Ecclesiastes 12:6 - Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

Bible Comments

Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern.

Or ever (i:e., before ever) the silver cord ... - connected with Ecclesiastes 12:1, 'Remember thy Creator before that the silver cord of life is snapped asunder.'

Be loosed. [So the Qeri' reads yeeraateeq (H7368)'. But the Kethibh has y-r-ch-q, be removed, namely, by God; or, as others point it, yeeraacheeq.]

Or the golden bowl ... or the pitcher be broken at the fountain. A double image, to represent death, as in Ecclesiastes 12:1-5 old age was symbolically represented.

(1) A lamp of frail material, but gilded over, often in the East hung from roofs by a cord of silk and silver interwoven: as the lamp is dashed down and broken when the cord breaks; so man's life, as it were let down from above, is snapped at death. "The golden bowl" of the lamp answers to the skull, which, from the vital preciousness of its contents, may be called "golden;" "the silver cord" is the spinal marrow, which is white and precious as silver, and is attached to the brain.

(2) A fountain, from which water is drawn by a pitcher let down by a rope wound round a wheel; as when the pitcher and wheel are broken, water can no more be drawn, so life ceases when the vital energies are gone. The "fountain" may mean the right ventricle of the heart; the "cistern," the left; the pitcher, the veins; the wheel, the aorta, or great artery (Smith.) The circulation of the blood, whether known or not to Solomon, seems to be implied in the language put by the Holy Spirit into his mouth. Hengstenberg explains the pitcher as the image of the individual life, the fountain the image of the general life: God supplying the great general treasure from which all individuals take to themselves what is needful to their subsistence. The wheel expresses life in its rapid motion (James 3:6; literally, the 'wheel of nature.') This gloomy picture of old age applies to those who have not 'remembered their Creator in youth.' They have none of the consolations of God, which they might have obtained in youth: it is now too late to seek them. A good old age is a blessing to the godly (Genesis 15:15; Job 5:26; Proverbs 16:31; Proverbs 20:29).

Ecclesiastes 12:6

6 Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern.