Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Ecclesiastes 12:7
Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.
7. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was ] The reference to the history of man’s creation in Gen 2:7 is unmistakeable, and finds an echo in the familiar words of our Burial Service, “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” So Epicharmus, quoted by Plutarch, Consol. ad Apoll. p. 110, “Life was compound, and is broken up, and returns thither whence it came, earth to earth and the spirit on high.” So the Epicurean poet sang,
“Pulvis et umbra sumus.”
“Dust and shadows are we all.”
Hor. Od. iv. 7. 16
echoing the like utterance of Anacreon,
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“We shall lie down, a little dust, no more”
echoed in its turn by Shakespeare ( Cymbeline, iv. 2),
“Golden lads and lasses must,
Like chimney sweepers, turn to dust.”
the spirit shall return unto God who gave it ] We note, in the contrast between this and the “Who knoweth ?” of ch. Ecc 3:21, what it is not too much to call, though the familiar words speak of a higher triumph than is found here, the Victory of Faith. If the Debater had rested in his scepticism, it would not have been difficult to find parallels in the language of Greek and Roman writers who had abandoned the hope of immortality. So Euripides had sung
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,
, ,
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“Let then the dead be buried in the earth,
And whence each element first came to light
Thither return, the spirit to the air,
The body to the earth.”
Eurip. Suppl. 529
or as Lucretius at a later date,
“Cedit item retro, de terra quod fuit ante,
In terras, et quod missum ’st ex theris oris,
Id rursum cli rellatum templa receptant.”
“That also which from earth first came, to earth
Returns, and that which from the ether’s coasts
Was sent, the vast wide regions of the sky
Receive again, returning to its home.”
De Rer. Nat. ii. 998.
Or again,
“Ergo dissolvi quoque convenit omnem animal
Naturam, ceu fumus, in altas aris auras.”
“So must it be that, like the circling smoke,
The being of the soul should be dissolved,
And mingle with the breezes of the air.”
Lucret. De Rer. Nat. iii. 455.
Or Virgil, with a closer approximation to the teaching of the Debater,
“Deum namque ire per omnes
Terrasque tractusque maris, clumque profundum;
Hinc pecudes, armenta, viros, genus omne ferarum,
Quemque sibi tenues nascentem arcessere vitas;
Scilicet huc reddi deinde, ac resoluta referri
Omnia; nec morti esse locum; sed viva volare
Sideris in numerum, atque alto succedere clo.”
“[They teach] that God pervades the world,
The earth and ocean’s tracts and loftiest heaven,
That hence the flocks and herds, and creatures wild,
Each, at their birth, draw in their fragile life;
That thither also all things tend at last,
And broken-up return, that place for death
Is none, but all things, yet instinct with life,
Soar to the stars and take their place on high.”
Virg. Georg. iv. 220 227.
We cannot ignore the fact that to many interpreters (including Warburton) the words before us have seemed to convey no higher meaning than the extracts just quoted. They see in that return to God, nothing more than the absorption of the human spirit into the Anima Mundi, the great World-Soul, which the Pantheist identified with God.
It is believed, however, that the thoughts in which the Debater at last found anchorage were other than these. The contrast between the sceptical “Who knoweth the spirit of man that it goeth upward?” (ch. Ecc 3:21) and this return to God, “who gave it,” shews that the latter meant more than the former. The faith of the Israelite, embodied in the Shem or Creed which the writer must have learnt in childhood, was not extinguished. The “fear of God” is with him a real feeling of awe before One who lives and wills (ch. Ecc 8:8; Ecc 8:12). The hand of God is a might that orders all things (ch. Ecc 9:1). It is God that judges the righteous and the wicked (ch. Ecc 3:17). Rightly, from this point of view, has the Targum paraphrased the words “The Spirit will return to stand in judgment before God, who gave it thee.” The long wandering to and fro in many paths of thoughts ends not in the denial, but the affirmation, of a personal God and therefore a personal immortality.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
The spirit – i. e., The spirit separated unto God from the body at death. No more is said here of its future destiny. To return to God, who is the fountain Psa 36:9 of Life, certainly means to continue to live. The doctrine of life after death is implied here as in Exo 3:6 (compare Mar 12:26), Psa 17:15 (see the note), and in many other passages of Scripture earlier than the age of Solomon. The inference that the soul loses its personality and is absorbed into something else has no warrant in this or any other statement in this book, and would be inconsistent with the announcement of a judgment after death Ecc 12:14.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Ecc 12:7
Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was; and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.
