The Difficult Days
So remember your Creator in the days of your youth – before the difficult days come, and the years draw near when you will say, “I have no pleasure in them”; before the sun and the light of the moon and the stars grow dark, and the clouds disappear after the rain; when those who keep watch over the house begin to tremble, and the virile men begin to stoop over, and the grinders begin to cease because they grow few, and those who look through the windows grow dim, and the doors along the street are shut; when the sound of the grinding mill grows low, and one is awakened by the sound of a bird, and all their songs grow faint, and they are afraid of heights and the dangers in the street; the almond blossoms grow white, and the grasshopper drags itself along, and the caper berry shrivels up – because man goes to his eternal home, and the mourners go about in the streets – before the silver cord is removed, or the golden bowl is broken, or the pitcher is shattered at the well, or the water wheel is broken at the cistern – and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the life’s breath returns to God who gave it.
“Absolutely futile!” laments the Teacher, “All of these things are futile!” (Ecclesiastes 12:1-8)
In terms of the vitality of life, today is better than tomorrow.
Throughout Ecclesiastes 1:1-11:6 the Preacher meditated upon the hevel of life under the sun: all is vain, futile – truly absurd. He compares most human endeavors toward meaning as “chasing after wind”: people pursue pleasure, wealth, wisdom, or other things looking for ultimate purpose and satisfaction and will be disappointed and frustrated by all of them. To rage against such truths is itself futile and striving after wind. God understands better than we do, and His work and ways are inscrutable to us.
In truth Ecclesiastes 12:1 represents the Preacher’s conclusion of Ecclesiastes 11:7-10: remember your Creator in the days of your youth. Any concerns about the Preacher’s endorsement of the pursuit of one’s desires in youth should be allayed by this conclusion. The Preacher was never commending careless hedonism; he reminded them of God’s judgment for all they would do in Ecclesiastes 11:9, and now the Preacher made known the spirit of his instruction. To remember one’s Creator in the days of one’s youth was not intended to represent God as a kind of “Big Brother” always waiting to catch you in transgression at any and every moment; instead, it is an exhortation to fully live what is a good, high-quality life, and to do so while one still has the strength and vitality to do so. If what we imagine as a good, high-quality life involves a lot of sinful behavior, such is our failure of imagination.
But the Preacher did not merely wrap up the beginning of his conclusion; he transitioned into his final lament regarding the difficult days which come as a result of the aging process (Ecclesiastes 12:1-7). We do well to remember our Creator in the days of our youth because difficult days will come in which we will no longer take a lot of enjoyment in the process of living.
In Ecclesiastes 12:2 cosmic forces dim: the sun, the moon, and the stars grow dark, and clouds disappear. In Ecclesiastes 12:3 the household fades: (male) “guardians” tremble, strong men stoop over, (women) grinders become few, and (women) “watchers” dim. Commerce collapses in Ecclesiastes 12:4a: doors shut and the grinding mill declines. Nature is observed in Ecclesiastes 12:4b-5a: birdsong rises and fades, birds (?) are terrified in the streets, almonds blossom while grasshoppers drag along and caper berries shrivel. The Preacher then described the passing of an individual in vivid detail in Ecclesiastes 12:5b-7: man goes to his eternal home; mourners are present in the streets; the silver cord is removed, the golden bowl is broken, the pitcher is shattered at the well, and/or the water wheel is broken at the cistern, all of which may represent funerary rituals; the body returns to the dust from which it is taken, and the soul returns to the God who gave it.
Thus, the Preacher seems to describe the aging process by means of a series of illustrations and observations in Ecclesiastes 12:2-7, and we are left to attempt to decode what, or who, is aging: whether we are to understand the Preacher on a surface meaning level, to plumb the surface to find some metaphorical values, or a little bit of both.
We can understand the impetus to understand the Preacher as describing the aging process of individuals by means of a series of metaphors. In this perspective the dimming of the cosmos might represent degeneration of experience and vision; the fading of the “household” represents the weakening of bodily functions, perhaps arms, legs, teeth, eyes; and the observations of nature might be associated with being easily startled but with fading hearing, the whitening of hair, slowing in movement, and reduction in desire. Death then “naturally” follows these signs of decay.
