FOOTNOTES:
[72] 2 Kings, Chap. xx.
CHAPTER VI.
The disease of Old-age.
Old-age itself is a disease, as the poet has properly expressed it[73]. Wherefore as I have frequently read with pleasure, the very elegant description of it, given by Solomon the wisest of kings; I think it will not be foreign to my design, to attempt an explanation and illustration thereof. For it contains some things not easy to be understood, because the eloquent preacher thought proper to express all the circumstances allegorically. But first I will lay the discourse itself before my readers, which runs thus.
“Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth, before the evil times come, and the years draw nigh, in which, thou shalt say, I find no pleasure: before the sun, and the light, and the moon, and the stars be darkened, and the clouds return after rain; when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the soldiers shall give way, and the diminished grinders shall cease; and those that look out thro’ holes shall be darkened; and the doors shall be shut outwardly, with a low sound of the mill, and they shall rise up at the voice of the bird; and all the daughters of music shall be of no avail; also when they shall be afraid of high places, and stumblings in the way; and the almond tree shall flower, and the Cicadæ shall come together; and the appetite shall be lost, man departing to his eternal habitation, and the mourners going about in the street: before the silver chain be broken asunder, and the golden ewer be dashed in pieces; and the pitcher be broken at the fountain head; and the chariot be dashed in pieces at the pit; and the dust return to the earth, such as it had been; and the Spirit return to God, who gave it[74].”
The recital of evils (and infirmities) begins from the aberrations of the mind. The sun, says Solomon, and the light, and the moon, and the stars are darkened. Perceptions of the mind are less lively in old men; the ideas and images of things are confounded, and the memory decays: whence the intellectual faculties must necessarily lose their strength or power by degrees. Wisdom and understanding are frequently called light in the sacred scriptures;[75] and privation of reason, darkness and blindness.[76] Cicero likewise says very justly, that reason is as it were, the light and splendor of life.[77] Hence God is stiled the father of lights.[78] Thus the virtues of the mind decaying, may be compared to the luminaries of the world overcast. I am conscious that this exposition is contrary to that of a number of learned interpreters, who take this obscuration of the lights in the genuine sense of the words, and think that the failing of the sight is here to be understood. But I am surprized, how they happened not to take notice, that every thing in this discourse, even to the most minute circumstances, is expressed in words bearing a figurative sense. For whereas, in describing the infirmities of Old-age, the injuries of the operations of the mind, as the most grievous of all, were not to be pretermitted; so these could not be more clearly expressed, than by the obscuration of the cœlestial luminous bodies, which rule our orb, and cause the vicissitudes of times and seasons. Moreover it is particularly to be observed here, that the author mentions the defects of sight lower down, and most certainly he would have avoided repeating the same thing.
But he goes on, and adds, what well agrees with the foregoing explanation. The clouds return after rain. That is, cares and troubles crowd on each other, and daily oppress aged folks. As in moist climates, and those liable to storms, even when the clouds seem to be exhausted, others soon follow, and the rains become almost perpetual. And these inconveniencies are felt the more sensibly, in proportion to the debilitation of the powers of the mind, whereby they are rendered less able now, than formerly, either to bear, or get the better of their oppressions.
But from the mind our royal author now passes to the body. The keepers of the house, says he, shall tremble, and the soldiers shall give way, and the diminished grinders shall cease. The limbs, and firmest parts of the body, are damaged by age: the hands and knees grow weak, thro’ the relaxation of the nerves. Hence those are rendered incapable of defending us against injuries, and of performing innumerable other good offices, for which they were originally intended; and these becoming unequal to the weight they were wont to sustain, lose their active suppleness, and fail in bending. Likewise the double teeth or grinders, either drop out, or rot away; so as now to be too few remaining to comminute solid food. In the translation of the Hebrew word, which I have here rendered by double teeth or grinders, I followed Arias Montanus, who, in my opinion, has translated it right. For it is in this passage used by the author in the plural number; who afterwards employs it in the singular, but in a quite different sense, when he treats of the sense of tasting; as I shall shew anon, when I come to that passage. For, that Solomon’s intention in this place was, to describe those defects of the senses, which generally steal on old-age, I have not the least doubt.