Ecclesiastes Chapter Twelve, Remembrance Before Death

Ecclesiastes 12:6 Remember your Creator before the silver cord is loosed, or the golden bowl is broken, or the pitcher shattered at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the well. [7] Then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it. [8] “Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher, “All is vanity.”

The preacher’s parting words before an intimate and third person conclusion beginning in verse 9 build to sort of a crescendo. In verse 1 the readership is advised to remember God during youth, before the difficult days come. But many people will not live to experience old age for good or for bad. My family has known several people who passed away before seeing 20 years old within the last decade or so. Life does not come with a guarantee.

To that end, the preacher pleads for us to remember our Creator before we die. Verse 6 offers four metaphors for death. Life is referred to as a silver cord, a golden bowl, a pitcher and a wheel. In two images life is depicted as valuable (silver and gold) and the latter two functional (a pitcher and a wheel). The final image is apparently intended to depict a well wheel, not a wagon wheel. The well wheel has a rope about it that turns to lift the bucket out of a well to fetch water. With the wheel broken, the bucket cannot be lifted any longer; the source of life (water) can no longer be drawn.

While verse 6 urges his readership to come to a trusting faith in God before death, verse 7 informs us of the ultimate and inescapable fate of man on this earth. Yes, I do subscribe to the biblical teaching of the Rapture, but from an earthly, under the sun perspective, there is no consideration of the Rapture in this book; there is only the Great Leveler, Death. And verse 7 lays death’s finality out in no uncertain terms.

The first part of death corresponds with verse 5’s “mourners going about the streets.” The dust, that is our bodies, returns to the earth as it was. This is a direct and blatant reference to Genesis chapter 2. We read, “Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being,” Genesis 2:7, NIV. Paul, when writing to the Corinthian church, corroborated this testimony, stating, “The first man was from the earth, a man of dust,” 1 Corinthians 15:47, ESV. Continuing this thought, Paul explained, “As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust…just as we have borne the image of the man of dust,” 1 Corinthians 15:48, 49, ESV. Of course Paul is defending the reality and necessity of the resurrection to the church in this chapter. Being born into this world physically, we bear the image (the likeness or representation) of the man of dust: Adam. To those well meaning but misguided Christians who attempt to allegorize the first 11 chapters of Genesis, relegating it to the realm of mythology, this chapter is a grievous embarrassment. The resurrection, predicated on the likeness and contrast of Adam and Christ, must also be allegorized, since Adam was never a real person, therefore inadvertently asserting that the resurrection (the remedy for Adam’s Fall and mankind’s ruin) must not be a literal thing, but an image of some spiritual truth represented therein. But Paul dismisses this as fallacy, since he sternly warns us that if the resurrection, which remedies Adam’s sin, is not historical truth, then Christ is not physically risen and we are doomed to Hell, 1 Corinthians 15:17.

The simple fact that Adam is directly named 30 times in Scripture makes it difficult to remove him from history. He is named 18 times in Genesis, once in Deuteronomy, 1 Chronicles, Job, and Luke, 2 times in Romans, 3 times in 1 Corinthians, twice in 1 Timothy, and once in Jude. Having firmly established where this mention originates, we turn to the words of the curse God issued to Adam, “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return,” Genesis 3:19, NIV. The human body is composed of elements that can be found in the soil of the earth. When death occurs, the human body begins to disintegrate, so speak. We decompose back into the elements God used to comprise the body. Within a few years only the skeleton would remain; within decades only dust; of course this differs depending on burial methods.

Having established the fate of our body, the preacher explains to his readership that the spirit has an entirely different destiny. This portion mirrors verse 5’s “man goes to his eternal home.” Our true eternal home is not the grave. We return to the presence of our Creator, Elohim. This is not the title of the covenant God Yahweh, as He revealed Himself to Moses. This is the God of creation, who made the heavens and the earth, and will recreate them when He removes sin from existence and ushers in righteousness.

Man has an eternal fate, and one that is decided by his view of Jesus Christ. Christ our Lord asked the most important question on earth to His disciples when He said, “But who do you say that I am?” Matthew 16:15. For those who believe that Jesus is the Savior, our eternal home is Heaven, adopted as sons and daughters of God. For those who reject Jesus’ claims to pursue their own standard of righteousness, our eternal home is the Lake of Fire and everlasting separation from God. God cannot have sin contaminate His new creation. In Christ our Lord He provided the remedy, to forgive the sins of men through the vicarious sacrifice of His Son. Believing this, which is the message of the gospel Christians preach, bestows upon you the new birth and God the Holy Spirit indwells you, sealing you for the day of redemption. Choosing to reject the Savior means you also refuse the offer of having your sins paid for by Jesus. You choose instead to pay for them yourself. To that end you must pay for them eternally, since separation, or death, is the only punishment for sin that God has. Christ died in our place to pay for human sin. But if you reject that payment, then God has a place reserved for you. Since you will not surrender your sin and acknowledge your need of salvation, and God cannot have sin corrupt the new Heavens and earth that are coming, everyone who forfeits the free gift of God’s grace will enter into eternal punishment, the Second Death, for their own sin, paying for it forever. If this does not sound like a smart idea, then I beseech anyone reading this to genuinely and thoughtfully consider Jesus Christ. He is the world’s Savior. He is your Savior; He is my Savior. He is, by His own confession, the only Savior, John 14:6, Acts 4:12.

Verse 8 culminates with the phrase that epitomizes human experience and existence under the sun. It is unadulterated vanity. There is no objective or universal purpose for man; he exists in a petty, hopeless, cyclical round of birth, life and death. Life comes with great sorrow and greater uncertainty with no apparent point as to why things happen or that we should ever expect better or more. Then life abruptly ends, irrespective of whether you were young or old, accomplished or entirely green. You are dead, put away from human sight, and ultimately forgotten. Then another rises to replace you, profaning your works without a care, because your life (and theirs) has no objective meaning or purpose. Indeed, all under the sun is vanity.