The death of the body, and separate state of souls
I. Death reduces our bodies to their primitive dust.
1. How doth this stain the pride of all flesh, and bring their glory into contempt
1. What are pedigree and noble blood that mortal man should value himself upon them?
2. Why should we give way to the slavish fear of man? He is but dust, and must die as well as we; and God can easily stop his breath, and cut of[ all his designs against us, by bringing him down to the dust of death before us.
3. How illustriously does God display His glory in our dust! What a wonderful living machine has He made it! What strength and beauty has He put into it! How has He fitted every part for the office He designed it! And when it shall be dissolved into dust again, He will build it anew with greater improvements and refinements, sprightliness and glory, than ever before.
4. How great is the condescension of the Son of God, that He would clothe Himself with our dust, and so become a mortal man like ourselves!
II. The soul does not die with the body.
1. Reason itself tells us that the soul is immortal. The very heathens themselves had strong apprehensions of the immortality of the soul; their apotheoses, and worshipping deceased men for gods, supposed their present existence in an invisible state; and the souls surviving the body was such a common conjecture, at least, of all ages and nations among them, that Cicero calls it the voice of nature, and Seneca thought the consent of all mankind about it had the force of a considerable argument to prove it. But we have still a better proof to insist on, and that is–
2. Divine revelation.
(1) The Scripture gives us such descriptions of death as intimate a separation of the soul from the body. (Job 34:14; Gen 35:18; 2Ti 4:6; 2Pe 1:13-14; Mat 10:28.)
(2) We have accounts in Scripture of souls which, after death, have returned again to their bodies. (1Ki 17:21-22; Mat 27:52-53.)
(3) We have an account of souls which do exist in another world separate from their bodies. (Heb 12:23; Rev 6:9-10.)
III. Immediately after death the soul appears before God, to be consigned to a separate state of blessedness or misery in another world.
1. The souls of believers, immediately after death, enter into a state of blessedness with Christ in glory. (Rev 14:13; Psa 49:15; Psa 73:24; Isa 57:1-2; Luk 23:48; 2Co 5:1; 2Co 5:8; Php 1:21-23; Act 7:59; Heb 12:23-24; Rev 5:7.)
2. The souls of the wicked, immediately after death, enter into a state of misery. (Act 1:25; 1Pe 3:19-20; Luk 16:19-31.) (J. Guyse, D. D.)
The two natures of man
1. As we lay our beloved in the grave, we recognize indeed their mortality; but at the same time we feel that this is not really they. The presence of death assures us afresh that our beloved is really the spirit which has passed out of sight.
2. This recognition of a spiritual nature as well as a material nature gives us a presumption of a higher as well as a lower destiny. We see how the frail body died inevitably: year by year it was always coming nearer to death; and we see how the strong spirit did not waste and decay in like manner, but ought to have survived.
3. We ask where the strong, sweet spirit has gone, and our hearts answer, with the Bible, It has gone to God; recalled to Him who gave it. Augustine says, Thou hast made us for Thyself, and we rest not till we rest in Thee.
4. To one who is not afraid to go to God, death is the triumphant conclusion of this life of trial. Those who pass the veil find hope changed to sight, prayer to praise. (F. Noble, D. D.)
The story of a soul
The story of a soul, its relations, its prospects, its future, is the one important thing to be considered; yet who dare draw aside the veil and read his coming history? The sacred penmen for Whom the veil of the future was in part drawn aside caught glimpses of the souls history in the future which they have sketehed in brief and graphic lines. The text discloses to us the single fact of the separation of the soul from the body at death and its continued existence in another sphere.
