Gilbert House Fellowship #132: Ecclesiastes

ecclesiastes12ANOTHER BOOK of wisdom attributed to Solomon is our Old Testament study this week. The collected sayings of “the Preacher” (or “the Collector”), widely believed to be Solomon, are generally gloomy, but only in that they remind us of the folly of pursuing material things apart from God.


The book concludes with a summary of Solomon’s long pursuit of wisdom — a three sentence summary of the meaning of life:

The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.
Ecclesiastes 12:13-14 (ESV)

Click here for the complete archive of our New Testament Bible studies to date, and click here for the Old Testament studies to date.

3 Comments


  1. Dear Mr. Gilbert, this is not related to the house church study but is in response to something you said in your latest Youtube video. You made a comment about the issue of spiritual and moral responsibility regarding the idea of parallel universes.

    There is a situation that does not involve multiple universes but has the same moral/spiritual implications. That is the situation of identical twins. Traditional orthodox Christian theology holds that a human becomes a human with a soul at conception. Identical twins result from the division of the zygote AFTER conception. This leads to the most logical conclusion that the twins somehow share a soul (whatever that may mean). Modern studies involving identical twins seems to corroborate that idea, such as studies involving twins separated at birth who come back together as adults and find that they have the same tastes and likes and dislikes and even marry women with the same names, etc.

    If it is true that twins share the same soul, then that leads to the same moral/spiritual question of spiritual and moral responsibility, i.e., if one twin comes to faith in Christ and the other does not, what then? I was wondering if you have ever considered this interesting puzzle from a Christian perspective?

  2. The picture in ch 12 is more profane than ever expected:
    keepers of the house–Your arms and hands tremble.
    strong men–Your legs, knees, and shoulders weaken and you walk bent over.
    grinders–You start to lose your teeth.
    windows–Your vision begins to deteriorate.
    doors–Either your hearing starts to fail, or you close your mouth because you’ve lost your teeth.
    the sound of the grinding is low – You can’t chew your food, or your ears can’t pick up the sounds outdoors.
    rise up–You wake up with the birds early each morning, and wish you could sleep longer.
    music–Your voice starts to quaver and weaken.
    afraid–You are terrified of heights and afraid of falling while you walk down the street.
    almond tree–If you have any hair left, it turns white, like almond blossoms. grasshopper–You just drag yourself along, like a grasshopper at the close of the summer season.
    desire–You lose your appetite, or perhaps your sexual desire.
    long home–You go to your eternal [long] home and people mourn your death.
    This is a copy and paste statement from Warren Wiersbe (BE series commentary), but he is not the first one writing this, I read this decades ago in other commentaries.

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