Didymus the Blind : 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. — COMMENTARY ON Ecclesiastes 360:14 Didymus the Blind : Some are able to drink from the fountain without the pitcher. Rebecca, which means steadfastness in the good, stepped down to the fountain and scooped the water with the pitcher in order to give the thirsty servant [of Abraham] to drink; but she herself drank from the fountain without the pitcher.…The imperfect knowledge and the imperfect prophecy are the pitcher filled from the fountain. When the imperfect will pass away, the pitcher is broken. Its content, however, is not lost.… When one does not need to drink from the pitcher anymore because the Savior has given to drink and prepared in the person who drinks a spring of living water, then the pitcher is not needed for the person who has the fountain of living water inside. — COMMENTARY ON Ecclesiastes 361:9 Didymus the Blind : One can understand the "cistern" accordingly: Inasmuch as it is possible to scoop water from a fountain with a pitcher, it is also possible to pull up water from a cistern with a water wheel. When there is no need any more to pull up water in this way, then the "[water] wheel will break at the cistern." — COMMENTARY ON Ecclesiastes 362:13 Gregory of Neocaesarea : Neither stored silver nor tested gold will be of any further use. A mighty blow will strike everything, right down to a water pot standing next to a well, and to a carriage wheel which happens to have been left in the ditch, its time of revolving ceased, and to the life that, by water, has passed through the age of washing. — PARAPHRASE OF Ecclesiastes 12:6 Jerome : "Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern." He returns to former matter and after a rather large exaggeration, -which he interposes in this place, in which he says, "and remember your Creator, in the day of your youth; before the days of wickedness come, and before the sun, moon grow dark" and so on, "in the day in which the keepers of the house are renewed". - now he finishes the point he had begun in a similar way, saying, "before the silver cord is broken", and this or that happens. But he shows the silver cord to be this white band, and the space that divides us from heaven. It also means the gold band, which returns to the place whence it came down. more precisely the two that follow, the wearing of the jug on the fountain, and the breaking of the wheel by the pond, are metaphorical images of death. For death is just like the jug, which is worn down, stops to fill, and the wheel by which water is carried from a well or pond, if it has been broken. Thus the interpretation of the Septuagint has it that the usage of water is twisted in this rope; thus when the silver cord is broken, and the river of the spirit flows back to the fountain, the man will die. — Commentary on Ecclesiastes