No doubt the Preacher has the decay and increasing corruption inherent in the aging process in mind throughout Ecclesiastes 12:1-5a, with death as the end result in Ecclesiastes 12:b-7; such grounds and animates his exhortation in Ecclesiastes 11:7-12:1a. It seems axiomatic for humanity: we do not know what we have until we no longer have it, and this proves all the more accurate in terms of matters of health and strength. In our youth we do not think twice about our abilities and strength; we take them for granted, and for understandable reasons, since we have very little experience of being bereft of them. Young people can physically see aging and its effects on their elders, but they have no experiential framework by which to understand it. Thus the Preacher’s exhortation remains quite salient: in your youth you have the strength and vitality to pursue your dreams, live your life, and well glorify and honor God in your decisions.
Such wisdom stands somewhat at variance with the general progressivist perspective which imagines the future will be better. In some ways, the future might prove to be better than the past or present. But there is never a guarantee the future will be better than the past or present, and in terms of youth and vitality, today is indeed better than tomorrow. None of us are growing any younger; while we gain benefits from wisdom obtained through experience, the future will invariably involve more physical corruption and decay than our present.
Yet perhaps we should not so quickly run to a metaphorical understanding of the Preacher, for what he has to say about the individual may extend beyond the individual. The corruption and decay which besets the individual also proves true of the creation in general. Stars do eventually dim, explode, and/or collapse. Households, once robust and strong, grow weak and collapse. There are times of rising commerce, and then there are times during which commerce collapses. Even if commerce could remain robust, the means of production wear out and require replacement. Nature is replete with evidence of vitality and death: every year we see evidence of vitality and youth flower and then fade as the seasons progress. And it’s not just individual people who die and require lamentation and funeral rites; anything and everything “under the sun” will decay and die, from stars to rocks, households to nation-states, small businesses to multinational corporations.
Furthermore, the Preacher might well be confessing how the wisdom tradition itself falls prey to corruption, decay, and death. In this reading, the woman of strength in Proverbs 31:10-31 is laid low in old age and its attendant decay; both Wisdom and Folly looking out the window, or found in the streets, are similarly laid low. Wisdom requires a level of strength which humans cannot sustain indefinitely.
And so “today is better than tomorrow” often proves not only accurate for the individual but also for households, businesses, societies, the creation in general, and even wisdom. There is no guarantee things will get better. Some things might well improve; other things might well get worse.
While we can draw applications of the Preacher’s description of death and mourning rituals in Ecclesiastes 12:5b-7 to collectives, institutions, and aspects of the creation, the Preacher certainly has individual people primarily in view. Death remains bitter. The body returns to the dust from which it came. The spirit, Hebrew ruach and Greek pneuma, is often translated as “soul,” and especially in the New Testament be the term more associated with eternal life than the transient life breath (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:20-58); yet the Preacher may understand it primarily in terms of that “breath of life,” which returns to the God who gave it. For the Christian, this is the hope of returning to be with the Lord while awaiting the resurrection and the final victory over the futility of the creation; yet for the Preacher, it may represent the sad final end, in which the life force returns to God while the body decomposes back into soil.
And so the Preacher concluded as he began: everything is hevel: a vapor, futile, vanity, absurd (Ecclesiastes 12:8). In the beginning he observed the cyclical nature of all things in the creation (cf. Ecclesiastes 1:2-11); at the end he observed the corruption, decay, and inevitable death of every person and everything “under the sun.” He has abundantly demonstrated the validity of his claim. We can easily hear him say so in bitterness, frustration, and lamentation. Yet it makes his exhortation all the more powerful: life ends as it begins, and it will not be long, so at least enjoy it.
So it goes for life “under the sun.” Yet we can have the hope of something better and greater in what God has accomplished through His Son Jesus. The creation was subjected to futility, but endures in hope of the freedom which will come by means of the sons of God. Jesus has overcome sin and death in His resurrection; if we share in the sufferings which attended to His death, we also can share in the victory over sin and death on the final day. May we entrust ourselves to God in Christ through the Spirit and obtain eternal life in Him!
Ethan R. Longhenry
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