"'Live while you live,' the Epicure would say, 'And seize the pleasure of the present day.' 'Live while you live,' the Sacred Preacher cries, 'And give to God each moment as it flies.' Lord, in my view let both united be: I live in pleasure while I live in Thee."[48]
[48] _Dum vivimus vivamus._--Doddridge.
Finally, the Preacher enforces this early and habitual reference of the soul to the Divine Presence and Will by a brief allusion to the impotence and weariness of a godless old age, and by a very striking description of the terrors of the death in which it culminates.
While "the dew of youth" is still fresh upon us we are to "remember our Creator" and his constant judgment of us lest, forgetting Him, we should waste our powers in sensual excess; lest temperate mirth should degenerate into an extravagant and wanton devotion to pleasure; lest the lust of mere physical enjoyment should outlive the power to enjoy, and, groaning under the penalties our unbridled indulgence has provoked, we should find "days of evil" rise on us in long succession, and draw out into "years" of fruitless desire, self-disgust, and despair (ver. 1). "Before the evil days come," and that they may not come; before "the years arrive of which we shall say, I have no pleasure in them," and that they may not arrive, we are to bethink us of the Pure and Awful Presence in which we daily stand. God is with us that we may not sin; with us in youth, that "the angel of his Presence" may save us from the sins to which youth is prone; with us, to save us from "the noted slips of youth and liberty," that our closing years may have the cheerful serenity of a happy old age.
To this admonition drawn from the miseries of godless age, the Preacher appends a description of the terrors of approaching death (vv. 2-5),--a description which has suffered many strange torments at the hands of critics and commentators. It has commonly been read as an allegorical, but singularly accurate, diagnosis of "the disease men call death," as setting forth in graphic figures the gradual decay of sense after sense, faculty after faculty.[49] Learned physicians have written treatises upon it, and have been lost in admiration of the force and beauty of the metaphors in which it conveys the results of their special science, although they differ in their interpretation of almost every sentence, and are driven at times to the most gross and absurd conjectures in order to sustain their several theories. I need not give any detailed account of these speculations, for the simple reason that they are based, as I believe, on an entire misconception of the Sacred Text. Instead of being, as has been assumed, a figurative description of the dissolution of the body, it sets forth the threatening approach of death under the image of a tempest which, gathering over an Eastern city during the day, breaks upon it toward evening: so, at least, I, with many more, take it. And I do not know how we can better arrive at it than by considering what would be the incidents which would strike us if we were to stroll through the narrow tortuous streets of such a city as the day was closing in.
[49] It may be worth while to specify some of the gross and absurd conjectures, some also of the strange differences, into which what may be called the _medical_ reading of this passage has betrayed its advocates. Ginsburg has a marvellous collection of them in his "notes" to these verses. I select and combine only a few of them. The darkening of the light, the sun, the moon, and the stars (ver. 2) is taken by one great authority (the Talmud) to mean the darkening _of the forehead_, _the nose_, _the soul_, _and the teeth_; by another (the Chaldee Paraphrast), the obscuring of _the face_, _the eyes_, _the cheeks_, _and the apples of the eyes_; by a third (Dr. Smith, in his "Portraiture of Old Age"), _for the decay of all the mental faculties_. That "the clouds return after the rain" signifies, according to Ibn Ezra, _the constant dimness of the eyes_; according to Le Clerc, _a bad influenza, accompanied with unceasing snuffling_. "The keepers of the house" (ver. 3) are _the ribs and the loins_ (Talmud), _the knees_ (Chaldee), and _the hands and arms_ (Ibn Ezra). "The men of power" are _the thighs_ (Talmud) and _the arms_ (Chaldee). "The grinding maids" are _the teeth_, and "the ladies who look out of the lattices" are _the eyes_, by general consent. "The door closed on the street" is _the pores of the skin_ (Dr. Smith), _the lips_ (Ibn Ezra), and _the eyes_ (Henstenberg). That "the noise of the mills ceases" or "grows faint" (ver. 4) means that _the mastication of food_ becomes imperfect (Dr. Smith), that _the appetite_ fails (Chaldee), that _the voice_ grows feeble (Grotius). That "the songbirds descend to their nests" signifies that _music and songs are a bore_ to the aged man (Talmud), that he is _no longer able to sing_ (Chaldee), that _his ears are heavy_ (Grotius). The allusion to "the almond" (ver. 5) denotes that _the haunch-bone shall come out from leanness_ (Talmud), or (Reynolds) it denotes _the hoary hair which comes quickly on a man_ just as the almond-tree thrusts out her blossoms before any other tree; while at least half-a-dozen scholars and physicians take it as pointing to _membrum genitale_ or _glans virilis_. That "the locust becomes a burden" means that _the ankles swell_ (Chaldee), _gout in the feet_ (Jerome), _a projecting stomach_ (Le Clerc), _the dry shrivelled frame of an old man_ (Dr. Smith). Almost all modern commentators take the reference to "the caper-berry" as marking the fact that condiments lose their power to provoke appetite with the aged, while many of the ancients took it as marking the failure of sexual desire. The "silver cord" and "golden bowl" of ver. 6 are _the tongue and the skull_ (Chaldee), _backbone and brain_ (Dr. Smith), _urine and bladder_ (Gasper Sanctius); while the "bucket" is either _the gall_ or _the right ventricle of the heart_, and "the wheel" that draws the water stands for _the air-inspiring lungs_.