Remember Now Thy Creator

Welcome to Vespers, where we take up the last hour of your day.

Tonight: the last chapter of Ecclesiastes — remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth.

A reminder: this is a survey of great ideas, not necessarily an endorsement of any one contribution.

We begin where the Preacher leaves off before he turns. From Ecclesiastes:

Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun. But if a man live many years, and rejoice in them all; yet let him remember the days of darkness; for they shall be many. All that cometh is vanity. Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes: but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment. Therefore remove sorrow from thy heart, and put away evil from thy flesh: for childhood and youth are vanity.

And then the chapter that follows, whole.

Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them; while the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain: in the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened, and the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of musick shall be brought low; also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets.

Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it. Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher; all is vanity.

And moreover, because the preacher was wise, he still taught the people knowledge; yea, he gave good heed, and sought out, and set in order many proverbs. The preacher sought to find out acceptable words: and that which was written was upright, even words of truth. The words of the wise are as goads, and as nails fastened by the masters of assemblies, which are given from one shepherd. And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.

From Barnes, on the first verse:

Remember now — rather, And remember. The connection between this verse and the preceding one is unfortunately interrupted by our division of chapters.

He goes on:

Creator — gratitude to God as Creator is here inculcated, as just previously fear of God as Judge. Godliness, acquired as a habit in youth, is recommended as the proper compensation for that natural cessation of youthful happiness which makes the days of old age more or less evil; more evil in proportion since there is less of godliness in the heart, and less evil where there is more godliness. While the evil days come not — rather, before the evil days come.

From Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, on the same verse:

As the previous verses showed what youths are to shun, so this verse shows what they are to follow. Creator — remember that thou art not thine own, but God's property; for He has created thee. Therefore serve Him with thy all, and with thy best days, not with the dregs of them. The Hebrew is Creators, plural, implying the plurality of persons. While not — that is, before that the evil days come; namely, calamity and old age, when one can no longer serve God, as in youth. No pleasure — of a sensual kind. Pleasure in God continues to the godly old.

From Matthew Poole, on the same verse:

Remember — to wit, practically, or so as to fear, and love, and faithfully serve and worship him, which when men do not they are said to forget God.

He goes on:

Thy Creator — the first author and continual preserver of thy life and being, and of all the perfections and enjoyments which accompany it, to whom thou hast the highest and strongest obligations to do so, and upon whom thou hast a constant and necessary dependence, and therefore to forget him is most unnatural, and inhuman, and disingenuous.

And on the clause that gives the sermon its urgency:

In the days of thy youth — for then thou art most able to do it, and thou owest the best of thy time and strength to God; then thou hast opportunity to do it, and thou mayst not live to old age; and then it is most necessary for the conquering those impetuous lusts and passions which drown so many thousands of young men in perdition, both in this life and in that to come.

And on the phrase the evil days:

The evil days — the time of old age, which is evil, that is, burdensome and calamitous in itself, and far more grievous and terrible when it is loaded with the sad remembrance of a man's youthful follies and lusts, and with the dreadful prospect of approaching death and judgment.

From John Gill, on the same verse. He takes the plural the way Jamieson does:

Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth — or Creators; as Makers; for more than one were concerned, as in the creation of all things in general, so of man in particular; and these are neither more nor fewer than three; and are Father, Son, Spirit; the one God that has created men.

He goes on:

Now this God, Creator, should be remembered by young men; they should remember there is a God, which they are apt to be forgetful of; that this God is a God of great and glorious perfections, who judgeth in the earth, and will judge the world in righteousness, and them also; and that he is in Christ a God gracious, merciful, and pardoning iniquity, transgression, and sin.

And:

They should remember him under this character, as a Creator, who has made them, and not they themselves; that they are made by him out of the dust of the earth, and must return to it; and they should remember the end for which they are made, to glorify him.

From Matthew Henry, on the whole first movement of the chapter:

We should remember our sins against our Creator, repent, and seek forgiveness. We should remember our duties, and set about them, looking to him for grace and strength. This should be done early, while the body is strong, and the spirits active. When a man has the pain of reviewing a misspent life, his not having given up sin and worldly vanities till he is forced to say, I have no pleasure in them, renders his sincerity very questionable.

