Ecclesiastes 12:13

“Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter” is a solemn call to listen, because what follows is the answer the whole book has been working toward. The Preacher, Qoheleth in Hebrew, is traditionally Solomon the son of David, the king to whom God gave wisdom and understanding “exceeding much” (1 Kings 4:29–34). He opened the book with a question, “What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?” (Ecclesiastes 1:3), and with a refrain he repeats again and again: “Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity” (Ecclesiastes 1:2). The word for vanity is hebel, a breath or vapour, something fleeting that is gone almost as soon as it appears.

Chapter by chapter he weighed wisdom, pleasure, wealth, labour and justice, and found each of them hebel. Just before these verses he described in poetry the slow failing of the body in old age and the coming of death (Ecclesiastes 12:1–8). So this conclusion comes at the end of an honest and often sorrowful look at life as it really is, and it is God’s own word given through him. Against all that is fleeting it sets the one thing that lasts. Earthly pursuits are a breath, and fearing God and keeping his commandments give a human life a foundation that endures.

To fear God is to hold him in deep reverence and awe, and to bow to him in humble submission as the Creator and Judge of all. The Hebrew verb is yârêʼ, and when Scripture calls us to fear God it means this reverent awe. We acknowledge his authority, his power and his holiness, and we let that shape how we see everything and how we live. It is the right posture of a creature before its Maker.

This fear lay at the heart of Israel’s faith and of its wisdom: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding” (Proverbs 9:10). A psalm joins the two halves of the Preacher’s conclusion in a single verse: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: a good understanding have all they that do his commandments” (Psalm 111:10). Wisdom begins with reverence for God, and it is lived out in obedience.

The second command grows out of the first. The word mitsvâh comes from a root meaning “to command” and refers to a command or precept. Here it gathers up all of God’s revealed will for how we are to live. Keeping his commandments is reverence put into practice, so that the awe we have toward God shows in what we actually do, and belief in his power becomes a life ordered by his word.

For Israel these commandments belonged to the covenant, and obeying them was the way of blessing and life. Moses set life and death before the people and urged them, “therefore choose life”, by loving the LORD, obeying his voice and cleaving to him, “for he is thy life” (Deuteronomy 30:19–20). He also told them that the LORD commanded them “to fear the LORD our God, for our good always, that he might preserve us alive” (Deuteronomy 6:24). God’s commands are given for our good. Ecclesiastes has a tone all its own, and it ends on this same ground. Jesus later summed up the commandments as loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind, and loving your neighbour as yourself (Matthew 22:37–39).

Verse 14 opens with “For”, and it gives the reason for verse 13. Fearing God and keeping his commandments is the whole of man because every person will answer to God for the life he has lived. The word for God is ʼĕlôhîym, plural in form and read as a plural of majesty when it names the true God, with its verbs usually singular. The Judge is God himself, whose knowledge and power are boundless, so his judgment is complete and inescapable.

The word for work, maʻăseh, means a deed, a work, a product, an occupation or workmanship. “Every work” therefore covers the whole range of what people do, from the greatest achievement to the smallest daily task. The word for judgment, mishpâṭ, means a verdict, a right decision or a legal process. God will weigh each work against his own standard in a just and fair hearing, and his verdict will be final.

This answers one of the hardest things the Preacher saw. Proverbs often shows righteousness leading to prosperity, but in Ecclesiastes he watched the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper. Under the sun that can look like the end of the matter, and this verse gives God’s answer: every work will come before him. Moses had already recorded God’s words, “To me belongeth vengeance, and recompence” (Deuteronomy 32:35). The letter to the Hebrews says that “all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do” (Hebrews 4:13). Paul says that “we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ” (Romans 14:10), and John saw the dead “judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works” (Revelation 20:12).

“Whether it be good, or whether it be evil” names the standard. Good is what agrees with God’s holy character and will, and evil is what goes against it and springs from sin. God tells the two apart perfectly, and his judgment rests on his own righteousness, which stands above every human opinion. Good works come into this judgment as surely as evil ones, so what is done in faithfulness to God is seen and remembered by him.

Jesus lived the whole duty of man perfectly. He reverenced the Father in everything and did his will, and he said, “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil” (Matthew 5:17). He is also the one who makes that duty possible for us. In him the fear of God becomes the loving reverence of children, for we have received “the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father” (Romans 8:15). God promised a new covenant in which he would “put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts” (Jeremiah 31:33), and Hebrews declares that promise to us in Christ (Hebrews 8:10). So believers keep his commandments from a new heart and out of love for him: “If ye love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15). Christ “of God is made unto us wisdom” (1 Corinthians 1:30), and in him we find the wisdom the Preacher searched for.

Christ also stands at the centre of the judgment in verse 14. Jesus said, “For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son” (John 5:22). The One who will bring every work and every secret thing into judgment is perfectly just and perfectly merciful, and for those who trust in his atoning sacrifice he has taken away the terror of that day: “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). Believers will still give account of their works, and their eternal standing rests on his righteousness. The Judge is himself the One through whom we can stand before God righteous.

Our age looks for meaning in getting ahead, in owning things and in one experience after another, and the Preacher has already walked each of those roads to its end. His conclusion turns us from what passes under the sun to God, who is eternal and unchanging. Reverence for God and obedience to his commands are a loving response to the One whose ways are always for our good. They free us from a chase after happiness that leaves us empty, and they give our lives a purpose that lasts beyond death.

Because God sees every secret thing, his judgment calls us to look honestly at our motives as well as our deeds. Knowing this stirs a reverent awe that moves us to integrity, in private as much as in public. It humbles us, leads us to repent of hidden sins, and sets us to pursue holiness from the inside out. Every day is lived before the God who sees, and that gives each ordinary choice its weight.