The book of Ecclesiastes is one of the hardest to understand in the Bible.
`Everything is meaningless!’, announces the Teacher in 1:2; and though this statement is qualified as the book proceeds, it is clearly repeated almost at the close (12:8). Scarcely a book in which to seek for warm fuzzy feelings. What are we supposed to do with it? Or, more precisely: why has God placed it in the Bible?
(Two notes: First, this is an extended post. Secondly, it was written taking as its starting point the NIV translation of 1:2: `Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless!` – which does seem an appropriate match to the rest of the book’s contents, up almost to the end. The NASB, CEV, GNT, NLT and others read it similarly. However, I’m coming to see the significance of the ESV footnote that says that the Hebrew word often translated `meaningless` can also refer `to a “mist,” “vapour,” or “mere breath,” and metaphorically to something that is fleeting or elusive`, that is, utterly transient. Which opens up the possibility that at its very beginning and end the Teacher is saying that the reflections that follow – quite possibly being earlier reflections, even teachings, from his own journey – all demonstrate an utter transience, which must be transcended through the recognition of the Eternal God. Like with Job, it may be only in the opening and close that we find undiluted truth, even though there are jewels from time to time throughout. In that case, as Kidner suggests, the book as a whole can be seen as put together by a man of faith as a deliberate pointer to God: `Path after path will be explored to the very point at which it comes to nothing. In the end, only one way will be left…` The overall thrust of what follows below takes the bleaker version of 1:2 as its starting-point. But I’m coming to wonder… Here it is, see what you think…)
We may well begin by asking whether Ecclesiastes has some special way of functioning as a vehicle for truth. We are given some direct clues that this is so. `Do not be over-righteous… do not be over-wicked… It is good to grasp the one and not let go of the other’ (7:17-18), or `Money is the answer for everything(10:19), stand like flashing neon questionmarks for a reader coming with a mind shaped by Jesus’ teaching.
And clearly the opening and closing statements `Everything is meaningless’, taken alone, conflict with the overall biblical message. History is not meaningless for the Bible. It begins meaningfully with the Creation and Fall; it is redeemed meaningfully by the Cross, Resurrection and Pentecost; and it ends triumphantly with the purpose of the whole exercise gloriously completed, with Christ returned and the marriage supper of the Lamb and His Bride inaugurating a transfigured universe. History is not bound into the cycles of futility so powerfully depicted in Ecc 1 (`The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises… there is nothing new under the sun’). Romans 8 agrees explicitly that the natural, fallen world is in bondage to futility – but adds that the children of God have already been liberated from this process, and are the firstfruits of a liberation that will spread to the whole creation. The message of Scripture, says Cornish poet Jack Clemo, is triumphant: `Your fate is unspeakably tragic – but you need not fulfil it!‘
When we set the message of Ecc 1:2 into the total context of Scripture, then, we see it is a partial perspective; in Romans 8’s terms, it is a perspective from within the creation’s `bondage to frustration’. And if we pay attention to the text of Ecclesiastes itself, we have a clue pointing the same way in the often-repeated phrase `under the sun’: `There is nothing new under the sun'(1:9). It’s there at the start, in 1:3, and repeated almost thirty times. The phrase defines the book’s perspective; it does not, in itself, offer any other; but when we read Ecclesiastes, not as a book standing alone, but as part of an entire Bible that begins and ends `beyond the sun’, with its central narrative beginning and ending with an incarnation and ascension pointing us likewise `beyond the sun’, we know that this perspective will need complementing with something else.
Yet perhaps we are going about this the wrong way. For we should begin by looking more closely at Ecclesiastes itself. There is always a danger of losing a book’s unique message by swamping it with cross-references. Perhaps what we should bring to Ecclesiastes from the rest of the Bible – from the insight that it is set in a Bible that does not view history as meaningless – is a sensitivity to paradox. And hence a question: Does Ecclesiastes, in itself, come across as somehow paradoxical, unresolved? (It could only be seen as “contradicting” the rest of the Bible if its own unusual message seemed complete in itself.)
The answer is obviously Yes. Ecclesiastes is clearly a book of unresolved tensions. If, indeed, `Everything is meaningless’, then there would be no point in Ecclesiastes’ own narrative (nor any others in the Bible). Clearly, the very fact that the Teacher `pondered and searched out and set in order many proverbs…searched to find just the right words'(12:9-10) means that this activity obviously had some meaning. And the final verses give us the `conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.’ The conclusion again defines activity that is meaningful, even vital. There is, then, a paradox presented by Ecclesiastes itself, if we take it seriously.
