Chapter 12 is the concluding chapter of Sefer Kohelet, and it focuses entirely on the end of human life. Shlomo HaMelech portrays the gradual decline of man toward the end of his days: "Before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars grow dark," "On the day when the keepers of the house tremble, and the men of valor bend, and the grinders cease" - a complete depiction of aging and decay. Arising from this description is the great counsel set forth at the opening of the chapter: remember your Creator while you are still young.
וּזְכֹר אֶת־בּוֹרְאֶיךָ בִּימֵי בְּחוּרֹתֶיךָ עַד אֲשֶׁר לֹא־יָבֹאוּ יְמֵי הָרָעָה וְהִגִּיעוּ שָׁנִים אֲשֶׁר תֹּאמַר אֵין־לִי בָהֶם חֵפֶץ׃ - Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years arrive when you will say, "I have no pleasure in them."
A young man is called a bachur for two reasons: first, because he is in the choice prime (mivchar) of his years; and second, because this is the age when he chooses (bocher). Later in life, a person generally continues along the path he chose then - one who chose a straight path continues straight, and one who chose a crooked path continues crooked. Ba'alei teshuvah and people who redirect their lives in midstream are not many. The primary choice is made in the days of youth, and therefore: "Remember your Creator in the days of your youth."
Midrash Zuta expounds: "The evil days" - these are the days of old age. "And the years arrive when you will say, 'I have no pleasure in them'" - these are the days of the Mashiach, in which there is neither merit nor liability. Once Mashiach has already arrived, a person cannot say, "Now I will become observant and active"; it is a freeze-frame, and a person is judged in Heaven according to his standing at that very moment. Therefore: remember your Creator before those days arrive.
Pesikta Zutreta explains: "Remember your Creator" - the One who formed you in your mother's womb; "in the days of your youth" - while your strength is still within you. As the verse states, "Praiseworthy is the man who fears the Lord," which Chazal expound to mean: while he is still a vigorous man. The great virtue is when a person overcomes and subdues his evil inclination while he is still young. "Before the evil days come" - these are the days of old age, when the days weigh heavily upon the elderly person and everything seems bad to him: here it aches, there he does not feel well, and here he cannot move. "And the years arrive when you will say, 'I have no pleasure in them'" - these are the days of afflictions, when a person despairs of his life because of illnesses and says: I no longer desire this life.
Rashi cites the Mishnah here: There we learned, Akavya ben Mahalalel says, reflect upon three things and you will not come to sin - know where you came from, where you are going, and before Whom you are destined to give an accounting. Where you came from - from a putrid drop; where you are going - to a place of dust, worms, and maggots; and before Whom you are destined to give an accounting - before the King of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He. All three are derived from this verse.
Rashi does not mention it, but the Yerushalmi notes that Akavya derived all three from a single word - from the word Borecha ("your Creator"): be'ercha (your well/source), borcha (your pit/grave), and Borecha (your Creator). "Borecha" - before Whom you are destined to give an accounting; "borcha" - the pit into which every person is ultimately cast, the grave, a place of dust, worms, and maggots; "be'ercha" - the source from which you emerged, welling forth from the origin of a putrid drop, seed and white matter. Remember all of these - and you will not come to sin.
Rashi explains "the evil days" as the days of old age and weakness. The holy Alshich explains the verse as a continuation of the verses in the previous chapter, where Shlomo warned against waiting for old age. Here, says the Alshich, Shlomo HaMelech comes and offers us an opportunity to make amends: if you did not merit to remember the Creator from your childhood, at least be of the second category - those who remember Hashem in their youth. And there are two periods of youth: from age thirteen to twenty, and from twenty through the majority of one's days. If you did not repent between thirteen and twenty, when a person's blood boils at its peak and his strength is at its height, at least repent afterward, from twenty through the majority of your days. Repent in the first period, and at the very least in the second. "Before the evil days come" - before a person is gathered to his grave, for you do not know your time.
