Ecclesiastes 12:7
Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.
Study Note
Study Note
The solemn declaration 'then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it' provides Ecclesiastes' most explicit statement on the anthropological constitution of the human being — dust from earth (Genesis 2:7), spirit from God — and their respective destinations at death. The verse does not resolve the question of post-mortem individual consciousness (Ecclesiastes is deliberately ambiguous on this) but establishes that the human being is a composite whose components return to their origins. The phrase 'spirit shall return unto God' (Hebrew ruach tashuv el-ha'Elohim) was read by later Judaism and Christianity as the basis for belief in the immortality of the soul, though Ecclesiastes' original intention may be more about death as the dissolution of the life-force back to its source. James 2:26 ('the body without the spirit is dead') applies the same dust-spirit anthropology to the faith-works relationship.
Other Translations
and the dust returneth to the earth as it was, and the spirit returneth unto God who gave it.
And the dust returneth to the earth as it was, And the spirit returneth to God who gave it.
And the dust goes back to the earth as it was, and the spirit goes back to God who gave it.
Cross References
And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of …
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it …
And Abraham answered and said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, which am but …
And they fell upon their faces, and said, O God, the God of the spirits of all flesh, shall one …
Let the Lord, the God of the spirits of all flesh, set a man over the congregation,
How much less in them that dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, which are crushed …
They are destroyed from morning to evening: they perish for ever without any regarding it.
And why dost thou not pardon my transgression, and take away mine iniquity? for now shall I sleep in the …
His bones are full of the sin of his youth, which shall lie down with him in the dust.
If he set his heart upon man, if he gather unto himself his spirit and his breath;