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Paul was finishing his dissertation to the Romans, saluting, or crediting, each person’s role in his visitation. He wrapped up by saying this:
The
grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen; now to Him that is of
power to stablish you according to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus
Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since
the world began, but now is made manifest, and by the scriptures of the
prophets, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, made known to
all nations for the obedience of faith; to God only wise, be glory through
Jesus Christ forever. Amen. (Rom 16:24:27)
First off, Solomon in noted for his wisdom (1 Kings 3: 1 Kings 4).
The wisdom of Solomon was not Solomon’s but from God who said, “Behold, I have
done according to your words: lo, I have given you a wise and an understanding
heart; so that there was none like you before you, neither after you shall any
arise like unto you” (1 Kings 3:12). Only God, Jesus, was wiser than Solomon
and he would have known things not known by any other person ever. Hence,
Solomon understood things no others understood until Jesus revealed His
knowledge of all things. Paul would have known just a fraction of Solomon, but
God revealed to Paul so many esoteric things, He knew the mystery if God — the
Christ. How so? Because he had the mind of God and in like manner, those in
Christ can have as well:
For
what man knows the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him?
Even so the things of God knows no man, but the Spirit of God.
Now we
have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that
we might know the things that are freely given to us of God; which things
also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Holy
Ghost teaches; comparing spiritual things with spiritual, but the natural man
receives not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto
him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned; but he
that is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is judged of no man for who
has known the Mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the Mind
of Christ. (1
Cor 2:11-16)
We can know things not by our own volition but because of Christ in us.
The Mind of Christ — God in the flesh — is the very Mind of God and those
“in Christ” (entangled with Him, if truly so, would have the Mind of Christ.)
Solomon had the knowledge of God and used it for good things; that is wisdom.
With that background, Solomon would have spoken in metaphors. Which are the
metaphors; the actual words or there hidden meanings? Hebrew pictographs are
images of real things that represent ideas. They are not translations but share
hidden ideas.
Would have Solomon have known modern biology? No, but he had the wisdom of
God. His wisdom would have been borrowed from God — the “Word,” or preincarnate
Jesus. He was surely in the Messiah — the “Christ” in English and Christ in
him.
Note that Jesus was never taught anything. His Mind was the Mind of
God who as the Creator, the intricate workings of His creatures were
overwhelming. God was the Designer of biological systems, and Solomon would
have been privy to the knowledge of God as was shown in 1 Kings 3:12
from earlier.
Would those who heard him understand? How would have Solomon expressed
biological, or even spiritual knowledge? By using metaphors. I submit that
today’s key verse is a sentence of metaphors to reveal the truth, or reality,
from his mind with God’s divine Mind.
The thoughts of Solomon would have been the very Mind of God just as
scripture says. In modern scientific terms, since Solomon was entangled with
God, their minds were one. Only decoherence from the world would upset that
connection, and so it was for Solomon for parts of his life. Now for the key
verse about death:
Before
the silver cord is loosed, and the golden bowl is broken, and the pitcher is
shattered at the spring, and the wheel is broken at the cistern. (Ecc 12:6)
Obviously, that is figurative speech. Who cares if a silver cord is loosed
and such? Solomon was speaking of life
itself. What then is “life”? Of course, life is anything biological, but in
philosophy, life would be the set of faculties to exist in the world to
understand how to navigate the world.
In theology, since death is void of God, life is imbued with God, having
the glory of God within. As such, with little thoughts of God, all have sinned
and come short of the Glory of God (Rom 3:23), and as such our thoughts are not
His divine Thoughts; our minds or not His Mind (Isa 55:8).
Hence, alive is with a conscious that is governed by the Conscience, or
order, of God — His will be done.
However, we do understand material things. For that reason, Solomon likened
death to a silver cord loosed, a golden bowl broken, a pitcher shattered, and a
water wheel broken at the cistern. Indeed, those are the metaphors since those
things seem to have little to do with human biology.
What would those things exemplify? That is a good question. Using the
pictographic ideas of the key words, the pictures imply several things:
- Silver
(כסף) = desire, longing, that which is
cherished.
- Cord
(חבל) = binding, joining, connection.
- Gold
(זהב) = what is refined, shining, divine
value.
- Bowl
(גלה / gulah) = a vessel that
reveals or contains.
- Spring/Fountain
(מבוע) = the source from which life flows.
- Wheel
(גלגל) = the cycle of life, revolving
order.
- Cistern
(בור) = the pit, the deep place, the
repository.