I. It retains a consciousness of its individual existence and of its personal identity. The effects of death upon the body we can distinctly trace from the suspended animation to the final dissolution. But who can show any influence of death upon the soul beyond the simple cessation of any visible action of the mind through its supposed organ the brain p If there were uniformly a decline of mental manifestations corresponding with the decline of the body through disease, if we saw that the mind always failed in perception, in memory, in reflection, and in action, just in proportion as the body failed in strength and in the power of locomotion, then we might infer that death had an influence upon the mind corresponding with its influence upon the body; yet even then we should not be warranted in saying that the mind itself had ceased to be, or that anything had occurred beyond the suppression of mental activity through its ordinary channels. You enter an apartment where a thousand wheels all connected by cogs and bands are in swiftest motion, and the shuttle is flying incessantly through a score of looms. You do not, however, see the propelling force by which all this machinery is driven. Far down under the ground, in a vault of the strongest masonry, the great fire is fed that generates the steam which, conveyed through concealed pipes, imparts motion to the engine, and thence to the thousand wheels of the factory. Of a sudden the machinery stops; the wheels are motionless, the shuttle is arrested in the middle of the loom. Now, you are not warranted in inferring that the great fire in the vault below, which you have never seen, has been suddenly extinguished, or that the supply of water in the boiler has failed, or that the boiler itself has burst, or that from any cause the engine has ceased to move. Only some connecting pipe has burst, or some band or joint concealed from you is broken. The force exists there and needs only a connecting medium to manifest its presence. What more, then, are you authorized to infer when the machinery of life stands still than that the connection between the energizing will and the muscular framework has been severed? Would you be warranted in inferring that intelligence and will were annihilated, even if simultaneously with the decay of the body you always witnessed a corresponding cessation of mental activity? The machinery has stopped, but does that prove that the fire has been put out, that the motive power is destroyed? But we do not always witness a decline of mental activity corresponding with the decay of the body. How often does the mind continue the full exercise of its every faculty up to the very moment of death; how often, indeed, does its activity seem to increase as it approaches that crisis. How evident is it that the fire is burning, that the engine is moving, that the inner force is there even while the outer machinery drags heavily, and grates and pauses, from the snapping of one and another of its bands. You can show me nothing to prove that the mind is injuriously affected by death, you can bring no proof whatever that it is annihilated. And now, with no evidence from nature of the annihilation of the spirit at death, I turn to revelation to learn what then becomes of it. And here I learn first of all that it continues to exist, a conscious spirit, retaining its personal identity. There is no suspension of consciousness; or, if any, it is only as the momentary suspension of consciousness in sleep, from which the mind awakes with new perceptions and with augmented vigour. Abraham, Moses, Elias, Lazarus and Dives are the same persons after death that they were before it, and knew themselves to be the same. This is the first fact that we gain knowledge of in the future history of the soul. And how significant is such a fact as this. What an awful discovery to the man who has lived an atheist, who has flattered himself into the belief that death was an eternal sleep. The delusion then vanishes. When death comes and his connection with this outward world is severed, he wakes up to a consciousness of existence still; the same being and beyond the possibility of annihilation, and where death has no more power. What a discovery is this for such a mind to wake up to, and understand after death!
II. The soul after death awakes to a lively and a constant sense of the presence of God. What a fearful thought for the men who have tried to convince themselves, and others, that there was no God, or that God was but a blind, indifferent, unobservant force. Think of such a mind waking up into the very presence of the living God. That is the souls second experience after death–it wakes up to know itself alive, and it wakes up to a personal God.
III. The soul awakes to the memory of the past. This is clearly intimated in the following context. The spirit will return to God for a judicial purpose. God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing. And in order to this, the soul itself will recall its secret and its long-forgotten sins. Indeed, there is great probability that at death the faculty of memory will be quickened into new activity and power; and that impressions buried under the dust and rubbish of years will be brought out as fresh as when first made upon the pliant but durable tablet of the heart. Now, the Scriptures teach us, as in the parable of Dives and Lazarus, that the memory is in most lively exercise after death.
IV. The soul will awake to the certainty and the near prospect of the judgment. The spirit returns to God that it may answer for the deeds it has clone here in the body. Retaining its identity, it retains its accountability; it retains its personal relations to the government of God, and to God Himself as a Ruler and a Judge.
V. The soul after death will enter upon the experience of an eternal retribution. This is the uniform representation of the Scriptures. The soul enters at once upon a state of happiness or of misery, and it knows that that state is to be eternal. O the unutterable joy or the unspeakable anguish of the mind when it first realizes the fact that it will be for ever blessed or for ever miserable! (J. P. Thompson.)
Our destiny after death
I. The destiny of the body.
1. Death is the severance of the two parts of mans complex being; the dissolution, not of the being, but of the union, between body and soul.
2. The text points to the origin of the body. Then shall the dust return–not the body. It is described by what it was and will be: Dust thou art, etc. (Psa 103:14; Gen 18:27). The Church, in the same way, commits the body to the grave, as dust to dust, in the Burial Office. This is a humbling thought, and it is true, whatever view may be taken of the creation of the body.
