A Commentary in Simple English on Ecclesiastes

Chapter 12 The end of the argument

Verses 1-8 The storm breaks

In verse 1 we have the word ‘remember’. That was also in verse 8 of the last chapter. We shall find it again in verse 6 of this chapter. These three uses of the word mark three stages. The first is youth in Chapter 11. The second is old age in Chapter 12: 1-5. The third is death in Chapter 12:6 and 7.

There are quite a number of word pictures here. We cannot be quite sure what some of them mean. It does seem quite simple to see them as pictures of old age. There are also pictures of a big house and of a storm.

So although youth and ‘black hair’ mean nothing (verse 1) they are the best time for a wise man to think about God. ‘True repentance is never too late; but late repentance is not often true’. God is not only the God who made us. He is not only our ‘Creator’. We know that He has given us His Son to die for us. We should be ready to give all our life to Him. If we leave it till we are old, we shall have so little to give to Him.

The years of middle life will go so quickly. The days of bad trouble will come. Then it will be too late. The last words of the verse may mean: ‘It is too late to do anything now’. [12.1]

In verse 2, light is a picture of life. The last part of the verse is rather like Chapter 1: 5-7. The dark storm clouds had gone away. The rain had passed over. Now the clouds and the danger of another storm come back. So we are to remember our Creator, who is the God who made us. We must remember Him early, before we face the storm and the darkness. These are pictures of death.

In verse 3, the ‘keepers of the house’ are the servant men. They are the men who stand at the doors of the great house. Now they shake or ‘tremble’. The strong men are the men with power and money who live in the house. They bow or ‘stoop down’. The ‘grinders’ are the women servants in the house. They do the hard work. They have to use hand mills to grind grain for food. Now there are not enough women servants to do this work any more. ‘Those who look through the windows’ are the rich ladies who live in the house. They do not do any hard work. They look out of the window and they talk about what they see. They pass their time away like this. But now it is all dark. So we have here the picture of men and of women, of rich and poor people in the house.

Another way to think of this verse is as a picture of an old man. ‘The keepers of the house’ are his arms. They shake. The ‘strong men’ are his legs. They are so weak that he cannot stand up. The ‘grinders’ are his teeth. He cannot bite his food. The ‘windows’ are his eyes. The old man will soon lose his sight. All will be dark.

In verse 4, the street is the ‘bazaar’ or ‘suq’. It is the busy street of a town in an eastern country. It is crowded with shops and traders. It is full of people. There is a lot of noise. Everyone is busy. That is where the old man would have been until not long ago. Now he can no longer go out there. In the house, the women grind grain in a hand mill to make bread. They talk away with each other. The old man is so deaf now that he cannot hear these noises.

Perhaps in the silent hours before dawn, the old man rises up. He sleeps so badly that the song of a bird is enough to wake him up. The ‘daughters of song’ at the end of the verse may be the birds again. The old man is too deaf even to hear them now.

Verse 5 gives us five more pictures of old age. First, the old man is frightened to stand anywhere high up and look down. Next, he is frightened to go out into the busy street. The old man will not go out of the house now. But the other three pictures are from outside the house. The third picture is of the ‘almond’ tree. This has very good nuts. It has white flowers or ‘blossom’. These come out at the end of winter. So the third picture may be of white hair on the old man’s head, and of the ‘winter’ of life. The fourth picture is of the ‘locust’ or grasshopper’ which is an insect. The old man walks so badly that he looks like one. He can hardly walk at all. In the last picture, all his desire has come to an end. In the last two lines of the verse the old man has died. His body goes to the grave. There are people who are sorry that he has died. They are the mourners. They are busy again very soon. They are in the street - the ‘suq’ or ‘bazaar’ - in front of the house where the old man used to live.

Verse 6 begins with the third and last call to ‘Remember Him!’ It is the great call to think about God. If we did not think about God when we were young, we should at least do it before we die. Then we have two beautiful pictures of death. They teach us that life is of great value and use. First there is something which is made from gold. It may be a bowl or perhaps a lamp. We are not sure. It hangs up on silver chains. If just one link in the chain breaks, then the bowl will fall. It will break and it will be of no more use. The lamp will give no more light. Light is a picture of life. [12.2]

Many ‘links’ together make up the ‘chain’ which is the life of our bodies. If only one link in the chain breaks, we die.