Why are these days called "the evil days"? The Alshich explains: because the days themselves exact retribution from a person. When a person does good, the days themselves come forward to testify on his behalf - "advanced in days" (ba bayamim, literally "came with his days"), meaning all his days accompany him and testify for him. This was true of Avraham Avinu, and this is what the Zohar says regarding "And the days of Yisrael drew near" and "And the days of David drew near": the days draw near to testify about his good deeds, each day coming forward to attest to what this person did on that day, how he utilized his time. And Chazal expounded on the verse "at a time of finding" - this refers to death, when the days come to testify. But when, Heaven forbid, it is the opposite - the evil days come, days that say: "On me he did evil; me he wasted; here he committed transgressions."
"When you shall say, 'I have no pleasure in them'" - chefetz denotes desire and will. Days in which there is no desire means days in which a person no longer wants anything. Offer him a good meal, and he replies: "Have you seen my jaw?" He consumes only liquids, and even among those, many are forbidden to him, and the truth is - even what he is permitted to eat, he cannot taste. There is nothing about which he says, "I want this." A person loses interest, loses his sense of taste; his pleasure has neither desire nor appetite, just as Barzillai the Gileadite said, "Can I taste what I eat?" They ask him what he desires, and he replies: "I desire nothing, only quiet."
If so, what is the problem? The problem, says the Alshich, is how effective repentance can be at that point. You might say: "I kept away from sins" - but what kind of distancing is that, when you have no taste, no pleasure, and no desire? The body no longer enjoys anything, so how can a person say, "I broke my evil inclination, I overcame it," when he has no appetite for anything anyway? Such repentance is termed by Chazal teshuvah geriata - an inferior, degraded repentance. Certainly, the Holy One, blessed be He, accepts all repentance, even at the very threshold of death (al zivula batrayata), even when a person stands moments before the grave - Hashem accepts his repentance; yet one must know that it is an inferior teshuvah.
It suffers from three flaws. First: in complete repentance, when a person remembers his Creator in the days of his youth, he still has years ahead to accumulate merits; whereas one who repents a moment before death - where are his merits? Second: do not say this is repentance out of love; a person who repents moments before death repents out of fear, not love, and therefore his willful sins are not transformed into merits. Third: the repentance itself is defective, for he no longer has a taste for anything and has nothing left to lose. A moment before they lower him into the grave, he says, "I repent" - but he ought to have repented beforehand, not when he already sees the axe falling upon the tree.
Rabbeinu Yonah teaches that every repentance finds some measure of forgiveness. We once explained this through the parable of the garment and cleaning. If you have a very soiled garment and you dip it in water and pull it out - did it come out cleaner? It must have. How do we know? Look at the water: it is dirty, a sign that something was washed away. Can one say the garment is clean? Certainly not, yet the water accomplished something. Add some scrubbing - the water gets dirtier, and the garment begins to look slightly cleaner. Add soap, soak it, use boiling water and other cleaning agents - until you reach a point where the garment emerges completely clean. Every teshuvah accomplishes something; it cleanses to some degree. But a total transformation requires strong detergents, deep investment, and time. Therefore, he says: repent in the days of your youth, for if not, what value will your teshuvah have? What good is repentance done late, during the years in which the body enjoys nothing at all?
The Alshich further explains, based on Chazal, that the evil days are the days of old age: "Before the evil days come" - refers to age sixty until old age. Today, a sixty-year-old is not considered old; his strength is still with him. And if you did not repent then, repent before days arrive of which you say, "I have no pleasure in them," which is already advanced old age (seivah), as at seventy one enters seivah. Thus, we have two milestones at which he urges repentance: repent at sixty, and if not - repent at seventy.