3. It shall return to the earth. Unto dust shalt thou return, has in it the accents of Divine disappointment. An act of man has intervened, whereby the hindrance to corruption has been removed, and the corruptible body therefore pursues its natural course. God made not death (Wis 1:13), but man called it to him by forfeiting the grace which kept it away. The result is, in Adam all die.
4. It is bodily death to which the text refers; and the words are true now, as in the Old Covenant–though Christ redeemed both body and soul. The body is dead because of sin (Rom 8:10), though the spirit is life because of righteousness.
II. The destiny of the spirit.
1. It pursues a different route, for its origin is different. God who gave it. The words point to the spirit as being a special creation of God–the infusio animae. God is truly the Father of Spirits (Heb 12:9), and it can be said of souls that they are His, because He directly creates them (Eze 18:8). They come from Him.
2. The spirit returns to its Source. The words, Into Thine hands I commit for, commend, Prayer-book Version of My spirit, are used at the departing of the soul, when leaving the body. Thus death is regarded as the withdrawal of that which had been given.
3. Here is the belief in a future life, and in a book, too, which materialists and pessimists have thought favoured their views. The soul in its individuality; the soul as a supra-sensuous substance–the spirit; the soul as the express gift of God; the soul as an immortal principle beyond the reach of that disintegration which death produces in the houses of clay (Job 4:19); the soul returning to Him who only hath immortality in an absolute sense, as Self-derived;–all this is in Ecclesiastes, before Christ had brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel.
III. Lessons.
1. The remembrance of the end is one which is impressed upon us in Holy Scripture as most important (Deu 32:29; Psa 39:4).
2. This is most necessary in the time of temptation, in making some important choice, or when languid in devotion. It acts respectively as a curb, as an adviser, as a stimulant, on those occasions.
3. If death were annihilation, to view life from the standpoint of death would be morbid; but as death is the gate to higher life, such a view is not, one of unmingled sadness, but fills this present life with interest, as its issues are seen to be eternal.
4. To seek more and more to realize how precious is the immortal spirit, God-given; and to learn how to preserve it from sin, knowing its destination. (H. W. Hutchings, M. A.)
The spirit shall return unto God who gave it.—
The immortality of the soul
The immortality of the soul may be argued–
I. From the soul itself.
1. The soul is a spiritual substance. This is evident from the fact that it possesses all the properties of spirit, and none of those that belong to matter–such as intelligence, reflection, and volition.
2. The soul is capable of endless improvement. The more knowledge the mind possesses, the better fitted it is for fresh acquisitions in knowledge. The mind possesses faculties that are but imperfectly exercised in this life; but as nothing is made in vain, there must, therefore, be a future state.
3. All men desire immortality, and are averse to annihilation. Can we suppose that a Being, infinite in wisdom and goodness, would plant such desires for immortality in His creatures if they were never to be gratified?
4. All human beings are disposed to be religious in some way. This is so natural to men, that some have chosen to define man a religious, rather than a rational, animal. All nations have their gods, to whom they pay adoration and worship; and there is nothing too mean and insignificant for man to worship, rather than to have no god. And all religions are founded in the belief of a future state.
5. The powers and faculties of the mind are strong and vigorous, when the body is weak and emaciated. Though the outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. How often, when speech has failed, and the body has lost the power to raise a single limb, has the soul, by some token, evinced, not only that all its faculties remained unimpaired, but that it was leaving the world in the greatest peace.
II. A future state of existence may be concluded from the unequal distribution of rewards and punishments in this life.
1. If there be a God, He is a God of justice; and if He be a God of justice, He will fully reward the virtuous, and punish the vicious–but this He does not do in the present world; and, therefore, there must be a future state.
2. The natural tendency of virtue is, indeed, to produce happiness, and that of vice is to produce misery. But though these positions hold true in general, still there are innumerable cases in which the virtuous suffer much, and the vicious little or nothing in this world. We are therefore led to conclude that the present state is only a small part of the great plan of Gods moral government.
3. That the present life is a time of trial, or probation, is admitted on all hands, with very few exceptions. And a state of trial implies that there will be a time of review, or examination, when the probationers will be rewarded, or punished, according to their works. But this time cannot come till the state of trial is finished.
4. The doctrine that there is no future state destroys all proper distinction between virtue and vice. And, indeed, if this be the ease, they have no existence but in name; for neither is the one rewarded, nor the other punished. There would be no motives to virtue, nor any checks to vice. Do away a future state, and there is nothing for the vicious to fear, nor for the virtuous to desire.
