Ecclesiastes 12:8

Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher; all is vanity. A summary of the first part. VANITY OF VANITIES. Resumption of the sentiment with which the book began (Ecclesiastes 1:2; 1 John 2:17). Verse 9. BECAUSE THE PREACHER WAS WISE ... YEA, HE GAVE GOOD HEED - Hebrew, 'izeen (H238); literally, he weighed, or else 'listened,' namely, to the voice of the Spirit, which spake by him (Psalms 49:4). PROVERBS - `parables' (1 Kings 4:32). The preacher does not praise...

8-14 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. 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. The prophets sought diligently, what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferi...

Verse Ecclesiastes 12:8. This affecting and minute description of _old age_ and _death_ is concluded by the author with the same exclamation by which he began this book: _O vanity of vanities_, saith Koheleth, _all is vanity_. Now that man, the masterpiece of God's creation, the delegated sovereign of this lower world, is _turned to dust_, what is there _stable_ or worthy of contemplation besides? ALL - ALL is VANITY!...

This passage is properly regarded as the Epilogue of the whole book; a kind of apology for the obscurity of many of its sayings. The passage serves therefore to make the book more intelligible and more acceptable. Here, as in the beginning of the book Ecclesiastes 1:1, the Preacher speaks of himself Ecclesiastes 12:8 in the third person. He first repeats Ecclesiastes 12:8 the mournful, perplexing theme with which his musings began Ecclesiastes 1:2; and then states the encouraging practical conclusion...

EXPOSITION ECCLESIASTES 12:1 The division into chapters is unfortunate here, as this verse is closely connected with Ecclesiastes 12:10 of the preceding chapter. REMEMBER NOW THY CREATOR IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. Set God always before thine eyes from thy earliest days; think who made thee, and what thou wast made for, not for self-pleasing only, not to gratify thy passions which now are strong; but that thou mightest use thy powers and energy in accordance with the laws of thy being as a creature of God's hands, responsible to him for the use of the faculties and capacities with which he has endowed thee. The word for "Creator" is the participle of the Verb _bara, _which is that used in...

VANITY OF VANITIES, SAITH THE PREACHER,.... The wise man, or preacher, set out in the beginning of the book with this doctrine, or proposition, which he undertook to prove; and now having proved it by an induction of particulars, instanced in the wisdom, wealth, honours, pleasures, and profit of men, and shown the vanity of them, and that the happiness of men lies not in these things, but in the knowledge and fear of God; he repeats it, and most strongly asserts it, as an undoubted truth beyond all dispute and contradiction, that all things under the sun are not only vain, but vanity itself, extremely vain, vain in the superlative degree; ALL [IS] VANITY; all things in the world are vain; all creatures are subject to vanity; man in every state, and in his best estate, is altogether vanity: this the wise man might with great confidence affirm, after he had shown that not only childhood a...

Ecclesiastes 12:1. _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;_ Do not give God the dregs of life. Do not offer in sacrifice to him anything that is worn out. Remember that, among the first fruits which the Jews were to bring to the priest to be offered on God's altar, there were to be «green ears of corn, dried by the fire, even corn beaten out of full ears.» The Lord delights to have the hearts of his people while they are yet children. The Lord says, through Hosea the prophet, «I taught Ephraim also to go, taking them by their arms;» as if, while they were but little, God had taught them to take their first steps in walking. There is also that passage in the prophecy of Jeremiah, «I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when

CHAPTER 12 _ 1. Youth and old age (Ecclesiastes 12:1)_ 2. The concluding epilogue (Ecclesiastes 12:9) Ecclesiastes 12:1. Childhood and youth are vanity! That is the concluding sentence of the previous chapter. The vanities of life, the doom and darkness of the grave are uppermost in his mind, and the final word he speaks, ere he closeth with his epilogue, is the same with which he began his search, the search which brought out so many things, yet nothing in reality--as in the beginning of the book, so now he cries out, “Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, all is vanity” (verse 8). He has come back in all his reasoning to the place from which he started. On

ECCLESIASTES 11:1 TO ECCLESIASTES 12:8. CLOSING COUNSELS. It is well to do and to get all one can, in the way of industry and pleasure, before old age draws on. Ecclesiastes 11:1 and Ecclesiastes 11:2 are best taken as referring either to merchandise or generosity, though bread has also been interpreted as seed sown on irrigated land (_cf._ Ecclesiastes 11:4 and Ecclesiastes 11:6) or even as human semen, and...

_Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher; all is vanity_ The recurrence at the close of the book, and after words which, taken as we have taken them, suggest a nobler view of life, of the same sad burden with which it opened, has a strange melancholy ring in it. To those who see in the preceding verse nothing more than the materialist's thoughts of death as echoed by Epicurean poets, it seems a confirmation of what they have read into it, or inferred from it. The DEBATER seems to them, looking on life from the closing scene of death, to fall back into a hopeless pessimism. It may be rightly answered however that the view that all that belongs to the earthly life is "vanity of vanities" is one not only compatible with the recognition of the higher life, with all its infinite possibilities, which opens before man at death, but is the natural outcome of that recognition as at the hour of dea...