Yet all of this applies when a person has no interest in life. But one who has a taste for life - consider Rav Shteinman, who at age one hundred and three was still delivering shiurim and full of vitality. True, the physical body weakens, but the mind and the person's engagement with life remain intact, and he utilizes every moment. In contrast, when a person is idle, he sits and counts passing buses, slowly deteriorating into senility because he has nothing to return to. The Rambam writes that after a person finishes his labor, "he should return to his study," and this is what they would always say in yeshivot when people went off to deal with elections or other matters: What does the Rambam say? "He should return to his study." But there is someone who has nothing to return to, poor man: he never studied, never opened a sefer, sees the beit midrash only from the outside or when sitting shiva for a relative. When he grows old, he loses all zest for life; perhaps his only remaining interest is arguing with his wife, since he is now retired and home all day. Beyond that - it is sheer pity. But look at elders who are steeped in Torah: you see them flourish, "In his days the righteous shall flourish." The body may weaken, but he has an enduring pursuit; there is something that enlivens him and keeps him connected.
Regarding Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya, it is related that Rebbi wept and said: "There is one who acquires his World in a single hour." There are many explanations for why he wept - was he envious, Heaven forbid, that this man acquired his portion in the World to Come in a single hour? Rather, he wept over him: How tragic is this person who acquired his World in a single hour, for he did not prepare garments for himself. A person's spiritual garments in the World Above are merits, mitzvot, and good deeds - and he has no garments. True, he atoned for his sins, but he arrives naked, without merits. It was over this that Rebbi wept: Woe to the person who acquires his World in a single hour and yet prepared no provisions for that final journey.
עַד אֲשֶׁר לֹא־תֶחְשַׁךְ הַשֶּׁמֶשׁ וְהָאוֹר וְהַיָּרֵחַ וְהַכּוֹכָבִים וְשָׁבוּ הֶעָבִים אַחַר הַגָּשֶׁם׃ - "Before the sun and the light, the moon and the stars grow dark, and the clouds return after the rain."
Chazal expound this entire verse as an expression of a person's physical decline and aging, detailing several bodily changes. Rashi cites from Chazal: "The sun grows dark" - this is the forehead, the brow, which normally radiates and shines in a person. In a young man, the skin of the forehead is taut and gleaming, but as one grows old, the forehead develops wrinkles and no longer radiates, becoming darkened and creased. "The light" - this is the nose, which defines the facial features; indeed, halachah states that a corpse found without a nose cannot be definitively identified, for according to Chazal the nose is essential for recognizing facial appearance. "The moon" - this is the soul that illuminates a person, for once it departs, the light of his eyes is gone; the eyes are merely windows, while vision itself stems from the soul. "And the stars" - these are the cheekbones, the prominent parts of the face that once shone and stood out.
"And the clouds return after the rain" - clouds signify dimness and darkness; when the sun shines it is light, and when clouds gather darkness falls. That is, a dimming of vision will occur, where a person's eyesight deteriorates and he can no longer see well. This comes after the tears of weeping, for excessive tears are among the things that dim a person's eyesight. And what weeping is this? Since the verse refers to an elderly person, it refers to weeping over the many troubles and afflictions he has endured.
The Midrash relates: Rabbi Levi presented two parables - when he comes to weep, tears stream from his eyes; when he comes to urinate, excrement precedes him. These are two examples of a state where a person's muscle control weakens. This is very common in the elderly: an older person starts recounting an emotional story and immediately bursts into tears. A young man can recount a tragedy without crying (aside from extreme cases, under normal circumstances), whereas an elderly person's tears flow very quickly. On Yom Kippur during Ne'ilah, people strive with all their might to squeeze out a tear, while an older person weeps instantly. Where does this come from? First, from all that he has lived through; but on a basic physical level, because his muscles have weakened, any slight emotional stir releases them.
The second example is even clearer: "When he comes to urinate, excrement precedes him." He intends to relieve himself of liquids, but solid waste discharges instead, for the exact same reason: his muscles have weakened, and any slight exertion leads to this. As is well known, with bedridden or infirm individuals, the muscles deteriorate to the point where they lose all bowel control; but even at an earlier stage, while still functional, control gradually diminishes. This is the parable's reading of "and the clouds return after the rain": he expects "rain" - light bodily fluids - but "the clouds" arrive instead, the dense, solid waste. The same dynamic applies to tears.
