. Hamilton].
Ecc_12:3. As each power and sense fails, man descends by so many steps into the grave.
By the failure of sight—the noblest of the senses—a man has already entered “the valley of the shadow of death.”
In old age, a man is compelled, in a terribly real sense, to retire from the world. Shut in from outward joys, he must live with himself. How cheerless if he has no Divine Comforter!
When old age, with its ever-increasing feebleness, draws on, “the keepers of the house”—the once-powerful arms that shielded the body from every hostile assault, that triumphantly defended it even in the shock of battle—“shall tremble.” Their force is gone; they can no longer grasp a weapon, or strike a blow. The “strong men” too, that were like the pillars of the building—the firm and well-jointed limbs that bore the body up, unconscious of its weight—“shall bow themselves,” and sink down helpless beneath the load. “And the grinders shall cease because they are few”—the toothless jaws shall at length refuse their office—the very mechanism by which the waste of nature’s energies was wont to be repaired, losing its power to act, and thereby accelerating the progress of decay. “And those that look out of the windows”—the sentinels that kept watch in the lofty towers, and whose function it was to descry and announce the approach of danger—those bright and beaming eyes that, erewhile, looked forth far and wide on surrounding things, shall “be darkened”; their range of vision will become contracted, and blind Isaac shall not know his younger from his elder son [Buchanan].
In the consciousness of failing strength, the good man feels that he belongs the more to God.
Ecc_12:4. When hearing fails, a man is shut in from more than half the world. Even affection and love can only minister to such by some other and more difficult entrance.
But not only is the door of audience closed, the door of utterance is also shut. “The grinders have ceased,” and with lips collapsed and organs all impaired, it is an effort to talk; and bending silently in on his own solitude, the veteran dozes in his elbow-chair the long summer hours when younger folks are busy. But, if he dozes in the day, he does not sleep at night. At the voice of the bird, at the crowing of the cock, although he does not hear it, he can keep his couch no longer. He rises, but not because he has any work to do, or any pleasure to enjoy [Dr. J. Hamilton].
Aristotle hath observed it well, that by hearing, the things of others are made known to ourselves, as by our voice and tongue we are able to make known our own things to another. But when old age cometh, the glory of this most excellent work is humbled and “brought low,” the anvil is worn, the hammer is weak, the drum is unbraced, the pure air is grown thick, the music is marred, the doleful toll of the passing bell being ready to sound, and to ring out [Jermin].
He can afford to part with the delights of music who has learned to make melody in his heart.
Ecc_12:5. He has neither enterprise nor courage. Once it was a treat to press up the mountain side and enjoy the majestic prospect. Now there is no high place which is not formidable; and even to the temple, it is a sad drawback that it stands on Zion, and that it is needful to “go up.” “The almond tree flourishes, and the grasshopper is burdensome.” Teaze him not with your idle affairs. In that load of infirmities he has enough to carry, and though it be not the weight of a feather, do not augment his burden who totters under the load of many years. For “desire has failed.” You can grapple with heavy tasks; you can submit to severe toil and protracted self-denial, for you have a purpose to serve—you have an end in view. But with him there is no inducement, for there is no ulterior [Dr. J. Hamilton].
The hoary head of old age—the flourishing of the almond tree—forebodes the dreary winter that shuts the scene of mortal life.
In this present state—this earthly house—man is but as a guest that tarrieth for a night; but in that “house of eternity”—that other world—to which he is hastening, man has his final and permanent habitation.
It should be our aim to make preparation for our comfort, peace, and joy, in that world where we shall dwell the longest.
Ecc_12:6. Though death involves the destruction of the entire mortal frame, yet it may begin in any one of the great centres of life—the brain, the heart, or the lungs. The “silver cord” of nervous matter may be “loosed,” and the delicate mechanism by which the body is supplied with blood and air may be rendered useless.
Science has thrown much light upon those wonderful processes by which physical life is maintained. But its greatest discoveries are chiefly the clearing, and settling into more definite form, of that knowledge which was held in solution by mankind for ages. Poetry has often anticipated science, and the prophet comes before the investigator.
The fountain of natural life remains for the race, but the individual is only permitted to draw from it for a short time.
The bucket and the wheel are broken; the water can no longer be drawn; and instead of the busy and lively scene that was wont to surround the well’s mouth, all is solitude and silence, the ground untrodden, the water stagnant [Wardlaw].
Ecc_12:7. However fairly it may be garnished, man lives but in a house of clay whose end is dust.
The humble destination of the mortal part of us should be a rebuke to pride.
Some rationalistic expositors maintain that these words teach that the soul loses its individuality, and is absorbed into God. But we are plainly taught that man, as a spirit, returns to God, not to perish by dispersion in His infinity, but to be judged. (Ecc_12:14.) Hence moral responsibility will remain, and this is not possible unless the conscious selfhood in each man remains.
Natural likeness to God—for we are spirit as well as flesh—makes us capable of appearing before Him in a spiritual world. But moral likeness to Him can alone turn that solemn necessity into blessedness.
We know not what mysterious things await the spirit when it returns to God; but we know that the law of love holds good, as the condition of happiness, in all worlds.
Our spirits are God’s free gift, and therefore all the powers and faculties thereof ought to be employed to the honour of the Giver. (Rom_11:36.) He is to be depended on, and acknowledged for the preservation of them (Job_10:12); and all crosses upon body and spirit to be submitted unto. (Heb_12:9.) [Nisbet.]