Then there are pictures of water. Water is often a picture of life. (John 4:13 and 14). So here first a spring of water rises out of the ground. The women used a jar or pot to carry the water home. The water pot is no good now. Someone has broken it. There by the spring are the pieces. At death, we cannot put life together again. The last picture is of a well of water. The women have a bucket. It is tied to the end of a rope. They let the bucket down into the water empty. Then they pull it up again full. At the top, the rope is fixed to a wheel or a ‘pulley’. The women have a handle to turn the wheel. This lowers and raises the bucket.

Sadly now, someone has broken the wheel. No one can mend it. So the women can no longer pull their buckets of water up from the well.

The water of life is deep down. As long as we live we can pull it up. We cannot pull more of it up once ‘the wheel’ breaks. That means when we die.

So in verse 7, we have some last words from the Teacher about death. God made man from the dust (Gen 2:7). Then He breathed life or ‘spirit’ into him. God gave the spirit to man. This was God’s grace. At death, the body and the spirit have to part. This is why we fear death. Our spirit has always had the body to use and to control. At death, the body goes back to the dust (Gen 3:19). The spirit goes back to God. The spirit without the body will feel naked (2 Cor 5:3-4). God promises to Christians a new body so that in glory their spirits will not feel naked.

(Verse 8) These are the last words of the Teacher. They are words that he has often used. The verse is like 1:2. We may feel that we still do not have the right English words for them. Perhaps if the wise man knew the truth, he would not be able to look at it. It would be too great for him.

Verses 9-14 The Writer sums up

Verses 9 and 10 tell us about the Teacher. They look like a note, which the Writer has added to tell us more about the book.

The ‘spine’ of a book is the piece at the back between the front and back covers. It is the part that we can see when the book is on a shelf. We put the name of the book on the spine. Now in Bible times ‘scribes’ did the writing. In many places, they wrote on ‘tablets’ made from clay. They wrote in wedge-shaped marks, which they made in the soft clay. Then they baked this hard. The ‘tablets’ were rather like bricks. When a scribe had finished a tablet, he might store it in a clay ‘wallet’. This would have a piece that the scribe would use like the spine of a book. Verse 8 might be like the name of a book. It shows what kind of thing a reader would find inside. Verse 13 begins: ‘The end of the matter’. That would mean that the whole book was in this one clay box. The next words might mean that nothing had been left out to keep it short. [12.3] We cannot be certain that this is the picture behind these verses.

So in verse 9, we read two things about the Teacher. He himself was wise. Then he shared what he knew with ‘the people’. Christian knowledge is shared knowledge: see Ephesians 3:18. He could do this because he ‘weighed’ the proverbs or sayings. He heard them from other people and then he thought about them. He also tried to find more proverbs. Then he put them into order. The meaning of one added more to the meaning of another when he put them together. Then (verse 10) he worked to get the shape right. He wanted to give pleasure to people by what he said. Yet he would not lose any of the truth of what he wanted to say. The Teacher worked hard at this.

In verse 11, we have two pictures. First, a ‘goad’ is a sharp piece of wood. When cattle or oxen did not want to move, the man who drove them would ‘poke’ or ‘prod’ them with the goad. This hurt the cattle, but they could not see the man behind them with the goad. He hurt them just enough to make them move. The second picture may even be of the same piece of wood! This time, someone knocks it into the ground. He wants to put up a tent. The piece of wood is a tent ‘peg’ now. He will fix to it one of the ropes which hold the tent up. So ‘the words of the wise’ can do two different things for us. They can make us move when we do not want to. They can help us to stand up, like the tent.

The ‘shepherd’ at the end of the verse may just be the man with the goad and the tent peg. Most people rather think that it is God. God gave the ‘words of the wise’.

Verse 12 begins with a warning that we should not add anything to this book. From verse 9 the speaker has not been the Teacher himself. It has been the Writer who was a follower of the Teacher. Now in verse 12, we can hear the follower speak to someone else. The follower calls him: ‘My son’. He does not tell him not to study or to write. He just warns him that it is very hard work.

The first half of verse 13 tells us that we are nearly at the end of the book. ‘All is heard’. The second half tells us first that we should fear God. We should think how great and how good He is. He loves us so we want to show our love to Him. The fear of God will change us. Then we shall want to do what God tells us to do. There are people who do not have the fear of God in them. Yet they try to do what God tells them to do. They do it for the wrong reasons. We cannot obey God like that. The verse ends: ‘This is all of man’. It is man with God. Rather, we should say, it is God with man. Man now is no longer just ‘beneath the sun’. Man is no longer empty or without meaning. God is his God. For (verse 14) nothing is so small that it is does not matter to Him. If God cares enough to bring ‘everything into judgment’, then nothing can be without meaning. Even the good things that we hide, God will bring into judgment.