He goes on:

Then follows a figurative description of old age and its infirmities, which has some difficulties; but the meaning is plain. If sin had not entered into the world, these infirmities would not have been known. Surely then the aged should reflect on the evil of sin.

Then the house. From the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, on the keepers of the house:

Here, as before, there is a vivid picture which is also an allegory. The words represent, first, the effect of terror, such as that produced by tempest, or by earthquake, in the population of the city; and second, the fact which corresponds to these in the breaking up of life. As in the previous verse the phenomena of the firmament answered to those of the higher region of man's nature, so these represent the changes that pass over the parts of his bodily structure.

He goes on:

The keepers, or watchers, of the houses are in the picture those who stand at the gate as sentinels or go round about the house to see that there are none approaching with the intention to attack. In the allegory they represent the legs which support the frame at rest or give it the power of movement. The trembling is that of the unsteady gait of age, perhaps even of paralysis. Not a few features in the picture seem to indicate experience rather than observation.

And on the strong men: interpreting the parable, they are the symbol of the arms as man's great instrument of action.

From Cambridge again, on the fear of that which is high:

The description becomes more and more enigmatic, possibly, as some have thought, because the special forms of infirmity referred to called for a veil. To be afraid of a hill expresses not merely or chiefly the failure of strength of limbs to climb mountains, but the temper that, as we say, makes mountains out of molehills, which, like the slothful man of the Proverbs, sees a lion in the path. There are fears in the way. Imaginary terrors haunt the aged.

Cambridge then quotes Horace, in the commentary's own rendering:

Many the troubles that attend the old; for either still he sets his mind on gains and dares not touch, and fears to use his gains, or deals with all things as with chill of fear.

And Cambridge notes that Aristotle, among the characteristics of age, lists that the old are timid, and in all things forecasting fears.

On the almond tree. From Cambridge:

The true meaning is to be found, it is believed, in the significance of the Hebrew name for almond tree — the early waking tree — and the enigmatic phrase describes the insomnia which often attends old age. The tree that flourishes there is the tree of wakefulness. The discordant interpretations of commentators multiply, and we may record, but only in order to reject it, the most notable: that the almond blossoms represent the white hairs of age. Those blossoms are, however, pink and not white, and few persons would find a likeness.

The Pulpit Commentary takes the other side of that. From the Pulpit Commentary:

And the almond tree shall flourish; or, is in blossom. The old man is thus figured from the observed aspect of this tree. It blossoms in winter upon a leafless stem, and its flowers, at first of a pale pink colour, turn to a snowy whiteness as they fall from the branches. The tree thus becomes a fit type of the arid, torpid-looking old man with his white hair.

The Pulpit Commentary also reads the high place as the road out. From the Pulpit Commentary:

They find difficulty in mounting an ascent. Shortness of breath, asthmatic tendencies, failure of muscular power, make such an exertion arduous and burdensome, just as in the previous verse a similar cause rendered singing impossible.

He goes on:

The description is now arriving at the last stage, and allegorizing the closing scene. The steep ascent is the painful process of dying, from which the natural man shrinks; for as the gnome says: none dotes on life more than the aged man. The old man is going on the appointed road, and fears shall be in the way; or, all sorts of fears are in the path; as in his infirm condition he can walk nowhere without danger of meeting with some accident, so analogously, as he contemplates his end and the road he has to travel, fearfulness and trembling come upon him, and horror overwhelms him.

Then the lamp. From Cambridge, on the silver cord and the golden bowl:

The figurative character of the whole section reaches its highest point here. It is clear however that the figures, whatever they may be, are symbolic of nothing less than death. We have had the notes of decay in organs and in functions brought before us one by one. Now we come to the actual dissolution of soul and body.

He goes on:

It will help us to a right understanding to begin with the golden bowl. The noun is the same as that used for the bowl of the golden seven-branched lamp of the Temple. It was the vessel from which the oil flowed into the lamps. The lamp itself was, in the judgment of most students of the Mosaic ritual, the symbol of life in its highest manifestations.

