Ecclesiastes 12:1

Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth The word for "Creator" is strictly the participle of the verb which is translated "create" in Genesis 1:1; Genesis 1:21; Genesis 1:27, and as a Divine Name is exceptionally rare, occurring only here and in Isaiah 40:23; Isaiah 44:15. It is plural in its form, as Elohim (the word for God) is plural, as the "Holy One" is plural in Proverbs 9:10; Proverbs 30:3; Hosea 12:1, as expressing the majesty of God. The explanations which have been given of the words as meaning (1) "thy fountain" in the sense of Proverbs 5:18, "thy well-spring of sensuous joy," or (2) "thy existence," are scarcely tenable philologically, and are altogether at variance with the context.

while the evil days come not The description which follows forms in some respects the most difficult of all the enigmas of the Book. That it represents the decay of old age, or of disease anticipating age, ending at last in death, lies beyond the shadow of a doubt; but the figurative language in which that decay is represented abounds in allusive references which were at the time full of meaning for those that had ears to hear, but which now present riddles which it is not easy to solve. Briefly, the two chief lines on which commentators have travelled have been (1) that which starts as in the comment of Gregory Thaumaturgus (see Introduction, ch. vii.) from the idea of the approach of death as the on-coming of a storm; (2) that which assumes that we have as it were a diagnosis of the physical phenomena of old age and its infirmities, and loses itself in discussions as to what bodily organ, heart, brain, liver, gall-duct, or the like, is specially in the author's mind. It will be seen, as the imagery comes before us in detail, how far either solution is satisfactory, how far they admit of being combined, or what other, if any, presents itself with stronger claims on our attention.

The "evil days" are those which are painted in the verses that follow, not necessarily the special forms of evil that come as the punishment of sensual sins, but the inevitable accompaniment of declining years or of disease. There is the implied warning that unless a man has remembered his Creator in his youth, it will not then be easy to remember Him as for the first time in the "evil days" of age or infirmity. In those days it will be emphatically true that there will be no pleasure in them.