Didymus the Blind : In the direct and literal sense, there is no person who has power over the spirit so as to understand the movement of air, that is, the wind as breath. The human being has no great power as long as he does not have power over the wind. He can do nothing to cause it and nothing to prevent it when it wants to harm him. Sailors have no power to direct the wind in accordance to their direction, and they cannot stop it when it is fierce and dangerous, even if they are excellent sailors. Thus we have to understand it in this sense in the literal meaning. Since, however, the soul of human beings often is called breath, we also can say: There is no one who has the power to cause the soul to remain within him or who has the power to take it from other living beings. This depends on providence. — COMMENTARY ON Ecclesiastes 240:20 Jerome : "Man is powerless over the spirit-to restrain the spirit; nor is there authority over the day of death; nor discharge in war; and wickedness cannot save the wrong-doer. "Our mind does not have the power to prevent the spirit from being taken from us, and when the spirit leaves to the realm of God, it helps nothing to shut out mouth and hold in our fleeting life. And when we are dead, the enemy of our life will come and we are not able to take any rest. Note too the kings in one age, which destroying all our things irreligiously led us by the hands to our death, but we were taken into the ashes and the earth. Therefore we must not mourn if we cannot know the future and we are often oppressed by more powerful and wicked men, for all things end in death: for the proud and the powerful the same end; he who has devastated all things does not deserve to keep his life when it is taken away. Another meaning could be that the spirit that is the source of life cannot be prevented from leaving any man, this is the rule of mortality. Above too he also spoke of this: "turning, turning goes the wind" [Eccl. 1,6.]. We have no power in the day of our death, but when we are alive our enemy is easily avoided. Similarly he who is in time of war and does not have the peace of God, which overpowers all feeling, he will not have any discharge therefrom, about which it is said to a bride, "your discharge is paradise with the fruit of apples" [Cant. 4, 13.]. And because piety will not save him who has it, piety will save the opposite, and impiety can be called the Devil and piety our Lord Jesus Christ. — Commentary on Ecclesiastes