Why has God given us this paradoxical book? Two possibilities offer themselves. Kidner, in his excellent The Message of Ecclesiastes (IVP), suggests that the whole thing is written by a man of faith as deliberate apologetics: `Path after path will be explored to the very point at which it comes to nothing. In the end, only one way will be left… We face the appalling inference that nothing matters under the sun. It is then that we can hear the good news, as it is, that everything matters… “For God will bring every deed into judgment”‘. Or there is a grimmer alternative: God has included it in Scripture, not because the Teacher himself wrote from a secret perspective of faith, but because the book itself, in its paradoxes, demonstrates, as so often the Old Testament does, the need for a Saviour. We may see it as a series of poems, not necessarily in agreement with each other; `postcards from the edge’ written at different stages during the Teacher’s `wanderings’, each often embodying a particular blind alley; a document reminiscent of a Dostoevsky novel – charting a long wandering, and only in the final verses reaching the beginning of the light; a God-given record of an extended course of inquiry (C S Lewis’ Surprised by Joy would be another parallel). Either way, the `message of Ecclesiastes’ must be sought carefully in what it is and communicates as a whole; not in individual verses, which (like others elsewhere, in Job for example) might prove hard to fit with the rest of the Bible if snatched out of their total context.
Let us assume, then, that our initial reading-through of Ecclesiastes turns up a paradox: everything is said to be meaningless, yet the Teacher’s own activity denies that that is so. Something is meaningful. One possible way to proceed is to go through the book noting what that something is.
The first two chapters present the Teacher embarking on a search for what is truly worthwhile (2:3). Coming into the book from Proverbs, we may note the lack of reference to God – and wonder whether his mission to `explore by wisdom all that is done under heaven’ could fall into the trap Proverbs 3:5 describes, of `leaning on your own understanding’ without first `trusting in the Lord with all your heart’; and whether the loss of that foundation of faith will lead ultimately to wisdom turning sour. Indeed, one of the Teacher’s first conclusions is that `I have increased in wisdom more than anyone who has ruled over Jerusalem before me, I have experienced much of wisdom and knowledge’; but his wisdom has turned out to be merely a source of sorrow, a `chasing after the wind’ (1:17-18, 2:14-16).
Hedonism then proves equally meaningless – the pleasures of laughter, alcohol and music-making, but also of wealth and achievement for their own sake, which likewise lead only to obliteration in death (2:4-6,26,21). The first positive point he finds comes, therefore, in 2:24: `A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work’; a course of moderated balance, of each thing in its place, of accepting the limitations of human activity: `There is… a time to be born and a time to die… a time to search and a time to give up'(3:2,6). This way of partially resolving the meaninglessness recurs in Ecclesiastes: `It is good and proper for a man to eat and drink, and to find satisfaction in his toilsome labour under the sun during the few days of life God has given him’ (5:18; cf 8:15).
And yet it is insufficient, is haunted. There is a hint that that restlessness may be a goading from God: `He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done’ (3:11). But a few verses later, the moment of rest is haunted by darker shadows. `Man has no advantage over the animal… All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return’, says 3:19-20; and it is only on that basis that he records, `There is nothing better for a man to enjoy his work, because that is his lot. For who can bring him to see what will happen after him?'(3:22) (Likewise 9:7-10, or 11:8: `However many years a man may live let him enjoy them all. But let him remember the days of darkness, for they will be many.’)
In addition, the momentary rest in everyday happiness is undermined by the stark awareness of injustice. George Steiner’s illustration comes to mind: can it be that the happy family sits listening to Mozart, when outside their house the overcrowded trains are speeding by to Auschwitz? And this is how Ecclesiastes seems to work, if we pay attention: almost like a seeker’s diary. There is a moment of resolution: `I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil – this is the gift of God’ (3:12-13). But immediately, alongside it, he records with honesty the horror that bursts in: `I saw… in the place of justice – wickedness was there… I saw the tears of the oppressed – and they have no comforter; power was on the side of their oppressors’ (3:16, 4:2). And on the heels of that come the bleakest observations of the book: `I declared that the dead… are happier than the living… But better than both is he who has not yet been, who has not seen the evil that is done under the sun’; and this negation of human endeavour: `I saw that all labour and all achievement spring from man’s envy of his neighbour'(4:2-4).
