Ecclesiastes 12:6

Ecclesiastes 12:6

What, we ask, is that view of man's present condition implied in the language which speaks of death and decay as a loosening of the silver cord and a breaking of the golden bowl?

I. It has been made an argument against the book of Ecclesiastes being the genuine writing of Solomon that it speaks so unmistakably of the immortality of the soul and of a judgment to come. It is asserted that these great doctrines were not revealed until after the age of Solomon. Now it must be freely confessed that it was in the later times of Jewish history, just as the temporal prosperity of Abraham's race was decaying, that the spiritual rewards of the righteous in another state were made to stand out more plainly to view. Nevertheless all along there had been an undertone running through God's revelation in which they who had ears to hear might catch the promise of a life beyond, although to grosser hearts it was doubtless a thing unknown. And if there had been these notes of immortality floating all down the rougher strain of human being, in an especial degree had they been gathered together by David and concentrated in bolder music. Such are those well-known words in Ps. xvi., "My flesh shall rest in hope, for Thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades, neither wilt Thou suffer Thine holy one to see corruption," etc. These are the songs of faith which Solomon in boyhood had learnt from his own father's lips. His extraordinary intellect would enable him, too, to appreciate, perhaps as none who went before had done, the whole strain of whispered truth as to man's immortal destiny. But the witness of Solomon ends not here. Whilst recognising fully the doctrine of the soul's exemption from death, he seems to have penetrated to the further truth that by the very nature of man our moral probation must be limited to this life. "Or ever the silver cord be loosed." Solomon regards man as essentially compounded of body and spirit. Loose the silver cord, and the creature ''man" is no longer. Suppose the disembodied soul to be subjected to a probation after death, it would not be the probation of the same creature as before, but the trial of another and different creature. You cannot separate in temptation or in worship between the body and the soul. Sever the two, and you may have a trial, but it will not be the trial of a "man."

II. "Or ever the golden bowl be broken." The idea involved by the golden bowl is that of a costly vessel which receives and retains. The idea is that of the receptiveness of man. Before this mysterious being, so richly endowed with all these capacities of living for God, of holding communion with Him, of turning from wickedness unto Him, is shattered, remember, O man, thy Creator. How knowest thou that when the golden vessel is once broken, when thy present mixed nature is shivered, and the fragments of thy flesh are scattered to the four winds, and thy spirit sent abroad into the darkness how knowest thou of what sensations thou shalt be capable, of what impressions susceptible? Now thou art a golden bowl receptive of God; let Him come into thee and be thy God.

Bishop Woodford, Sermons on Subjects front the Old Testament,p. 155.