Remember Your Creator

Ecclesiastes 12 opens with the closing address to the young man: Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near of which you will say, ‘I have no pleasure in them.’ Then the great allegory of old age: the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened; the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men are bent; the grinders cease because they are few, and those who look through the windows are dimmed; the doors on the street are shut. The sound of the grinding is low, and one rises up at the sound of a bird, and all the daughters of song are brought low.

The allegory reaches its climax: the silver cord is snapped, the golden bowl is broken, the pitcher is shattered at the fountain, and the wheel broken at the cistern. The dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it. Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher; all is vanity.

Then the frame narrator’s voice steps back in. He praises Qoheleth’s craft: the Preacher sought to find words of delight, and uprightly he wrote words of truth. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh. The conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil. The book ends on the doctrine the body of the book has spent twelve chapters refusing to find sufficient, and the tension — two thousand years of it — remains unresolved.