Cambridge then gathers the lamp images. From Cambridge:

The lamp of life was a familiar image. So when Pericles visited Anaxagoras, as he was dying of want and hunger, the sage said reproachfully: when we wish to keep the lamp burning, we take care to supply it with oil.

And Cambridge quotes Lucretius on the succession of the generations, in the commentary's own rendering: like men who run a race, hand on the lamp of life. And a line from the Greek epitaphs: sleep-giving night hath quenched my light of life.

Cambridge concludes:

It can scarcely remain doubtful then that the golden bowl is life as manifested through the material fabric of man's body. And if so, the silver cord in the imagery of the parable can only be the chain by which, as in houses or temples, the lamp hangs — that is, when we interpret the parable, that on which the continuance of life depends. Death, elsewhere represented as the cutting of the thread of life by the abhorred shears of the Destinies, is here brought before us as the snapping of the chain.

The Pulpit Commentary reads it the same way, and refuses the anatomy. From the Pulpit Commentary:

This is evidently one figure, which would be made plainer by reading and instead of or, the idea being that the lamp is shattered by the snapping of the cord that suspended it from the roof. When the bowl is broken or damaged so as to be useless, the light, of course, is extinguished.

He goes on:

But of what in man are these symbols? Many fanciful interpretations have been given. The silver cord is the spine, the nerves generally, the tongue; the golden bowl is the head, the membrane of the brain, the stomach. But these anatomical details are not to be adopted; they have little to recommend them, and are incongruous with the rest of the parable. The general break-up of life is here delineated, not the progress of destruction in certain organs or parts of the human frame.

And:

The cord is what we should call the thread of life, on which hangs the body lit by the animating soul; when the connection between these is severed, the latter perishes, like a fallen lamp lying crushed on the ground. The mention of gold and silver is introduced to denote the preciousness of man's life and nature.

The anatomy the Pulpit Commentary declines is worth hearing once, because Benson gives it in full. From Benson:

By the silver cord he seems to understand the spinal marrow, which comes from the brain, and goes down to the lowest end of the back-bone. And this is aptly compared to a cord, both for its figure, which is long and round, and for its use, which is to draw and move the parts of the body.

From Keil and Delitzsch, on the structure of the three warnings:

A third before now follows. The first placed the old man in view, with his discomfort in general; the second described in detail his bodily weaknesses, presenting themselves as forerunners of death; the third brings to view the dissolution of the life of the body, by which the separation of the soul and the body, and the return of both to their original condition, is completed.

And then the two returns, which the Preacher sets side by side and does not explain: then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.

We turn from the commentators to the moralists, and to the same subject seen from outside the text.

From the collections. From Tholuck:

Old age is a courtier; he knocks again and again at the window and at the door, and makes us everywhere conscious of his presence. Woe to the man who becomes old without becoming wise; woe to him if this world shuts the door without the future having opened its portals to him.

From Bulwer:

It is noticeable how intuitively in age we go back with strange fondness to all that is fresh in the earliest dawn of youth; it is the old who plant young trees; it is the old who are most saddened by the autumn, and feel most delight in the returning spring.

And Bulwer again, on the words of this chapter directly:

Let youth cherish the happiest of earthly boons while yet it is at its command; for there cometh a day to all when neither the voice of the lute nor the birds shall bring back the sweet slumbers that fall on their young eyes as unbidden as the dews.

From John Owen:

If we see a man in his old age grow more in love with the things of this world, and less in love with the things of God, it is not through the weakness of nature, but through the strength of sin.

From Edward Young:

Youth is not rich in time; it may be poor; part with it, as with money, sparing; pay no moment but in purchase of its worth; and what its worth, ask death-beds; they can tell.

From Mrs. E. Kinney:

If the spring put forth no blossoms, in summer there will be no beauty, and in autumn no fruit; so if youth be trifled away without improvement, riper years will be contemptible, and old age miserable.

From Richter:

Winter, which strips the leaves from around us, makes us see the distant regions they formerly concealed: so does old age rob us of our enjoyments, only to enlarge the prospect of eternity before us.