And yet people cannot remain there. Either we must identify some things that are of at least temporary value and meaning, or the result can only be depression, psychiatric breakdown, even suicide. In chapter 4, therefore, he returns to the `private’ values of moderation and companionship – `Better one handful with tranquillity than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind… Two are better than one… If one falls down, his friend can help him’ (vv6,8-9). There is something very modern about this: in a meaningless world, maybe relationships hold the one enduring value. (One thinks of Matthew Arnold: `The world… Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,/ Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain…/ Love, let us be true to one another!’)
Then in the middle chapters it seems as if the tension slackens. Having decided to go on after the vision of blackness in chapter 4, the Teacher begins to put together pieces of advice that are of general value, but do not always seem to fit his original grand intention of `seeing what was worthwhile for men to do under heaven during the few days of their lives’ (2:3). Indeed, there is a sense of the Teacher almost despairing of his grander quest: `The more the words, the less the meaning, and how does that profit anyone? For who knows what is good for a man in life?'(6:11-12)
Thus what he gives us becomes more like advice for `getting by in life’. This even includes religion: `Stand in awe of God’, he instructs his reader – but not so much out of worshipful adoration, rather as a way of avoiding God `destroying the work of your hands’ (5:6-7). (He gives very similar advice about standing in awe of the king in 8:2-6.) In 8:12-13 comes what may seem more constructive advice about fearing God because `it will go better with God-fearing men’, whereas the wicked will not live long lives; but almost immediately this is swept away by its opposite: `Righteous men… get what the wicked deserve, and wicked men get what the righteous deserve… No one can comprehend what goes on under the sun'(8:14,17). `This too, I say, is meaningless. So… nothing is better for a man under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad'(v15). (That may sound perilously close to `Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.’)
Yet there remains a sense that somehow the quest for wisdom is worth pursuing. `It is better to go to a house of mourning than to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of every man; the living should take this to heart ‘(7:2) – rather than merely drowning their sorrows. At this point, the Teacher is at least urging the value of continuing in the search – albeit without total conviction (5:20). And though he can sometimes say the opposite (eg 6:8), the general mood of these chapters is that wisdom is to be cherished (7:5,11,12,19,8:1). `I said, “I am determined to be wise” – but this was beyond me. Whatever wisdom may be, it is far off…. So I turned my mind to understand’ (7:23-25). Unaided wisdom `under the sun’ proves to be deeply inadequate… and yet, though there may have to be times for rest, to be human is to refuse to give up on the searching.
This continual, overt sense of ambivalence is surely one of the things that strike us about these chapters (and should caution us about using them as sources for doctrine). `Nothing is better for a man under the sun to eat and drink and be glad. Then joy will accompany him in his work’ (8:15); yet `Sorrow is better than laughter… The heart of fools is in the house of pleasure’ (7:3-4). `Enjoy life with your wife whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life God has given you’, he says (9:9) – yet in an acid moment in 7:28, sounding like a disappointed lover, he remarks, `I find more bitter than death the woman whose heart is a trap… I found one upright man among a thousand, but not one upright woman among them all.’ `Wisdom is a shelter’ (7:12) – yet, `Do not be overwise – why destroy yourself?’ (8:16). Read with care, the book itself seems to warn us: we have not yet reached conclusions.
But another recurrent note strikes us too: what undermines everything is that death obliterates all, that there is no afterlife. Chapter 3 makes that clear: the Teacher takes refuge from the vision of wickedness sitting in the place of justice (3:16) with the comfort that God will bring the past to account (3:17); but once he has concluded that `Man’s fate is like the animals… Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place’ (3:19-20), his next encounter with oppression (4:1) leaves him with no defence against the terrible nihilism of 4:2-4. Even as he recovers, and begins in the following chapters to accumulate a commonsense wisdom of `getting by’, the same note returns to haunt him. `As a man comes, so he departs, and what does he gain, since he toiled for the wind?’ (5:16). `Do not all go to the same place?’ (6:6). `Who knows what is good for a man in life, during the few and meaningless days he passes through like a shadow? Who can tell him what will happen under the sun after he is gone?’ (6:12). `All share a common destiny – the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad… This is the evil in everything that happens under the sun: The same destiny overtakes all… Even a live dog is better than a dead lion! For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward’ (9:2-5). What renders everything meaningless is the limitation of being `under the sun’; the black certainty of death, coupled with the lack of a promise of a judgment or afterlife to give meaning.
But as the book draws toward a close, its central messages – or rather, its central questions – begin to clarify.
