Before the silver cord is loosed, or the golden bowl is broken, or the pitcher is broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern.
All Commentaries on Ecclesiastes 12:6 Go To Ecclesiastes 12
Didymus the Blind
AD 398
By “gold” in Scripture one has to understand the spirit; but if one understands by “silver” the spoken word, we have to understand here by “gold” the thought and by bowl the sphere of reason, since it is the bowl and storage place for gold. When Scripture describes the spoken word and the written word as silver, this means a weaving of the words that fit to each other and a linking of the meaning of the different words among each other.