Ecclesiastes 12:7

‘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 Genesis 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 (Ecclesiastes 3:11), and the contrast between the certainty in this verse and his uncertainty in Ecclesiastes 3:21, and the reference to man's ‘everlasting home' above in Ecclesiastes 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 (Genesis 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' (Genesis 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' (Genesis 3:22) in ‘God's image and likeness' (Genesis 1:26). The animals are simply a by-product. Theirs is not said to be God's breath. It is simply a form of created life (Genesis 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 (Ecclesiastes 3:11). But it lifts man into hope. (It is something illustrated by the fact that ‘Enoch was not, because God took him' (Genesis 5:24), and by the fact that that Elijah was taken up by God into heaven (2 Kings 2:11), something equally mysterious, but providing hope). The future was left with God.