III. The immortality of the soul and a future state are most clearly revealed in the scriptures of truth.
1. There are certain persons of whom it is said that they shall never die. But none are exempt from the death of the body. It is, therefore, the soul that shall not die.
2. The immortality of the soul may be inferred from Scripture instances of committing the spirit to God.
3. We learn from the Scriptures that the soul, on the death of the body, goes immediately to happiness or misery.
4. The Scriptures speak particularly of the existence of the soul, after the death of the body. Christ affirms that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were living in His time, in quoting and commenting on the words of the Lord to Moses at the burning bush.
IV. Inferences:–
1. If the soul be immortal, it must be exceedingly valuable.
2. If the soul be immortal, the loss of it must be indescribable. (O. Scott.)
The individuality of the soul
Nothing is more difficult than to realize that every man has a distinct soul, that every one of all the millions who live, or have lived, is as whole and independent a being in himself as if there were no one else in the whole world but he. We class men in masses, as we might connect the stones of a building. Consider our common way of regarding history, politics, commerce, and the like, and you will own that I speak truly. We generalize, and lay down laws, and then contemplate these creations of our own minds, and act upon and towards them, as if they were the real things, dropping what are more truly such. Take another instance: when we talk of national greatness, what does it mean? Why, it really means that a certain distinct definite number of immortal individual beings happen for a few years to be in circumstances to act together and one upon another, in such a way as to be able to act upon the world at large, to gain an ascendency over the world, to gain power and wealth, and to look like one, and to be talked of and to be looked up to as one. They seem for a short time to be some one thing: and we, from our habit of living by eight, regard them as one, and drop the notion of their being anything else. And when this one dies and that one dies, we forget that it is the passage of separate immortal beings into an unseen state, that the whole which appears is but appearance, and that the component parts are the realities. We still think that this whole which we call the nation is one and the same, and that the individuals who come and go exist only in it and for it, and are but as the grains of a heap or the leaves of a tree. Again: when we read history, we meet with accounts of great slaughters and massacres, great pestilences, famines, conflagrations, and so on; and here again we are accustomed in an especial way to regard collections of people as if individual units. We cannot understand that a multitude is a collection of immortal souls. I say immortal souls: each of these multitudes not only had while he was upon earth, but has, a soul, which did in its own time but return to God who gave it, and not perish, and which now lives unto Him. All those millions upon millions of human beings who ever trod the earth and saw the sun successively are at this very moment in existence all together. Moreover, every one of all the souls which have ever been on earth is, in one of two spiritual states, so distinct from one another, that the one is the subject of Gods favour, and the other under His wrath; the one on the way to eternal happiness, the other to eternal misery. This is true of the dead, and is true of the living also. All are tending one way or the other; there is no middle or neutral state for any one; though as far as the sight of the external world goes, all men seem to be in a middle state common to one and all. Yet, much as men look the same, and impossible as it is for us to say where each man stands in Gods sight, there are two, and but two classes of men, and these have characters and destinies as far apart in their tendencies as light and darkness: this is the case even of those who are in the body, and it is much more true of those who have passed into the unseen state. What makes this thought still more solemn, is that we have reason to suppose that souls on the wrong side of the line are far more numerous than those on the right. It is wrong to speculate; but it is safe to be alarmed. This much we know, that Christ says expressly, Many are called, few are chosen; Broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be who go in thereat: whereas narrow is the way that leadeth to life, and few there be who find it. What a change it would produce in our thoughts, unless we were utterly reprobate, to understand what and where we are–accountable beings on their trial, with God for their friend and the devil for their enemy, and advanced a certain way on their road either to heaven or to hell. Endeavour, then, to realize that you have souls, and pray God to enable you to do so. Endeavour to disengage your thoughts and opinions from the things that are seen; look at things as God looks at them, and judge of them as He judges. Avoid sin as a serpent; it looks and promises well; it bites afterwards. It is dreadful in memory, dreadful even on earth; but in that awful period, when the fever of life is over, and you are waiting in silence for the judgment, with nothing to distract your thoughts, who can say how dreadful may be the memory of sins done in the body? (J. H. Newman, D. D.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 7. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God]
5. Putrefaction and solution take place; the whole mass becomes decomposed, and in process of time is reduced to dust, from which it was originally made; while the spirit, haruach, that spirit, which God at first breathed into the nostrils of man, when he in consequence became a LIVING SOUL, an intelligent, rational, discoursing animal, returns to God who gave it. Here the wise man makes a most evident distinction between the body and the soul: they are not the same; they are not both matter. The body, which is matter, returns to dust, its original; but the spirit, which is immaterial, returns to God. It is impossible that two natures can be more distinct, or more emphatically distinguished. The author of this book was not a materialist.