From Madame de Gasparin:

No desert without limits extends before the old man; he walks beside a river whose banks are seen to approach; a diminishing stream separates them each day less and less; and on the opposite bank stand wife and son, with arms outstretched to meet him.

Longfellow wrote a poem for the fiftieth anniversary of his college class, and called it by the gladiators' salute. It begins:

O Caesar, we who are about to die salute you, was the gladiators' cry in the arena, standing face to face with death and with the Roman populace.

O ye familiar scenes, ye groves of pine, that once were mine and are no longer mine, thou river, widening through the meadows green to the vast sea, so near and yet unseen, ye halls, in whose seclusion and repose phantoms of fame, like exhalations, rose and vanished, we who are about to die salute you.

And it ends where the almond tree does. From Longfellow:

But why, you ask me, should this tale be told to men grown old, or who are growing old? It is too late! Ah, nothing is too late till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate. Cato learned Greek at eighty; Sophocles wrote his grand Oedipus, and Simonides bore off the prize of verse from his compeers, when each had numbered more than fourscore years, and Theophrastus, at fourscore and ten, had but begun his Characters of Men. Chaucer, at Woodstock with the nightingales, at sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales; Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last, completed Faust when eighty years were past. These are indeed exceptions; but they show how far the gulf-stream of our youth may flow into the arctic regions of our lives, where little else than life itself survives.

He goes on:

As the barometer foretells the storm while still the skies are clear, the weather warm, so something in us, as old age draws near, betrays the pressure of the atmosphere. The nimble mercury, ere we are aware, descends the elastic ladder of the air; the telltale blood in artery and vein sinks from its higher levels in the brain; whatever poet, orator, or sage may say of it, old age is still old age. It is the waning, not the crescent moon; the dusk of evening, not the blaze of noon; it is not strength, but weakness; not desire, but its surcease; not the fierce heat of fire, the burning and consuming element, but that of ashes and of embers spent, in which some living sparks we still discern, enough to warm, but not enough to burn.

And the last lines:

What then? Shall we sit idly down and say the night hath come; it is no longer day? The night hath not yet come; we are not quite cut off from labour by the failing light; something remains for us to do or dare; even the oldest tree some fruit may bear; not Oedipus Coloneus, or Greek Ode, or tales of pilgrims that one morning rode out of the gateway of the Tabard inn, but other something, would we but begin; for age is opportunity no less than youth itself, though in another dress, and as the evening twilight fades away the sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.

The Preacher turns from the picture to his own work — what he was doing, and why the words are shaped the way they are. From Ecclesiastes:

And moreover, because the preacher was wise, he still taught the people knowledge; yea, he gave good heed, and sought out, and set in order many proverbs. The preacher sought to find out acceptable words: and that which was written was upright, even words of truth. The words of the wise are as goads, and as nails fastened by the masters of assemblies, which are given from one shepherd.

From Cambridge, on the goads:

They assert that its words also, sweet as they seem, are not without their sting, though, like the prick of the goad, it is for good and not for evil, urging men on to strong and vigorous labour in the fields of thought and action.

He goes on:

We are reminded of what was said of the words of Pericles, that his eloquence left a sting in the minds of his hearers; and in part also of the Greek proverb, consecrated for us by a yet higher application, that it is hard to kick against the pricks.

And on the nails:

The word by is an interpolation, and the words taken as they stand would run: as nails fastened are the masters of assemblies.

From Matthew Henry, on this same stretch:

The truths of God are as goads to such as are dull and draw back, and nails to such as are wandering and draw aside; means to establish the heart, that we may never sit loose to our duty, nor be taken from it. The Shepherd of Israel is the Giver of inspired wisdom. Teachers and guides all receive their communications from him. The title is applied in Scripture to the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

And then the conclusion. From Ecclesiastes:

And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh. Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.

