Ecclesiastes 12: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The chapter calls the reader to remember the Creator in youth, before the hard years arrive, and describes the coming of old age and death through a series of images: a house whose keepers tremble, a mill that falls silent, a snapped silver cord, a broken pitcher. Then the dust returns to the ground and the spirit returns to God who gave it, and the Teacher repeats the book's refrain that everything is meaningless. The closing verses describe the Teacher's work of collecting and arranging proverbs, warn that the making of many books has no end and that study wearies the body, and state the conclusion of the whole matter: fear God and keep his commands, because God will bring every deed and every hidden thing into judgment, whether good or evil.

Claim by Claim

1. 12:1
   • The hearer is commanded to remember his Creator.
   • The remembering is to be done in the days of one's youth.
   • This is to be done before the days of trouble come.
   • This is to be done before the years arrive of which one will say something.
   • The person will say of those years, "I have no pleasure in them."
2. 12:2
   • This is to be done before the sun and the light are darkened.
   • This is to be done before the moon and the stars are darkened.
   • This is to be done before the clouds return after the rain.
3. 12:3
   • There comes a day when the keepers of the house tremble.
   • On that day the strong men bend themselves over.
   • On that day the women who grind stop working.
   • The grinding women stop because they have become few.
   • On that day those who look out through the windows grow dark.
4. 12:4
   • The doors onto the street are shut.
   • The sound of the grinding mill becomes low.
   • One rises up at the sound of a bird.
   • All the daughters of song are brought low.
5. 12:5
   • They are afraid of what is high.
   • There are terrors along the road.
   • The almond tree blossoms.
   • The grasshopper drags itself along and becomes a burden.
   • The caper berry fails; the word may mean either the caper fruit or desire.
   • All this happens because man is going to his eternal home.
   • The mourners go about in the street.
6. 12:6
   • This is to be done before the silver cord is snapped, or removed; the word is uncertain.
   • This is to be done before the golden bowl is shattered.
   • This is to be done before the pitcher is broken at the spring.
   • This is to be done before the wheel is broken at the cistern.
7. 12:7
   • The dust returns to the earth as it was.
   • The spirit returns to God.
   • God gave the spirit.
8. 12:8
   • The Preacher says, "Vanity of vanities."
   • The Preacher says that everything is vanity.
9. 12:9
   • The Preacher was wise.
   • Beyond that, he taught the people knowledge.
   • He weighed and pondered.
   • He searched out.
   • He arranged many proverbs.
10. 12:10
    • The Preacher sought to find pleasing words.
    • What was written was upright.
    • What was written was words of truth.
11. 12:11
    • The words of the wise are like goads.
    • The collected sayings, or the masters of collections, are like firmly fixed nails; the phrase is ambiguous.
    • These words were given from one shepherd.
12. 12:12
    • The speaker addresses his son and tells him to be warned by these things.
    • There is no end to the making of many books.
    • Much study is a weariness of the flesh.
13. 12:13
    • This is the end of the matter, when everything has been heard.
    • The command is to fear God.
    • The command is to keep God's commandments.
    • This is the whole of man; whether it means man's whole duty or the whole of what a man is is left open.
14. 12:14
    • God will bring every deed into judgment.
    • The judgment includes every hidden thing.
    • The judgment covers whether the deed is good or evil.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

12:1

Verses 2 through 7 are one long poem about growing old. Each picture in it stands for part of what happens to a body over the years. The Teacher never says so plainly; he lets the reader work it out.

12:2

The darkening of sun, moon and stars is standard ancient poetry for catastrophe or the end of a life. "The clouds return after the rain" reverses the usual hope: instead of the sky clearing after a storm, another bank of cloud rolls in, gloom with no break in it.

12:3

Ancient and modern readers have taken these four figures two ways at once, and the Hebrew supports both: a great house sliding into decay (guards, strong servants, grinding women, watchers at the windows), and an aging body (hands trembling, legs bending, teeth grown few, eyes dimming). The poem never says which it means. Grinding grain by hand between two stones was daily household labor, normally done by women.

12:4

The doors are the ones opening from a house onto the street; shut doors mean a household withdrawn from ordinary life. Waking at a bird's first call is the light, early sleep of the old. "Daughters of music" is a Hebrew idiom, "daughter of" simply marks belonging to a class, and can mean singing women, or the songs themselves; some take it of the ears growing deaf.

12:5

Several details here are disputed. The almond blossoms white in late winter, before anything else, and readers have long heard white hair in it. The grasshopper "is a burden" translates a verb that may mean it drags itself along, losing its spring, or that even so light a thing feels heavy. "Desire shall fail" renders a Hebrew word that is the name of the caper berry, eaten to sharpen the appetite, so either the caper loses its effect or appetite and desire simply fail. "Long home" is literally "his everlasting house," the grave. Funerals employed professional mourners, who walked the streets wailing aloud.

12:6

Two pictures of ordinary equipment ruined past repair. The first is a lamp hanging by a cord: cut the cord and the bowl of oil falls and smashes. The second is the gear for drawing water, a jar let down into a spring, and a wheel or pulley set over a well. When these break, the household's water stops.

12:7

This echoes the opening chapters of Genesis, where a human being is formed from the dust of the ground and God breathes breath into him. The word rendered "spirit" is Hebrew *ruach*, which means breath, wind, and spirit all at once.

12:8

"Vanity" in the King James translates Hebrew *hebel*, literally a vapor or puff of breath: fleeting, weightless, impossible to get hold of. It does not mean conceit or self-admiration. "Preacher" translates *Qoheleth*, roughly "one who gathers or addresses an assembly", a teacher speaking to a gathered audience, not a preacher in a church.

12:9

Proverbs are short, pointed sayings. Collecting, editing and arranging such sayings into ordered collections was the recognized work of a wisdom teacher in Israel and across the ancient Near East.

12:10

"Acceptable words" means pleasing, well-turned ones. The verse claims two things about the writing at once: that it was crafted to be a pleasure to hear, and that it was accurate.

12:11

A goad is a long pole tipped with a sharp point, used to prod oxen forward, words that sting you into moving. The phrase behind "masters of assemblies" is unclear in Hebrew: it may mean collected sets of sayings, or the leaders of gatherings of scholars. "One shepherd" is equally open: shepherd was a common title for a king, a teacher, or God, and the text does not say which is meant.

12:12

"My son" was the standard way a wisdom teacher addressed a pupil; it need not mean his own child. Books at this date were hand-copied scrolls, so making them was slow, costly work.

12:13

"Fear God" in Hebrew usage means reverence and awe before God, not being frightened of him. "The whole duty of man" is an interpretation: the Hebrew says only "this is the whole of man," and "duty" is a word the translators supplied. Others render it "this applies to everyone."

12:14

The language is that of a law court: God sitting as judge and weighing what each person has done, including what nobody else saw.