Thus ends this affecting, yet elegant and finished, picture of OLD AGE and DEATH. See a description of old age similar, but much inferior, to this, in the Agamemnon of AEschylus, v. 76-82.
It has been often remarked that the circulation of the blood, which has been deemed a modern discovery by our countryman Dr. Harvey, in 1616, was known to Solomon, or whoever was the author of this book: the fountains, cisterns, pitcher, and wheel, giving sufficient countenance to the conclusion.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
The dust; the body, called dust, both for its original, which was from the dust, and to signify its vile and corruptible nature, Job 4:19; 30:19; Psa 103:14.
Return to the earth as it was; whence it was first taken. He alludes to that passage, Gen 3:19. The spirit; the soul of man, frequently so called, as Gen 2:7; Psa 31:5, &c., because it is of a spiritual or immaterial nature.
Return unto God; into his presence, and before his tribunal, that there it may be sentenced to its everlasting habitations, either to abide with God for ever, if it be approved by him, or otherwise to be eternally shut out from his presence and favour.
Who gave it, to wit, in a peculiar manner, by his creating power: for in a general sense God giveth to every seed his own belly, 1Co 15:38; hence he is called the Father of spirits, Heb 12:9.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
7. dustthe dust-formed body.
spiritsurviving thebody; implying its immortality (Ec3:11).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was,…. The body, which is made of dust, and is no other in its present state than dust refined and enlivened; and when the above things take place, mentioned in Ec 12:6, or at death, it returns to its original earth; it becomes immediately a clod of earth, a lifeless lump of clay, and is then buried in the earth, where it rots, corrupts, and turns into it; which shows the frailty of man, and may serve to humble his pride, as well as proves that death is not an annihilation even of the body; see Ge 3:19;
and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it; from whom it is, by whom it is created, who puts it into the bodies of men, as a deposit urn they are entrusted with, and are accountable for, and should be concerned for the safety and salvation of it; this was originally breathed into man at his first creation, and is now formed within him by the Lord; hence he is called the God of the spirits of all flesh; see Ge 2:4. Now at death the soul, or spirit of man, returns to God; which if understood of the souls of men in general, it means that at death they return to God the Judge of all, who passes sentence on them, and orders those that are good to the mansions of bliss and happiness, and those that are evil to hell and destruction. So the Targum adds,
“that it may stand in judgment before the Lord;”
or if only of the souls of good men, the sense is, that they then return to God, not only as their Creator, but as their covenant God and Father, to enjoy his presence evermore; and to Christ their Redeemer, to be for ever with him, than which nothing is better and more desirable; this shows that the soul is immortal, and dies not with the body, nor sleeps in the grave with it, but is immediately with God. Agreeably to all this Aristotle w says, the mind, or soul, alone enters , from without, (from heaven, from God there,) and only is divine; and to the same purpose are the words of Phocylides x,
“the body we have of the earth, and we all being resolved into it become dust, but the air or heaven receives the spirit.”
And still more agreeably to the sentiment of the wise man here, another Heathen y writer observes, that the ancients were of opinion that souls are given of God, and are again returned unto him after death.
w De Generat. Animal. l. 2. c. 3. x , &c. Poem. Admon. v. 102, 103. So Lucretius l. 2. “cedit item retro de terra”, &c. y Macrob. Saturnal. l. I. c. 10.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
WHAT HAPPENS AT DEATH
Verse 7 repeats the teaching of Ecc 3:21, that at death the body returns to dust, and the spirit returns to God who gave it. Future details are not given here but are recognized in Pro 14:32; Pro 11:7 and clearly affirmed in Luk 23:43; Luk 16:22-31; 2Co 5:1.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
(7) The preacher has risen above the doubts of Ecc. 3:21. (See also Gen. 3:19.)
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
7. Dust earth Just as, Gen 2:7, man was taken as dust from the ground, so now he returns to “dust.” And the spirit, then inbreathed from God, and thence forming a living person, returns unto God who gave it. It is not, in this return “unto God,” resolved back into an impersonal breath, which is a pantheistic idea unknown to the Hebrew mind. It returns, as Ecc 12:14 indicates, a personal being “unto God,” awaiting his judgment.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
‘And the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit return to God who gave it.’