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Sermon Bible 1900 · Public Domain I. There are certain characters which in youth lose…
Ecc 12:1
I. There are certain characters which in youth lose part of their youth. Something has stepped in which has spoilt life. These characters after repression, and when the time of youth is past, grow young again. Existence is transfigured. The soul is gifted with new powers, and the heart with a wealth of new feelings. They cannot help making experiments with all these new instruments. Every day is delightful, for every day there is something fresh to be tried; and the life of living seems inexhaustible. Naturally there is a dissipation of powers, a want of concentration, a want of foresight; and these things, coming in the midst of manhood or womanhood, are dangerous to progress. These characters want concentration of will towards a single and a noble aim. There is but one such aim on earth, and it is that of being like God. Concentrate, then, your will on this. Do not wish, but will, to be at one with God. "Ask, and ye shall receive; seek, and ye shall find."
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II. The second case I speak of is of characters which, passing into manhood and womanhood, retain for many years the elements of youth. This differs from the first inasmuch as youth has not been repressed, but previously enjoyed. As the chief danger of the former is dissipation of character, the chief danger of the latter lies in overfervency of character. What we want in this case is not the rooting out of youthful enthusiasm, but its direction. Endeavour to make your enthusiasm self-restrained. Begin to win the power of will over enthusiasm in the sphere of your spiritual life. Power of will comes to man when he claims and makes by faith the will of God his own. Power of self-restraint is gained when a man so loves the perfection of Christ that he cannot allow himself to run into every excitement. He stops and asks himself, "Would my Master have done this? would He have smiled upon it?"
III. The third case is that of characters who pass steadily from youth to manhood, leaving their youth behind them. Their tendency, since they have no youthfulness to complicate their nature, is to become men of one dominant idea, to let their particular business or profession absorb all the energies of their nature into itself, so that one portion of their character is especially developed and the others left untrained. They become in this way incomplete men. Educate all your being, for being devoid of the ardour of youth, and believing in steady work, you are in danger of becoming a one-sided man. Let your effort be to be manifold and many-sided, while you cling fast to your particular work. This is our Christian duty. For Christ came to save the whole of our nature, to present us at the end, body, soul, and spirit, perfect to His Father.
S. A. Brooke, Christ in Modern Life, p. 335..
I. What is it to remember God? It is, in the figurative language of the Old Testament Scriptures, to walk with God; to set the Lord always before our face; to dwell in the secret place of the Most High; to abide under the shadow of the Almighty. It is to have the thought of God constantly present to us, keeping us watchful, humble, contented, diligent, pure, peaceable.
II. Why should we thus remember God? "Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth." The service to which we are called is a reasonable service. He who made us has a right to us. And let us be quite sure that in resisting His call, in fighting against the demands of our Creator, we must be on the losing side; it must be our ruin; it must be our misery.
III. "Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth." We can discern the main reasons for this urgency. (1) First, because the days of youth are happy days. As yet you have something to offer which will do God honour; and if you wait till youth is gone, you withhold from Him that acceptable sacrifice. (2) The days of thy youth are vigorous days. The work of remembering God is easier in early than in later life. If you waste this precious time, soon will the evil days come: days of unceasing toil; days of dissipating pleasure; days of bitter disappointment; days of overpowering temptation; days of rooted habits, of deep spiritual slumber. Remember then thy Creator now, while the evil days come not.
C. J. Vaughan, Harrow Sermons, 1st series, p. 305.
References: Ecc 12:1.—New Manual of Sunday-school Addresses, p. 21; Sermons for Sundays, Festivals, and Fasts, 3rd series, p. 253 J. W. Colenso, Village Sermons, p. 72; R. Newton, Bible Warnings, p. 9; J. P. Chown, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xx., p. 282. Ecc 12:1-7.—J. Hamilton, The Royal Preacher, p. 215; J. Bennet, The Wisdom of the King, p. 382. Ecc 12:1-8.—R. Buchanan, Ecclesiastes: its Meaning and Lessons, p. 407; J. H. Cooke, The Preacher’s Pilgrimage, p. 114. Ecc 12:1-14.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. v., p. 222.
Ecc 12:5
It is not at his death only that it may be said of any man, "He goeth to his long home." It is a continual present tense. Every moment, every step he takes, he is always on the road, getting nearer and nearer.
I. Eternity is an abyss in which the mind loses itself in a moment; and the more we try to realise, the more impossible it grows. And because we have never seen it or conceived it, we call some earthly thing, some work, some waiting-time, some sorrow, some suffering, "long." But we shall never call it long again when we have looked out into the immensities which lie on the other side the horizon of this little world. But that life the Infinite Himself calls "long." "Man goeth to his long home."
II. If that is home, then this is exile. We are not "expelled." Christ has secured us from that. But we are "banished." He deviseth means that His banished be not expelled. There is much, very much, to tell us we are not at "home" yet. The manners and the habits about us are all foreign. We are prisoners of hope, but we are prisoners; and by many things which we all feel, we know that the term of our exile will be over the moment of our death.
III. If that is home, we are travellers here. And every day should be a step homeward. We must not pitch our tents as if they were houses, for they will soon be taken down. We must not stop by the way to pick many flowers, and we must not care for little discomforts and disagreeable things as we go, seeing that our halting-places are only inns.
IV. If that is home, this is school. Hence the discipline. Life is all training. We have much to unlearn and much to learn, many habits to lose and many habits to form, before the minority of our existence here shall have fitted us for the maturity of our glorified manhood.
J. Vaughan, Sermons, 10th series, p. 189.
Reference: Ecc 12:5.— Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. vi., p. 326.
Ecc 12:6
What, we ask, is that view of man’s present condition implied in the language which speaks of death and decay as a loosening of the silver cord and a breaking of the golden bowl?