From the Pulpit Commentary:

The teaching of the whole book is now gathered up in two weighty sentences. The first word of this verse, the word for end, is printed in the Hebrew text in large characters, in order to draw attention to the importance of what is coming. And its significance is rightly estimated. These two verses guard against very possible misconception, and give the author's real and mature conclusion. When this is received, all that need be said has been uttered.

He goes on:

Fear God, and keep his commandments. This injunction is the practical result of the whole discussion. Amid the difficulties of the moral government of the world, amid the complications of society, varying and opposing interests and claims, one duty remained plain and unchanging — the duty of piety and obedience. For this is the whole duty of man. The Hebrew is literally, This is every man, which is explained to mean, This is every man's duty. For this man was made and placed in the world; this is his real object, the chief good which he has to seek.

From Cambridge, on the same:

This is what the Teacher who, as it were, edits the book, presents to his disciples as its sum and substance, and he was not wrong in doing so. In this the Debater himself had rested after his many wanderings of thought. Whatever else might be vanity and feeding on wind, there was safety and peace in keeping the commandments of the Eternal, the laws which are not of to-day or yesterday.

He goes on:

The word duty is not in the Hebrew, and we might supply the whole end, or the whole work, or with another and better construction, This is for every man: that is, a law of universal obligation. This was, in Greek phrase, the work of man, that to which he was called by the very fact of his existence. All else was but an accessory.

From John Gill, on the conclusion:

The sum and substance of it, what it all tends to and issues in; even the whole of what is contained in this book, and in all other divinely inspired writings; of all that were now written, or before, or since: this the preacher calls upon himself, as well as his hearers, to attend unto. Or it may be rendered, the end of the whole matter is heard; here ends this book; and you have heard the whole of what deserves regard, and it lies in these few words.

He goes on:

Fear God, and keep his commandments. The fear of God includes the whole of internal religion, or powerful godliness; all the graces of the Spirit, and the exercise of them; reverence of God, love to him, faith in him, and in his Son Jesus Christ; hope of eternal life from him; humility of soul, patience and submission to his will, with every other grace. And keeping of the commandments, or obedience to the whole will of God, is the fruit, effect, and evidence of the former; and takes in all the commands of God, and an observance of them in faith, from a principle of love, and with a view to the glory of God.

And:

This is the whole man; and makes a man a whole man, perfect, entire, and wanting nothing; whereas, without this, he is nothing, let him have ever so much of the wisdom, wealth, honour, and profits of this world.

From Matthew Henry, on the close of the book:

Solomon repeats his text: vanity of vanities, all is vanity. These are the words of one that could speak by dear-bought experience of the vanity of the world, which can do nothing to ease men of the burden of sin. As he considered the worth of souls, he gave good heed to what he spake and wrote; words of truth will always be acceptable words.

He goes on:

To write many books was not suited to the shortness of human life, and would be weariness to the writer, and to the reader. All things would be vanity and vexation, except they led to this conclusion: that to fear God, and keep his commandments, is the whole of man. The fear of God includes in it all the affections of the soul towards him, which are produced by the Holy Spirit. There may be terror where there is no love, nay, where there is hatred. But this is different from the gracious fear of God, as the feelings of an affectionate child. The fear of God is often put for the whole of true religion in the heart.

We close with Isaac Watts, his paraphrase of the ninetieth Psalm, titled Man frail, and God eternal.

Our God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come, our shelter from the stormy blast, and our eternal home.

Under the shadow of thy throne thy saints have dwelt secure; sufficient is thine arm alone, and our defence is sure.

Before the hills in order stood, or earth received her frame, from everlasting thou art God, to endless years the same.

Thy word commands our flesh to dust: return, ye sons of men. All nations rose from earth at first, and turn to earth again.

A thousand ages in thy sight are like an evening gone; short as the watch that ends the night before the rising sun.

The busy tribes of flesh and blood, with all their lives and cares, are carried downwards by thy flood, and lost in following years.

Time like an ever-rolling stream bears all its sons away; they fly forgotten as a dream dies at the opening day.

Like flowery fields the nations stand pleased with the morning light; the flowers beneath the mower's hand lie withering ere 'tis night.

Our God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come, be thou our guard while troubles last, and our eternal home.

Good night.