Ecclesiastes 12:5 Commentary and Bible Study

With age comes a loss of confidence in all movement. Consequently, the aging person is afraid of any precarious pathway and especially of heights. It used to be their joy to run and jump and to put their body through its paces by negotiating with skill a difficult path or a high cliff, but now all that poise has been replaced by fears. Terrors are in the way, not necessarily in reality, but certainly in the mind of the one who is growing old. They are so acutely aware of their weakness and vulnerability in comparison to what they once were that they know they cannot cope with the simplest journey and consequently they expect the worst. A perfectly safe way is transformed into a path full of obstacles in their minds and often this evaluation is right given their loss of balance, stiffened joints, and clumsy movements. Growing near the house is the almond tree. Its blossom, at first tinged with red and later completely white, is a poetic image of the hair of the aged, changing from its natural colour to grey and then to white. The change in appearance of the aged is perhaps the most striking and obvious characteristic of old age. If it was not so familiar to us, we would be struck with horror at the transformation which age brings about. Perhaps we have a friend whom we have not seen for many years: gone is the handsome face and vigorous appearance. It has been replaced by a shrunken wrinkled form in which vigour is lacking; the person has been forced to submit to a process which cannot be resisted but which strips away all the features of youth. What extraordinary process has brought about this change? The verb translated ‘is a burden’ may also mean ‘drags itself along’. Correspondingly, the thought is either that the aged are so unable to bear the least burden that even the grasshopper, the lightest of creatures, is regarded as a burden to them. Or else Solomon means to say that the aged are compared to a creature which used to be able to spring effortlessly into the air, but whose legs are now so weakened that it can only drag itself along. Even desire grows weak and no longer provides that driving force that used to be so compelling. The word ‘desire’ is in fact the word for the caper-berry, a Mediterranean shrub, whose flower bud was pickled in vinegar and whose berries were eaten; the plant had a stimulating effect on hunger and thirst. The point is that in old age even this stimulant fails to produce any result. What is the reason for all this? It is that man is going to his appointed eternal home, either to heaven or to hell. Even before he gets there, God has ordained that he will pass through this period of physical decay so that all living on earth can see something of what awaits them after death. If death came with no warning, with no preceding deterioration of the body, we would think that immortality was within our grasp, but when we see that even before we die our bodies begin to break down, we conclude that even if death could somehow be put off, life would have lost its pleasures anyway. By calling death man’s eternal home, Solomon emphasises that it is part of the plan of God which none can avoid however painful and from which man has no power to return. Soon the individual will be in their coffin and funeral arrangements will be made and in those days the mourners would be out on streets. All the anguish of the departure must be gone through and there is no consolation for those outside of Christ.