I. It has been made an argument against the book of Ecclesiastes being the genuine writing of Solomon that it speaks so unmistakably of the immortality of the soul and of a judgment to come. It is asserted that these great doctrines were not revealed until after the age of Solomon. Now it must be freely confessed that it was in the later times of Jewish history, just as the temporal prosperity of Abraham’s race was decaying, that the spiritual rewards of the righteous in another state were made to stand out more plainly to view. Nevertheless all along there had been an undertone running through God’s revelation in which they who had ears to hear might catch the promise of a life beyond, although to grosser hearts it was doubtless a thing unknown. And if there had been these notes of immortality floating all down the rougher strain of human being, in an especial degree had they been gathered together by David and concentrated in bolder music. Such are those well-known words in Ps. xvi., "My flesh shall rest in hope, for Thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades, neither wilt Thou suffer Thine holy one to see corruption," etc. These are the songs of faith which Solomon in boyhood had learnt from his own father’s lips. His extraordinary intellect would enable him, too, to appreciate, perhaps as none who went before had done, the whole strain of whispered truth as to man’s immortal destiny. But the witness of Solomon ends not here. Whilst recognising fully the doctrine of the soul’s exemption from death, he seems to have penetrated to the further truth that by the very nature of man our moral probation must be limited to this life. "Or ever the silver cord be loosed." Solomon regards man as essentially compounded of body and spirit. Loose the silver cord, and the creature ’’man" is no longer. Suppose the disembodied soul to be subjected to a probation after death, it would not be the probation of the same creature as before, but the trial of another and different creature. You cannot separate in temptation or in worship between the body and the soul. Sever the two, and you may have a trial, but it will not be the trial of a "man."
II. "Or ever the golden bowl be broken." The idea involved by the golden bowl is that of a costly vessel which receives and retains. The idea is that of the receptiveness of man. Before this mysterious being, so richly endowed with all these capacities of living for God, of holding communion with Him, of turning from wickedness unto Him, is shattered, remember, O man, thy Creator. How knowest thou that when the golden vessel is once broken, when thy present mixed nature is shivered, and the fragments of thy flesh are scattered to the four winds, and thy spirit sent abroad into the darkness—how knowest thou of what sensations thou shalt be capable, of what impressions susceptible? Now thou art a golden bowl receptive of God; let Him come into thee and be thy God.
Bishop Woodford, Sermons on Subjects front the Old Testament, p. 155.
Ecc 12:7
I. Nothing is more difficult than to realise that every man has a distinct soul, that every one of all the millions who live or have lived is as whole and independent a being in himself as if there were no one else in the whole world but he. We class men in masses, as we might connect the stones of a building. Survey some populous town; crowds are pouring through the streets; every part of it is full of life. Hence we gain a general idea of splendour, magnificence, opulence, and energy. But what is the truth? Why, that every being in that great concourse is his own centre, and all things about him are but shades, but a "vain shadow," in which he walketh and disquieteth himself in vain. He has his own hopes and fears, desires, judgments, and aim; he is everything to himself, and no one else is really anything. He has a depth within him unfathomable, an infinite abyss of existence; and the scene in which he bears part for the moment is but like a gleam of sunshine upon its surface.
II. All those millions upon millions of human beings who ever trod the earth and saw the sun successively are at this very moment in existence all together. If we have once seen any child of Adam, we have seen an immortal soul. It has not passed away as a breeze or sunshine, but it lives; it lives at this moment in one of those many places, whether of bliss or misery, in which all souls are reserved unto the end.
III. Everyone of all the souls which have ever been on earth is in one of two spiritual states, so distinct from one another that the one is the subject of God’s favour and the other under His wrath, the one on the way to eternal happiness, the other to eternal misery. This is true of the dead, and it is true of the living also. Endeavour then to realise that you have souls, and pray God to enable you to do so. Endeavour to disengage your thoughts and opinions from the things that are seen; look at things as God looks at them, and judge of them as He judges. There will be no need of shutting your eyes to this world when this world has vanished from you, and you have nothing before you but the throne of God and the slow but continual movements about it in preparation of the judgment. In that interval, when you are in that vast receptacle of disembodied souls, what will be your thoughts about the world which you have left? How poor will then seem to you its highest aims, how faint its keenest pleasures, compared with the eternal aims, the infinite pleasures, of which you will at length feel your souls to be capable.
J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons; vol. iv., p. 80.
I. These words teach that the spirit of man is from God. The body was of His will; the life was of Himself, life of life. All things that were were of God; man only in his living spirit was from God.
II. What follows from this sonship to the Almighty? What does it mean as to man’s true being? (1) That God’s great gift to man is reason in its highest power of exercise; that is to say, the capacity of comprehending truth. (2) This spiritualised reason is gathered up by the girdle of individuality into the union of each separate soul in which it is impersonated. And thus again is it in God’s image.
III. The words of the text speak of no absorption, of no ceasing to be. They say nothing of the separate consciousness being swallowed up into universal being, as the raindrop is swallowed up in the ocean depths. No, the girdle of individuality is the likeness of God’s eternity; the unity of the soul is the transcript of His own everlasting unity.
S. Wilberforce, The Pulpit, No. 2172.
References: Ecc 12:7.—C. J. Vaughan, Old Testament Outlines, p. 165. Ecc 12:8.—H. V. Macdona, Penny Pulpit, No. 418.
