Bernard of Clairvaux

In his own words on Ecclesiastes

• Ecclesiastes 7:29

  The soul was made not only to the image, but also to the likeness. You ask in what it is like? Hear first concerning the image. The Word is truth, is wisdom, is justice: and this is the image. Of what? Of justice, of wisdom, and of truth. For this image is justice from justice, wisdom from wisdom, truth from truth, as it were light from light, God from God. The soul is none of these things, because it is not the image. Yet it is capable of them, and desirous of them, and perhaps on that account it is to the image. A lofty creature, bearing the mark of majesty indeed in its capacity, and of rectitude in its desire. We read that "God made man upright," which also its great capacity, as has been said, proves. For it is necessary that what is to the image agree with the image, and not participate in vain in the name of the image, just as the image itself is not called image by a mere or empty name.

  Sermons on the Song of Songs, Sermon 80

• Ecclesiastes 7:29

  Why does he not know, unless because, bending himself down to these lowest and earthly things, he heaps up earth for himself? Assuredly he does not know, concerning those things which he commits to the earth, for whom he gathers them: whether for the moth that destroys, or for the thief that digs through; for the enemy that plunders, or for the fire that devours. And thence that lamentable voice from the psalm belongs to the wretched man bending himself down and brooding over the things that are upon the earth: "I am made wretched and bowed down utterly; all the day long I went about in sadness." In himself indeed he experiences the truth of that sentence of the Wise Man: "God made man upright, but he has entangled himself in many sorrows." And immediately the voice of mockery comes to him: "Bow down, that we may pass over."

  Sermons on the Song of Songs, Sermon 80

• Ecclesiastes 9:1

  For if we could clearly know in what state God holds each one of us, we should neither depart above nor below, acquiescing in the truth in all things. But now, because this counsel has placed darkness as its hiding place, and the word is hidden from us, so that no one knows whether he is worthy of love or of hatred, more justly and more safely surely, according to the counsel of Truth itself, we choose for ourselves the last place, from which afterward we may be led up higher with honor, than we presume a higher place, from which we must soon withdraw with shame.

  Sermons on the Song of Songs, Sermon 37

• Ecclesiastes 12:13

  "Fear God, and keep his commandments," it is said, "for this is the whole duty of man." So if this is all, without this, man is nothing.

  Sermons on the Song of Songs, Sermon 20