There is a clear reference here to the idea behind Gen 2:7, although ‘spirit’ (ruach = spirit, wind, breath) replaces ‘breath’ (neshumah), possibly to suggest more permanence. In view of his earlier reference to the mystery of the everlastingness of God set in man’s heart (Ecc 3:11), and the contrast between the certainty in this verse and his uncertainty in Ecc 3:21, and the reference to man’s ‘everlasting home’ above in Ecc 12:5, we must see this also as significant. Unless the writer is extremely careless it indicates that his thought has advanced to a recognition of something beyond the grave. The God Who breathed into man the breath of life, and made him like one of the heavenly beings with a moral sense (Gen 3:22) and an awareness of God, now receives him back into His everlastingness.
So the body has gone to the grave to become once again dust, but something within man, his very life, that special something that God uniquely gave him, has gone up to the everlasting God. Thus does the speaker finally come out of his pessimistic search into a positive conclusion of optimism in God and His everlastingness.
It is no argument to say that animals are also elsewhere seen as having ‘the breath of life’ (Gen 6:17). There is no hint of that in Genesis 2, where the idea is positively linked with God breathing it uniquely into Man, an idea which is there central and distinctive. As we have pointed out above, what man became was unquestionably seen as unique, he became ‘as one of us’ (Gen 3:22) in ‘God’s image and likeness’ (Gen 1:26-27). The animals are simply a by-product. Theirs is not said to be God’s breath. It is simply a form of created life (Gen 1:21).
So the Preacher’s thinking has now moved from the vanity and meaninglessness of the earth to something mysterious in heaven, which man cannot fathom, the reception back by God of that which made man distinctive. And that is where his faith lies. He does not seek to define it, or even to understand it. It is one of God’s mysterious everlasting works (Ecc 3:11). But it lifts man into hope. (It is something illustrated by the fact that ‘Enoch was not, because God took him’ (Gen 5:24), and by the fact that that Elijah was taken up by God into heaven (2Ki 2:11), something equally mysterious, but providing hope). The future was left with God.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Ecc 12:7. Then shall the dust return to the earth. Desvoeux connects this with the preceding verse; at the end of which he places a semicolon only, and reads thus, And the dust return into the earth as it was, and the spirit return unto God who gave it. From the 7th verse of the preceding chapter we have the third precept, which, on account of its importance, is more enlarged upon than the two former, and has some retrospect to the three propositions considered jointly, but a more special one to the third. It might be thus shortly expressed: “Since men (being ignorant or unmindful of what must come to pass after their death) cannot find their way to happiness in this world, they must look for it after death, and lead in this world a life suitable to that expectation.” First then, Solomon puts us in mind that, however pleasant we may imagine a man’s life to be when attended with uninterrupted prosperity, yet a single reflection upon his future state is sufficient to damp his joy, and to convince him that all the happiness he has enjoyed is but vain, on that very account, that it is past, chap. Ecc 11:7-8. Then, from that observation he infers, that we must always keep futurity in view, and remember Him at whose disposal we know that all future events are, Ecc 12:9-10. This we must do during the whole course of our life, even from our youth, and in our most flourishing state, because the whole of our conduct must be once canvassed and examined before the supreme judge. Here the author, who in this book seldom misses the opportunity of a description, not satisfied with the bare mention of old age, describes the infirmities of it in a very elegant manner. But, as the style of that description is mostly figurative, it is not perhaps very easy to point out with certainty the particular infirmities attending a decrepit state, which are therein mentioned: yet the general meaning is very plain, which is sufficient to answer the main purpose. However, the description seems to consist of three parts. The first allegorically points out, under the image of an ill-attended house, the most obvious infirmities of old age; that is to say, those which can scarcely escape the notice of any one who beholds an old man; Ecc 12:3 and part of the 4th. The second part of the description sets forth, chiefly in plain literal terms, those alterations for the worse, which too often age produces in a man’s habit and inclinations; part of Ecc 12:4-5. The last part, under the emblem of a well which becomes useless through the decay of the engines, and other things necessary to draw water out of it, and to convey it to the proper places, represents the inward decay of the constitution, whereby we are at last brought to a state wherein (chap. Ecc 9:10.) there is no work nor device to be done, nor any use for knowledge and wisdom, Ecc 12:6. But, lest any one should suspect that Solomon involved the whole man in the ruin and destruction of the bodily machine, he does shortly assert a distinction of principles, and a difference of fate between body and soul. The one was made of earth, and returns into it. The other came from God, and returns to him. Ecc 12:7.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Ecc 12:7 Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.
