12 "Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near of which you will say, “I have no pleasure in them”; 2 before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened and the clouds return after the rain, 3 in the day when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men are bent, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those who look through the windows are dimmed,4 and the doors on the street are shut—when the sound of the grinding is low, and one rises up at the sound of a bird, and all the daughters of song are brought low— 5 they are afraid also of what is high, and terrors are in the way; the almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper drags itself along, and desire fails, because man is going to his eternal home, and the mourners go about the streets— 6 before the silver cord is snapped, or the golden bowl is broken, or the pitcher is shattered at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern, 7 and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it. 8 Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher; all is vanity.
9 Besides being wise, the Preacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many proverbs with great care. 10 The Preacher sought to find words of delight, and uprightly he wrote words of truth.
11 The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings; they are given by one Shepherd. 12 My son, beware of anything beyond these. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.
13 The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. 14 For God will bring every deed into judgement, with every secret thing, whether good or evil."
Ecclesiastes 12:1-14
The Preacher's third and final emphasis in the last two chapters of the book is: Be godly. This follows directly from what is said in the second injunction, Be joyful, which spoke of a responsible joy, sobered by the thought of judgment. It is the thought and certainty of judgment that underlines all that is said here. As one commentator has put it 'Man is a creature of time. In the end his creatureliness asserts itself unmistakably in his dissolution'. It is therefore wisdom to take cognizance of this, even in youth, the time when one is least disposed to think of such things, when life seems to stretch out forever. It is only when this dimension is accepted that one's youth can be rightly understood and enjoyed, only when the other dimension to life is not only introduced but taken seriously that life can be lived to the full. After all, life apart from God can have no meaning - this has been the substance of the earlier chapters - for God alone can give meaning to it, and if man or the world be regarded as the ultimate standard or point of reference, then all is vanity and leads to despair. This is the principal thrust of the final chapter, and will serve to give both background and context to all that will be said in the Readings that follow.