Ecc 12:8-14
I. Koheleth has achieved the quest. He has solved the problem and given us his solution of it. He is about to repeat that solution. To give emphasis and force to the repetition, that he may carry his readers more fully with him, he dwells on his claims to their respect, their confidence, their affection. He is all that they most admire; he has the very authority to which they most willingly defer. It is not out of any personal conceit, therefore, nor any pride of learning, that he recites his titles of honour. He is simply gathering force from the willing respect and deference of his readers in order that he may plant his final conclusion more strongly and more deeply in their hearts.
II. And what is the conclusion which he is at such pains to enforce? "The conclusion of the whole matter is this, that God taketh cognisance of all things. Fear God, therefore, and keep His commandments, for thus it behoveth all men to do." That this conclusion is simply a repetition, in part expanded and in part condensed, of that with which the Preacher closes the previous section, is sufficiently obvious. (1) There he incites men to a life of virtue by two leading motives: first, by the fact of the present constant judgment of God; and secondly, by the prospect of a future, a more searching and decisive, judgment. Here he appeals to precisely the same motives, though now, instead of implying the present judgment of God under the injunction "Remember thy Creator," he broadly affirms that God "taketh cognisance of all things," and instead of simply reminding the young that God will bring the ways of their heart into judgment, he defines that future judgment at once more largely and more exactly as "appointed for every secret thing’ and extending to every deed, whether these be good or bad. (2) In speaking of the forms which a virtuous life should assume, he is very curt and brief. All he has to say on that point now is, "Fear God and keep His commandments." He can now say to his soul,
"What hast thou to do with sorrow
Or the injuries of tomorrow?"
for he has discovered that no morrow can any more injure him, that no sorrow can rob him of his chief good. All that he has to do is to fear God and keep His commandments, leaving the issues of his labour in the wise, gentle hands which bend all things to a final goal of good.
S. Cox, The Quest of the Chief Good, p. 264.
References: Ecc 12:8-14.—T. C. Finlayson, A Practical Exposition of Ecclesiastes, p. 267. Ecc 12:9, Ecc 12:10.—R. Buchanan, Ecclesiastes: its Meaning and Lessons, p. 422. Ecc 12:9-14.—J. H. Cooke, The Preacher’s Pilgrimage, p. 129. Ecc 12:11.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. ix., p. 221.
Ecc 12:13
In its happy influence religion, or a filial compliance with the will of God, includes "the whole duty of man." It is self-contained felicity.
I. A new heart itself is happiness. When gifts are so good as the Gospel and its promises, so good as our kindred and friends, so good as the flowers of the field and the breath of new summer, it only needs an honest heart which takes them as they come, and which tastes unaltered the goodness of God that is in them. This is what the worldling wants; this new heart is what the God and Father of our Lord Jesus offers to you, to me.
II. The very faculty of joy is the gift of the Holy Ghost. He heals the canker of the churl, and sweetens the bitterness of the misanthrope; and by imparting the faculty of joy He has often exalted life into a jubilee and made a humble dwelling ring with hallelujahs.
III. A devout disposition is happiness. It is happiness whether outward things go well or ill.
IV. A benevolent disposition is happiness. Benevolence is God’s life in the soul, diffusing in kind emotions, and good offices, and friendly intercessions; but, unlike other expenditures, the more it is diffused the more that life increases of which it is the sign: and to abound in love one towards another is to abound in hope towards God.
J. Hamilton, The Royal Preacher, p. 242.
References: Ecc 12:13.—Parker, City Temple, vol. i., p. 10; G. Salmon, Sermons in Trinity College, Dublin, p. 148; J. Thain Davidson, Talks with Young Men, p. 275; J. M. Buckley, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxx., p. 75.
Ecc 12:13-14
I. Among the causes of a sceptical spirit I may assign the first place to that natural reaction against authority which results when the understanding is first emancipated from the control that restrained its free exercise during the years of earlier youth. Authority is the guide of childhood. There is in the child no prejudice, no reluctance to be taught. He is quite content to take his opinions upon trust. But the time arrives when reasoning at second hand no longer suffices us. As we acquire the power of thinking for ourselves we become also desirous to do so. And it seldom happens but that in the process we begin to doubt of what we had hitherto regarded as indisputable truths. The development of our physical powers brings with it exactly the same kind of temptations as the evolution of our intellectual faculties. The time comes when the child feels his powers expand, and when the spirit of self-reliance which the consciousness of strength and vigour inspires would make those checks and restraints to be impatiently borne which were submitted to without reluctance before.
II. Scepticism possesses an attraction, especially for the minds of the young, from an idea that it indicates strength of mind. They feel that to be superior to vulgar prejudices is something to be proud of, and they fancy that they exhibit the greater power of mind the more they can overturn of what has been established before. I believe there is no greater mistake than this. Faith is the chief power which can effect anything great in this world. When it rises to enthusiasm, it has wrought wonders and revolutionised human affairs; but even in its ordinary sober form—strong conviction and consequent readiness to act on that conviction—it is that which gives a man power to do anything great himself and to influence others. Scepticism is the absence of this power. It may be a thing deserving sympathy, or tenderness, or pity; but it certainly is not a thing to be proud of.
G. Salmon, Sermons Preached in Trinity College, Dublin, p. 130.
Reference: Ecc 12:13, Ecc 12:14.—H. Wace, Contemporary Pulpit, vol. i., p. 106.
Ecc 12:14
I. These words show, not only that each of us will be judged, but that each of us will be judged for each action of his life; not for his general character whether (taken altogether) he was on the whole a worldly or a pious man, or the like, but for every single act, good or bad, of which his entire life was made up. Each separate thing done, thought, or said, will be brought up again in due order—exactly as it was done, thought, or said—weighed, sifted, and judged; for "God," says the text, "shall bring every work into judgment."
