Reflection Questions – Ecclesiastes 12
It is to the final mystery- death- that Ecclesiastes returns in chapter 12. Solomon describes an old house in an Israelite village, full of old possessions, with a an inhabitant who is weary in body and spirit. They are stooped over v3. Many of their grinders, their teeth, have decayed and fallen out (v3). Their eyesight is almost gone (v3). They are shut in, largely confined to home, in other words they live behind locked doors (v4). They cannot engage in the life of the wider village, like going outside to watch and listen to farm workers (v4). They are fearful, concerned about trips and falls and violent youth ‘afraid of heights and of dangers in the streets’ (v5).
Solomon is not critical of precious folk in this life-stage. Rather his point is that all of us will one day journey through this season. That season where the desire for the pleasures of life has faded and the end is near, when ‘people got to their eternal home and mourners go about the streets’ v5.
This is a poetic, dramatic, picture of the last season of life on this earth, before v7 ‘the spirit returns to God who gave it’.
Death is a force before which king and servant, rich and poor, men and women, people in 1000BC, the time of Christ, 2023AD, and 3000AD must confess their impotence.
We can’t control or fully understand death.
Death is the greatest proof that our life is vapour and breath.
Yet King Solomon wants to underline that despite all that is beyond our control, there are some certainties in which the person of God must trust.
1. From Ecclesiastes 12.9-12, on a human level, what are these certainties? What did Solomon collect, record and share?
2. From, v11-12, who is the most important author and power at work through Solomon’s wise sayings?
3. Solomon’s wise sayings include not just Ecclesiastes, but all of his proverbs in the book of Proverbs. We could extend the principle to say that all Scripture is written by human authors, but finally it is God our creator who is the most important author and power at work through the words of Scripture. A cattle prod, a goad, and secondly a nail firmly fixed in a wall, are the two images Solomon uses to describe the usefulness and power of God’s wise words in v11. What uses or power for God’s words, then, do these two images suggest?
4. Lastly, Solomon reminds his readers of the great future event that every motive, thought, hidden ungracious attitude, and overt bad behaviour, must reckon with. Namely the resurrection of humankind to stand before the all knowing judge, our Creator. Read 12.13-14. In light of this day, put the instruction of v13 in your own words.
5. What difference does it make to know that our judge has become our saviour in Jesus Christ? How does this New Testament truth give us assurance before the judgement of God yet also spur us on even more towards the fear of God and obedience? (Consider Titus 2.11-14).