Ver. 7. Then shall the dust return to the earth, &c. ] What is man, saith Nazianzen, but N , soul and soil, breath and body; a puff of wind the one, a pile of dust the other; no solidity in either. Zoroaster and some other ancient heathens imagined that the soul had wings, that, having broken these wings, she fell headlong into the body, and that, recovering her wings again, she flies up to heaven, her original habitation. That of Epicharmus is better to be liked, and comes nearer to the truth here delivered by the Preacher, Coneretum fuit, et discretum est, rediitque unde venerat; terra deorsum, spiritus sursum, – It was together, but is now by death set asunder, and returned to the place whence it came, the earth downward, the spirit upward. See Gen 2:7 , “God made man of the dust of the earth,” to note our frailty, vility, and impurity. Lutum enim conspurcat omnia, sic et caro, saith one, – Dirt defiles all things; so doth the flesh. It should seem so, truly, by man’s soul, which, coming pure out of God’s hands, soon becomes
“ Mens oblita Dei, vitiorumque oblita caeno. ”
Bernard complains, not without just cause, that our souls, by commerce with the flesh, are become fleshly. Sure it is, that by their mutual defilement, corruption is so far rooted in us now, that it is not cleansed out of us by mere death (as is to be seen in Lazarus, and others that died), but by cinerification, or turning of the body to dust and ashes.
The spirit returns to God that gave it.
a Dr Preston.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
dust. Figure of speech Metonymy (of Cause), App-6, put for the body which is made of dust (Gen 2:7; Gen 3:19. Psa 104:29. Job 34:15, Job 34:16).
as it was. Note the reference to Adam’s creation.
spirit. Hebrew. ruach. App-9. Not nephesh, soul (App-13).
return unto God. Hence He is said to be the God of the spirits of all flesh (Num 16:22; Num 27:16. Compare Luk 23:46. Act 7:59); “the Father of spirits” (Heb 12:9).
God. Hebrew. Elohim.(with Art.) = the (true or triune) God; the Deity. App-4. Concerning where the dead are, for us to assume any further than what is said here (Ecc 12:7) is no more than mere speculation.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
dust: Ecc 3:20, Gen 3:19, Gen 18:27, Job 4:19, Job 4:20, Job 7:21, Job 20:11, Job 34:14, Job 34:15, Psa 90:3, Psa 146:4, Dan 12:2
the spirit: Ecc 3:21
God: Gen 2:7, Num 16:22, Num 27:16, Isa 57:16, Jer 38:16, Zec 12:1, Heb 12:9, Heb 12:23
Reciprocal: Gen 5:5 – and he died Gen 15:15 – And thou Gen 23:4 – burying place Gen 23:19 – General Gen 49:33 – and yielded Gen 50:5 – bury me Gen 50:24 – I die Job 1:21 – Naked came Job 3:19 – The small Job 10:9 – into dust again Job 21:33 – every man Job 26:4 – whose spirit Psa 49:14 – they Psa 49:19 – He Psa 89:48 – What Psa 103:14 – we are dust Psa 104:29 – thou takest Ecc 6:6 – do Ecc 9:3 – after Isa 57:2 – He shall Zec 1:5 – General Mal 2:15 – the spirit Luk 24:39 – for 1Co 7:29 – that both Heb 9:27 – as Jam 2:26 – as
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Ecc 12:7. Then shall the dust The body, called dust, both on account of its original, which was from the dust, and to signify its vile and corruptible nature. As it was Whence it was first taken. He alludes to Gen 3:19. And the spirit The soul of man, so called, because of its spiritual or immaterial nature; shall return unto God Into his presence, and before his tribunal, that it may there be sentenced to its everlasting habitation, either to abide with God forever, if approved by him, or otherwise, to be eternally shut out from his presence and favour. Who gave it Namely, in a peculiar manner; by his creating power: whence he is called, the Father of spirits, Heb 12:9.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
12:7 Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the {u} spirit shall return to God who gave it.
(u) The soul unconsciously goes either to joy or torment, and sleeps not as the wicked imagine.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
This verse describes the reversal of the process by which God originally created man (Gen 2:7; cf. Job 34:14-15; Psa 104:29-30).