II. We look inwards, and our very hearts die within us. We see dark blots over all the past; we think of those secrets of our souls which we ourselves shrink from recalling. And all of these are to be laid bare before God! How shall we prepare ourselves for this judgment? There is but one answer to this question. There is One and One only to whom we can flee for help or succour, but He is all-sufficient. He is near at hand to hear our cry and help us; to renew, change and convert us; to help our infirmities; and He looks with loving and compassionating eyes on all our poor endeavours, on our struggles, our repentances, and our prayers; and as yet He pleads for us.
F. E. Paget, Helps and Hindrances to the Christian Life, vol. i., p. 122.
References: Ecc 12:14.—J. E. Vaux, Sermon Notes, 1st series, p. 4; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. xii., p. 83. 12—C. Bridges, An Exposition of Ecclesiastes, p. 283.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain
Ecclesiastes
A NEW YEARS SERMON TO THE YOUNG
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THE CONCLUSION OF THE MATTER
Ecc 12:1 - Ecc 12:7, Ecc 12:13 - Ecc 12:14.
The Preacher has passed in review ‘all the works that are done under the sun,’ and has now reached the end of his long investigation. It has been a devious path. He has announced many provisional conclusions, which are not intended for ultimate truths, but rather represent the progress of the soul towards the final, sufficient ground and object of belief and aim of all life, even God Himself. ‘Vanity of vanities’ is a cheerless creed and a half-truth. Its completion lies in being driven, by recognising vanity as stamped on all creatures, to clasp the one reality. ‘All is vanity’ apart from God, but He is fullness, and possessed and enjoyed and endured in Him, life is not ‘a striving after wind.’ Leave out this last section, and this book of so-called ‘Wisdom’ is one-sided and therefore error, as is modern pessimism, which only says more feebly what the Preacher had said long ago. Take the rest of the book as the autobiography of a seeker after reality, and this last section as his declaration of where he had found it, and all the previous parts fall into their right places.
Our passage omits the first portion of the closing section, which is needed in order to set the counsel to remember the Creator in its right relation. Observe that, properly rendered, the advice in Ecc 12:1 is ‘remember also,’ and that takes us back to the end of the preceding chapter. There the young are exhorted to enjoy the bright, brief blossom-time of their youth, withal keeping the consciousness of responsibility for its employment. In earlier parts of the book similar advice had been given, but based on different grounds. Here religion and full enjoyment of youthful buoyancy and delight in fresh, unhackneyed, homely pleasures are proclaimed to be perfectly compatible. The Preacher had no idea that a devout young man or woman was to avoid pleasures natural to their age. Only he wished their joy to be pure, and the stern law that ‘whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap’ to be kept in mind. Subject to that limitation, or rather that guiding principle, it is not only allowable, but commanded, to ‘put away sorrow and evil.’ Young people are often liable to despondent moods, which come over them like morning mists, and these have to be fought against. The duty of joy is the more imperative on the young because youth flies so fast, or, as the Preacher says,’ is vanity.’
Now these advices sound very like the base incitements to sensual and unworthy delight which poets of the meaner sort, and some, alas! of the nobler in their meaner moments, have presented. But this writer is no teacher of ‘Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,’ and wicked trash of that sort. Therefore he brings side by side with these advices the other of our passage. That ‘also’ saves the former from being misused, just as the thought of judgment did.
That possible combination of hearty, youthful glee and true religion is the all-important lesson of this passage. The word for Creator is in the plural number, according to the Hebrew idiom, which thereby expresses supremacy or excellence. The name of ‘Creator’ carries us back to Genesis, and suggests one great reason for the injunction. It is folly to forget Him on whom we depend for being; it is ingratitude to forget, in the midst of the enjoyments of our bright, early days, Him to whom we owe them all. The advice is specially needed; for youth has so much, that is delightful in its novelty, to think about, and the world, on both its innocent and its sinful side, appeals to it so strongly, that the Creator is only too apt to be crowded out of view by His works. The temptation of the young is to live in the present. Reflection belongs to older heads; spontaneous action is more characteristic of youth. Therefore, they specially need to make efforts to bring clearly to their thoughts both the unseen future and Him who is invisible. The advice is specially suitable for them; for what is begun early is likely to last and be strong.
It is hard for older men, stiffened into habits, and with less power and love of taking to new courses, to turn to God, if they have forgotten Him in early days. Conversion is possible at any age, but it is less likely as life goes on. The most of men who are Christians have become so in the formative period between boyhood and thirty. After that age, the probabilities of radical change diminish rapidly. So, ‘Remember . . . in the days of thy youth,’ or the likelihood is that you will never remember. To say, ‘I mean to have my fling, and I shall turn over a new leaf when I am older,’ is to run dreadful risk. Perhaps you will never be older. Probably, if you are, you will not want to turn the leaf. If you do, what a shame it is to plan to give God only the dregs of life! You need Him, quite as much, if not more, now in the flush of youth as in old age. Why should you rob yourself of years of blessing, and lay up bitter memories of wasted and polluted moments? If ever you turn to God in your older days, nothing will be so painful as the remembrance that you forgot Him so long.
The advice is further important, because it presents the only means of delivering life from the ‘vanity’ which the Preacher found in it all. Therefore he sets it at the close of his meditations. This is the practical outcome of them all. Forget God, and life is a desert. Remember Him, and ‘the desert will rejoice and blossom as the rose.’