I was wondering if the golden bowl might represent the letter “ghah”
now unused in the Hebrew. It then occurred to me that ghah might
represent the human genome characterized as a bowl (gulah). The human
genome is the embodiment of all the genetics in any organism.
Before, I suggested that the silver cord, as it can mean a “pale twisted
thread”
Only God at that time would have known that, meaning that the talent of
Solomon would have been on loan from God, as Rush Limbaugh said so often.
The word translated "bowl" in Ecclesiastes 12:6 is typically
understood as a vessel containing oil, often symbolizing life, consciousness,
or the sustaining light of life. In the conventional reading, the breaking of
the bowl is one of several metaphors for death.
However, the letter ghah (ג)
— the image of a twisted rope, braid, or spiral form resembling the structure
of life itself, then an interesting symbolic parallel does emerge:
·
A bowl is a container of precious contents.
·
The genome is a container of biological information.
·
DNA is physically structured as a twisted spiral.
·
The genome preserves the blueprint through which life is manifested.
·
A broken bowl would then represent the loss of the vessel that preserves
and expresses that life-pattern.
Hence, that verse can have hidden meaning: before the silver cord (the
connection of life) is released; before the golden bowl (the vessel containing
life's pattern and illumination) is broken; before the pitcher at the fountain
(the means of drawing life from the source) is shattered; before the wheel (the
cycle and mechanism of earthly existence) ceases to turn. With that in mind,
the bowl (ghah) would be the living repository of the divine pattern
encoded within humanity. That divine pattern is the Hebrew alphabet from
the Word, Jesus, as I wrote in my book, Theontology. Like Jesus — the Alpha
and Omega, Adam’s kind are the aleph and the tav.
The golden bowl — our genome — contains the elements of God within
(“dominion”; Gen 1:28) — a human soul. What is even more intriguing because
gold often signifies what is refined, enduring, or divine; thus the
"golden bowl" could be understood as, "the precious vessel that
contains the Creator's life-pattern."
The ancient author of Ecclesiastes almost certainly was not speaking about
DNA in a biological sense; rather, it would be what scholars call a typological
or symbolic extension. It is not claiming that Solomon knew of genomes, but
that the imagery of a treasured vessel containing the pattern of life can
resonate remarkably with what we now know about the genome, and that God
provided to Him that imagery.
When the imagery itself is examined, observation becomes interesting. A
cord is a twisted structure. Silver is pale, shining, and precious. DNA is also
a twisted structure, pale in appearance, and is absolutely essential to human
life.
Lastly consider the “cistern” as Solomon called it. That would be depth, or
a repository. It would be the mind and consciousness, thusly consciousness
would cease at death, at least for the body of the person. It would not cease
to exist but exist within the Mind that goes with the spirit.
Consider the imagery in Ecclesiastes 12:6: The fountain/spring (mabua') is the source from which living water comes; the pitcher draws from that source; the wheel lifts water upward; and the cistern (bor) is the deep reservoir that holds what has been gathered. In the physical picture, the wheel at the cistern stops turning, so water is no longer raised from the depths. Symbolically, that resembles consciousness rather well:
·
The deep reservoir contains accumulated experience, memory, and identity.
·
The wheel is the process by which those depths are brought into awareness.
·
When the wheel breaks, the contents remain inaccessible.
The question becomes: could God have inspired imagery that was richer than
Solomon himself fully understood?
That idea is not foreign to scripture; for example, Peter writes that the
prophets often searched to understand the full implications of what was
revealed through them (1 Peter 1:10-12). In that sense, it could be argued that
divine inspiration may contain depths beyond the immediate human author's
comprehension. That was what Paul was saying!
What is intriguing is the connection both major images have to helical
forms: the silver cord resembles a twisted strand, and the golden bowl (in the ghah
interpretation) contains the encoded pattern of life; and together they
resemble a life-thread and its repository.
The idea behind the words of Solomon and beyond the understanding of most
people would be this: The silver cord may symbolically foreshadow the
Creator's life-thread within humanity (glorious DNA), while the golden
bowl may symbolize the vessel, or genome — the body of DNA, which contains that life-pattern. When those
are broken, earthly life ceases.
Consciousness exists in heaven but like in the beginning — only God consciousness.
There would be no conscious of the things on earth because the “wheel” ceases
turning. There would be no remembrance of the things that the world presented.
The wheel would be the transfiguration from life on Earth to life in Paradise in heaven.
Simplified, Solomon was
expressing the idea of dying as the cord of life is untwisted; the vessel of
divine pattern is broken; the drawing of living waters ceases; the wheel of
awareness comes to rest; the body returns to dust; the hidden depths fall
silent; and the spirit returns to the One who gave it.
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