The holy Alshich continues on this verse with the call to repent during the days of youth. And if you did not repent then, he notes, a person will think that even if he falls ill and is bedridden, he will surely recover. And this does happen: there are people who fell ill at eighty, were already eulogized, and Baruch Hashem lived another fifteen or twenty years; so a person is convinced that any moment now this illness will pass. Thus, in the poetic phrasing of the Alshich, the person tells himself: "Why open your mouth to the Satan by reciting viduy, as though indicating that you will die?" By confessing, you appear to signal that your end is near - so why recite viduy, as if checking out of this world? The Satan is already waiting, ready to take you swiftly, so why confess?
And such, says the Alshich, is the way of anxious-hearted people, relatives of the patient, and compassionate women. Someone comes to visit the sick person and tries to open the gates of teshuva for him, seeking to arouse him: "Give glory, please, to Hashem your God... and make confession to Him; remember your Creator against Whom you have sinned, and return to Hashem your God before you appear before God's presence." Why face Him while His countenance is stern over the abundance of your iniquities? How could you bear to see the calamity that would befall you, lest the great fire consume you, and woe to that shame when you tremble before Him - "Hasten, make haste, plead for your soul, arise and call upon your God!" and words of this nature.
And what happens then? "And behold, as soon as the women and his acquaintances hear" - the family members hear this, and rise up like a lion against the visitor who dares speak in such a manner. They rage against him with all their might, arguing: "Who sought this from your hand, to trample our courtyards and spill a person's blood? Why would you cause a Jewish soul to die? When he hears you tell him to recite viduy because his death is near, he will become overwhelmed, faint, and lose all strength to rally, perishing to the pit - and his blood will be on your head! Why are you terrifying him and planting thoughts that he is about to die?" The visitor who came to awaken him to viduy, hearing these furious rebukes, leaps away like a gazelle and flees - why stay, when they might accuse him of causing the man's death?
"And they, like those who find great spoil, rejoice with gladness," and speak soothingly to the patient, saying to him: "Did you see that lunatic who came to frighten you and tell you to confess your sins, as though your end were near - when you are completely healthy! That man has lost his mind; he needs medication. But do not fear, for you will rise, rest, and stand; you will live longer than him, and you will bury him!" Don't worry, you will even attend his funeral; you still have many long years ahead. Meanwhile, the Alshich explains, that person departs to his eternal home; step by step his illness worsens until the signs of death appear upon him, while his household still clings to false comforts, preventing him from turning back from his wrongdoing and confessing to his Maker. They see the chart steadily declining, and yet: "Don't tell him to repent; don't frighten him" - and they allow him to die, Heaven forbid, in the midst of sin.
Therefore, the Shulchan Aruch states that when someone is ill, great care and sensitivity are required: he is told that viduy (confession) has helped many people, that many people confessed and through that merit went on to live - for when a person does teshuvah, that merit itself is often enough to protect him and lengthen his days. Conversely, there are those who did not confess for fear of "giving an opening to the Satan," and died, Heaven forbid, without viduy and without teshuvah. Do not panic and imagine that confession will bring death; know that this very viduy can grant life. One must indeed comfort the patient and speak with him gently so that he can accept the words without becoming frightened or rebellious. Yet ignoring the matter entirely is certainly wrong, for there is no greater harm than that - if he does not return now, when will he?
Chapter 12 opens with the call, "Remember your Creator in the days of your youth" - from this word, Akavya ben Mahalalel derived the three things that prevent sin: your Creator (Bor'echa), your grave (Borecha), and your source (Be'ercha). King Solomon warns not to wait for the days of evil, the days of old age and suffering, and the years in which one has no pleasure, when the body derives no enjoyment from anything and teshuvah done then is an "inferior teshuvah" - accepted, yet lacking merits, stemming from fear rather than love. The description of aging in the verse "Before the sun grows dark" - the forehead, the nose, the soul, and the jawbones, along with Rabbi Levi's parables of muscular decline - all come to illustrate how short time truly is. In contrast, one who possesses Torah and purpose in life flourishes even in old age. And finally, one must not postpone repentance and viduy out of fear of "opening a mouth to the Satan," but should awaken the soul with wisdom and gentleness - for if not now, when?