The verses from the middle of Ecc 12:1 - Ecc 12:7 enforce the exhortation by the consideration of what will certainly follow youth, and advise remembrance of the Creator before that future comes. So much is clear, but the question of the precise meaning of these verses is much too large for discussion here. The older explanation takes them for an allegory representing the decay of bodily and mental powers in old age, whilst others think that in them the advance of death is presented under the image of an approaching storm. Wright, in his valuable commentary, regards the description of the gradual waning away of life in old age, in the first verses, as being set forth under images drawn from the closing days of the Palestinian winter, which are dreaded as peculiarly unhealthy, while Ecc 12:4 - Ecc 12:5 present the advent of spring, and contrast the new life in animals and plants with the feebleness of the man dying in his chamber and unable to eat. Still another explanation is that the whole is part of a dirge, to be taken literally, and describing the mourners in house and garden. I venture, though with some hesitation, to prefer, on the whole, the old allegorical theory, for reasons which it would be impossible to condense here. It is by no means free from difficulty, but is, as I think, less difficult than any of its rivals.
Interpreters who adopt it differ somewhat in the explanation of particular details, but, on the whole, one can see in most of the similes sufficient correspondence for a poet, however foreign to modern taste such a long-drawn and minute allegory may be. ‘The keepers of the house’ are naturally the arms; the ‘strong men,’ the legs; the ‘grinding women,’ the teeth; the ‘women who look out at the windows,’ the eyes; ‘the doors shut towards the street,’ either the lips or, more probably, the ears. ‘The sound of the grinding,’ which is ‘low,’ is by some taken to mean the feeble mastication of toothless gums, in which case the ‘doors’ are the lips, and the figure of the mill is continued. ‘Arising at the voice of the bird’ may describe the light sleep or insomnia of old age; but, according to some, with an alteration of rendering {‘The voice riseth into a sparrow’s’}, it is the ‘childish treble’ of Shakespeare. The former is the more probable rendering and reference. The allegory is dropped in Ecc 12:5, which describes the timid walk of the old, but is resumed in ‘the almond trees shall flourish’; that is, the hair is blanched, as the almond blossom, which is at first delicate pink, but fades into white. The next clause has an appropriate meaning in the common translation, as vividly expressing the loss of strength, but it is doubtful whether the verb here used ever means ‘to be a burden.’ The other explanations of the clause are all strained. The next clause is best taken, as in the Revised Version, as describing the failure of appetite, which the stimulating caper-berry is unable to rouse. All this slow decay is accounted for, ‘because the man is going to his long home,’ and already the poet sees the mourners gathering for the funeral procession.
The connection of the long-drawn-out picture of senile decay with the advice to remember the Creator needs no elucidation. That period of failing powers is no time to begin remembering God. How dreary, too, it will be, if God is not the ‘strength of the heart,’ when ‘heart and flesh fail’! Therefore it is plain common sense, in view of the future, not to put off to old age what will bless youth, and keep the advent of old age from being wretched.
Ecc 12:6 - Ecc 12:7 still more stringently enforce the precept by pointing, not to the slow approach, but to the actual arrival of death. If a future of possible weakness and gradual creeping in on us of death is reason for the exhortation, much more is the certainty that the crash of dissolution will come. The allegory is partially resumed in these verses. The ‘golden bowl’ is possibly the head, and, according to some, the ‘silver cord’ is the spinal marrow, while others think rather of the bowl or lamp as meaning the body, and the cord the soul which, as it were, holds it up. The ‘pitcher’ is the heart, and the ‘wheel’ the organs of respiration. Be this as it may, the general thought is that death comes, shivering the precious reservoir of light, and putting an end to drawing of life from the Fountain of bodily life. Surely these are weighty reasons for the Preacher’s advice. Surely it is well for young hearts sometimes to remember the end, and to ask, ‘What will ye do in the end?’ and to do before the end what is so hard to begin doing at the end, and so needful to have done if the end is not to be worse than ‘vanity.’
The collapse of the body is not the end of the man, else the whole force of the argument in the preceding verses would disappear. If death is annihilation, what reason is there for seeking God before it comes? Therefore Ecc 12:7 is no interpolation to bring a sceptical book into harmony with orthodox Jewish belief, as some commentators affirm. The ‘contradiction’ between it and Ecc 3:21 is alleged as proof of its having been thus added. But there is no contradiction. The former passage is interrogative, and, like all the earlier part of the book, sets forth, not the Preacher’s ultimate convictions, but a phase through which he passed on his way to these. It is because man is twofold, and at death the spirit returns to its divine Giver, that the exhortation of Ecc 12:1 is pressed home with such earnestness.
The closing verses are confidently asserted to be, like Ecc 12:7, additions in the interests of Jewish ‘orthodoxy.’ But Ecclesiastes is made out to be a ‘sceptical book’ by expelling these from the text, and then the character thus established is taken to prove that they are not genuine. It is a remarkably easy but not very logical process.
‘The end of the matter’ when all is heard, is, to ‘fear God and keep His commandments.’ The inward feeling of reverent awe which does not exclude love, and the outward life of conformity to His will, is ‘the whole duty of man,’ or ‘the duty of every man.’ And that plain summary of all that men need to know for practical guidance is enforced by the consideration of future judgment, which, by its universal sweep and all-revealing light, must mean the judgment in another life.
Happy they who, through devious mazes of thought and act, have wandered seeking for the vision of any good, and having found all to be vanity, have been led at last to rest, like the dove in the ark, in the broad simplicity of the truth that all which any man needs for blessedness in the buoyancy of fresh youthful strength and in the feebleness of decaying age, in the stress of life, in the darkness of death, and in the day of judgment, is to ‘fear God and keep His commandments’!
