Trailblazer
Veteran Member
Genesis 3:19, KJV: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."Your interpretation of Ecc 12:7 has to be incorrect because God told Adam "YOU shall return" to dust. God did not say "your body will return to dust", but "YOU", Adam, would return to his native earth..
Obviously, God was referring to the body in the verse above because only the body can return unto the ground. .
That's right, the spirit, which is the soul which animates the body, will return to God after the body dies.Therefore the correct interpretation of Ecc 12:7 is that the spirit which returns to God is the breath of life that God gave Adam and which animated Adam who was dust.
That's right, the spirit is the man himself and the spirit will not return to dust because spirits do not ever return to dust.If the spirit itself is the man then the man did not return to dust as God said he would.
God never said the man himself would return to dust, YOU said that. God said unto dust shalt thou return. Obviously God was referring to the body of the man because only a body can return to dust.
Ecclesiastes 12:7 Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.
421. When the body is no longer able to perform the bodily functions in the natural world that correspond to the spirit’s thoughts and affections, which the spirit has from the spiritual world, man is said to die. This takes place when the respiration of the lungs and the beatings of the heart cease. But the man does not die; he is merely separated from the bodily part that was of use to him in the world, while the man himself continues to live. It is said that the man himself continues to live since man is not a man because of his body but because of his spirit, for it is the spirit that thinks in man, and thought with affection is what constitutes man. Evidently, then, the death of man is merely his passing from one world into another. And this is why in the Word in its internal sense “death” signifies resurrection and continuation of life. Heaven and Hell, p. 351