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain In Life Remember Death and Judgment
In Life Remember Death and Judgment
1. The Creator is to be remembered in youth. When the powers of mind and body are failing, it will be too late.
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1-7. Commentators have differed much as to the interpretation of this passage. It has been taken by many as a description of the gradual failing of one bodily organ after another till death supervenes. In that case we may explain Ecc_12:2. thus: The light grows dim to the aged sense, and reason is dulled and ceases to illuminate. The old man weeps in his distress, and the troubles that draw forth those tears ever recur (Ecc_12:2) The limbs tremble; the arms, once strong, are become bent and feeble; the few teeth that are left no longer do the work of mastication; the eyes grow darkened (Ecc_12:3). The means by which the processes of nourishment and sensation have been carried on, in other words, the body's means of communication with the outer world, are shut; the voice is low and feeble; the slightest sound breaks in upon rest (or, 'the bird shall rise with a cry,' i.e. the voice assumes the piping treble of age), and music no longer gives pleasure (Ecc_12:4). Fancied terrors haunt the soul, and bar the path. The sleeplessness, of which the almond tree (the Heb. name for it meaning 'the early waker,' cp. Jer_1:11) is a symbol, becomes the old man's lot; the lightest weight is a burden, and nothing rouses the flagging appetite, because he is setting out on his journey to the tomb, and the hired mourners are already awaiting him; even before the actual dissolution comes (Ecc_12:5), and the golden bowl of the lamp of life is broken, and the silver cord, by which it is suspended, loosed; and the pitcher, which has gone so oft to draw at the fountain of life, is shattered, and so is the wheel, which works the rope and bucket to raise water from the deep-sunk well (Ecc_12:6). Some refer these last two clauses respectively to the action of the lungs and of the heart.
Others, however, have explained these vv. as setting forth a description of a storm and the alarm which it produces, under which figure are indicated the signs which accompany death. The following is a sketch of that interpretation of the passage which sees in it a description of the time specially fatal to aged persons in Palestine, that is to say, the last few days of winter, marked by a violent tempest; the picture being continued by a description of the spring time of nature, which, however, brings no returning vigour to those who are in the extreme winter of their days.
There comes on the storm of exceptional severity, which concludes the broken weather of winter (Ecc_12:2). Servants and masters are alike dismayed. The grinding women cease from their work, and the ladies of the harem, stricken with fear, no longer idly gaze from the lattices on the passers by (Ecc_12:3). Ordinary work has ceased, and the house is shut up. But soon the last and greatest storm of winter is over, and the advent of spring is welcomed by the bird-note, to imitate the sweetness of which is the despair of the professional daughters of song (Ecc_12:4). Nature is joyous, but the aged are full of suspicion that danger lurks about and above their path. And yet there is on every side evidence of renewed power. The almond tree blossoms; the locust crawls out from its shelter; but the aged are not in sympathy. They are beyond the influence of appetising stimulants; for they are approaching the grave, and the hired mourners are near (Ecc_12:5). Then follow the figures of speech, already touched on, indicating bodily dissolution (Ecc_12:6).
8-13. Eulogy of the Preacher and his method. Summary of his teaching.
This is the Epilogue, and was probably added by a different hand. It answers to a commendatory preface in the case of a modern book.
10. Acceptable words] He feels that proverbs were a form of speech that will find favour.
11. The words of the wise, etc.] Leaders of thought in each age have the gift of fixing their words securely in the memories of their disciples (goads.. nails), a gift which comes to them from Him who is the supreme Guide and Disposer of the affairs of men (one shepherd). Masters of assemblies] RM 'collectors of sentences.'
12. Be admonished] Jewish teaching was largely oral: Gentile philosophers, on the other hand, committed their speculations to writing, sometimes, e.g. Epicurus, to the extent of many volumes. Among such it was easy to be bewildered and wearied.
13-14. The writer's conclusions. There is a moral Governor of the world. Here or hereafter there shall be a recompense, good or evil.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain 1. Youth and old age (Ecc 12:1-8)
CHAPTER 12
1. Youth and old age (Ecc 12:1-8)
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2. The concluding epilogue (Ecc 12:9-14)
Ecc 12:1-8. Childhood and youth are vanity! That is the concluding sentence of the previous chapter. The vanities of life, the doom and darkness of the grave are uppermost in his mind, and the final word he speaks, ere he closeth with his epilogue, is the same with which he began his search, the search which brought out so many things, yet nothing in reality--as in the beginning of the book, so now he cries out, “Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, all is vanity” (verse 8). He has come back in all his reasoning to the place from which he started.
Once more he speaks of youth and exhorts, “Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth.” This advice is given in connection with the thought expressed in Ecc 11:9, “God will bring thee into judgment.” Yet the natural man cannot obey this command. He then points to that which is inevitable. The balmy days of youth and energy will be followed by years in which man says, “I have no pleasure in them, the days of old age. Then death stalks in and the dust returns to the earth as it was and the spirit to God who gave it (Ecc 12:7). The description of the approach of old age is extremely beautiful. Clouds begin to cast a shadow over the spirit; sorrows multiply, one comes after the other as “clouds return after rain.” The keepers of the house (the hands) tremble with weakness, and the strong men (the knees) become feeble. But a few of the grinders (the teeth) are left and those that look out of the windows (the eyes) are darkened. Then the doors are shut in the streets, the ears become dull and can no longer hear the familiar sound of the grinding at the mill; he is troubled with sleeplessness and no longer enjoys pleasure. He is troubled with fears. His hair becomes snow-white like the almond tree in bloom and the least thing becomes a heavy burden; the appetite is gone. Age has come and man is ready to go to his “age-long home.” The silver cord is snapped (the spinal column), the gold bowl is broken (the brain), the pitcher is broken at the fountain (the heart), and the wheel broken at the cistern (the blood and its circulation). But if he speaks of an age-long home, what is that home? And he speaks now of the spirit returning to God, but what does it mean? There is no answer, no light on these questions, for the natural man, even at his best, and in highest wisdom, cannot find the truth for himself about that “home” nor what it means--the spirit return to God. And thus he ends, “All is vanity.”
But if we turn to the gospel, the gospel of God, the gospel of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, the gospel which is from above the sun, which reaches down to lost man under the sun, that blessed gospel lifts man higher and higher, till redeemed, saved by grace, washed in the blood of the Lamb, he reaches the place above the sun, the Father’s house with its many mansions, the eternal home of the saints of God.
Ecc 12:9-14. The final great conclusion remains. He reaches the high-water mark of his reasoning wisdom. Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: “Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work unto judgment with every hidden thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil.” This is great wisdom, but does it help man? Does it bring comfort to his soul? Does it carry with it that which satisfies his heart? God is in heaven and man on the earth, he said before. There is an immeasurable distance between. And this masterly conclusion of the royal searcher still leaves God and man apart, with not even the faintest glimmer of light. Man is a sinner; how can his sins be forgiven? How can man, with a sinful heart, “obey commandments”? What about that judgment of every hidden thing? Alas! no answer; and man, struggling man, lost, sinful man, face to face with that which the highest natural wisdom can produce, must quake and tremble.
Hence Ecclesiastes is the way-preparer for the gospel of Jesus Christ. Like every other Old Testament book it points and leads to Christ, in whom all problems are solved, all questions answered, in whom the old creation ends and the new begins.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain An Appeal to the Young
An Appeal to the Young
v. 1. Remember, now, thy Creator in the days of thy youth, with a feeling of reverence and gratitude for the many blessings received, the product of true faith in the heart, while the evil days come not, those of advanced age, nor the years draw nigh when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them, when the vigor of youth and maturity is replaced by the feeling of decay and the feebleness of senility;
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v. 2. while the sun, or the light, the refreshing beauty of the morning light, or the moon, or the stars be not darkened, when the light of youthful life is darkened by the shadows of advancing old age, nor the clouds return after the rain, one misfortune or calamity following another;
v. 3. in the day when the keepers of the house, all the members and organs of the body, especially the hands and feet, shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, bent over with the weight of age, the legs no longer standing upright, but crooked and misshapen with the various ailments of age, and the grinders cease because they are few, the teeth, particularly the molars, having decayed and fallen out, and those that look out of the windows, the eyes admitting light to the body, be darkened, as sight becomes feeble,
v. 4. and the doors shall be shut in the streets, the mouth, with the upper and lower lips, no longer being able to perform its function of speaking well, when the sound of the grinding is low, the voice, breathing out from the wall of the teeth, lacking the power and force of youth, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, his voice being reduced to the low, whispering sound of old men, and all the daughters of music shall be brought low, the ears, growing deaf, no longer enjoy the singing as in former days;
v. 5. also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, since their strength will no longer permit their climbing, and fears shall be in the way, they are readily overcome with timidity, they no longer have the courage to overcome perils and obstacles, and the almond-tree shall flourish, whose white blossoms in the midst of winter were a fitting symbol of old age with its silvery hair, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, when even the least weight becomes distressing, and desire shall fail, when interest in almost everything languishes and dies, because man goeth to his long home, he is rapidly approaching death and the grave, which will hold him for many years, and the mourners, having come to give him an honorable burial, go about the streets;
v. 6. or ever the silver cord, that by which the lamp of life was supposed to be suspended, be loosed, the thread of life being severed, or the golden bowl, conceived to be holding the oil of life, be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, the body, particularly with its organs of respiration, being compared to a vessel for drawing water regularly, or the wheel, with which the water was raised from the reservoir, broken at the cistern, the reference being to the breaking down of the whole mechanism of the body in death.
v. 7. Then shall the dust, out of which man was formed at the beginning, Gen 2:7, return to the earth as it was, Gen 3:19, and the spirit, namely, of every one that died in the true faith, shall return unto God, who gave it; for into the hands of God all His children commend their souls at all times. Note: This paragraph is one of the most beautiful poetical passages in the entire Bible and deserves to be studied for its form as well as for its contents, the earnest and searching admonition contained in its lofty sentences.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 call to mind
call to mind
This is an idiom. AT: "remember" (See: Idiom)
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before the days of difficulty come
Future time is spoken of as if the "days are coming" AT: "before you experience difficult times" or "before bad things happen to you" (See: Metaphor)
before the years arrive when you say, "I have no pleasure in them,"
Future time is spoken of as if "years arrive" AT: "before you become old when you say, 'I no longer enjoy being alive,'" (See: Metaphor)
do this before the light of the sun ... after the rain
Growing old and dying is spoken of as if the sun and moon go dark and dark clouds return. AT: "do this before it seems to you that the light of the sun ... after the rain" (See: Metaphor)
translationWords
call
mind
create
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 12:1-7 This beautiful prose poem, which uses many metaphors…
12:1-7 This beautiful prose poem, which uses many metaphors in Hebrew, describes the torturous deterioration of aging (in continuation of 11:7-10).
12:1-2 Don’t . . . forget your Creator: Reverence for God can give wisdom (Prov 1:7) and guidance as to what will be beneficial in this life and pleasing to God at the judgment (Eccl 12:13-14). It is better to remember God when young, when wisdom can make a real difference in life’s results.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.