Chapter 11 seems driven by an intuition that something is worth doing. Certainly, the Teacher does not dare to make so confident a statement; but 11:1-6 centre on the importance of directing our actions for what they can achieve in the future. Yet, on the other hand, everything is still challenged by the dark paradox of what is to come; let a man enjoy the years of his life, says the Teacher, but let him remember that the `days of darkness will be many. Everything to come is meaningless’ (11:8).
Chapter 12 begins likewise with a challenge regarding what is essential: `Remember your Creator in the days of your youth’. But then the shadow that has haunted the entire book returns, overwhelming all human activity in the powerful poetry of 12:1-7. In its presence everything – for that moment – is negated. `”Meaningless! Meaningless!” concludes the Teacher at its end. “Everything is meaningless!”
And, with that, the long sequence of reflections closes. There follow four verses describing the Teacher’s own labour of storing up the nation’s proverbs, the `words of the wise’. Is this Ecclesiastes itself, the Teacher’s careful storing up and treasuring of those moments of insight that have made him live? Here, despite what he has just said, the Teacher is clearly driven by an inner intuition that this activity is worthwhile. He comes close to despairing even now: `Be warned’, he urges his disciple, of any further offer of knowledge: `Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body.’ But there remains a last word, and it is nothing less than `the conclusion of the matter’. It takes us back to the God who was pointed to three times even in the last great passage about death: `Remember your Creator… Remember Him… the spirit returns to God who gave it’ (12:1,6,8). That God now, at last, takes centre stage: `Fear God and keep His commandments, for that is the duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment…'(12:13-14). And so the book closes.
Leaving us with what? In the first place, still with a question and a paradox: because of the blank, imminent darkness of death, life is meaningless; yet as surely as he senses that, the Teacher senses also that investing effort and recording wisdom are somehow imperative. It’s a combination of intuitions we find in many modern writers: at the end of Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers, for example, or in Beckett at his more optimistic. Is there a way to move beyond this ambiguity? The Teacher has something Lawrence and Beckett lack – an ultimate faith, even amid the triumph of death, of `Remember your Creator… Remember Him… Fear God’. And a final paradox forces itself on us in the book’s closing verse. For if our deepest intuition tells us there is a God, then surely that God is interested in what we do; in other words, there is a judgment. But if there is a judgment, then that itself provides real meaning to our activities now: more, it must surely point beyond the veil – for a judgment surely implies some process of reward or its alternative. Death cannot then be the final curtain; eternity is rightly in our hearts….. – and then meaningfulness floods back from the prospect of an afterlife, like sunlight flooding in when the corner of a curtain is lifted in a darkened room…..
Here then is the final message emerging from Ecclesiastes’ record of the Teacher’s extended and paradoxical explorations. There is no dramatic proclamation; yet two conclusions are unavoidable. First, the record of Ecclesiastes shows that nothing `under the sun’ can ultimately satisfy. Indeed, even `wisdom’ – even the classic wisdom of the `son of David, king of Jerusalem’ – goes sour and leads only to despair if its perspective remains `under the sun’; that is, unless God intervenes (as He will do elsewhere in the Bible of which this book is part), revealing what human wisdom `cannot understand’ of His ways (11:5, 8:17). (Mere belief in God is not enough; the Teacher retains that throughout the book, and still despairs. What he lacks is actual revelation from `beyond the sun’, that could transcend his repeated cry of `Noone knows’ (6:12,8:7,10:14).) The despair of the Teacher is a despair that echoes throughout contemporary western thought, trapped as it likewise is `under the sun’.
But secondly Ecclesiastes makes clear that, if there is no judgment and afterlife, no presence of God in death, then everything is indeed meaningless. And that realisation is so significant as to justify, in itself, the inclusion of this book in the Bible. It is the Holy Spirit Himself who `convicts of judgment’ (John 16:8). What this inspired record demonstrates, as clearly as any other book in the Old Testament, is the message so many of them finally yield: without some kind of deliverance coming from beyond what is `under the sun’, there is no hope. Ultimately, then, precisely in its unresolved paradoxes, Ecclesiastes turns out to be a gospel book.
Gospel, meaning good news. For there are few more enriching lessons to learn than the fundamental significance of God’s presence in our death, of His judgment and of the afterlife. For they point us to the road that – unexpectedly – will turn out to lead `beyond the sun’: that will lead to glory!
(AFTERWORD: Let me repeat again here that what’s above was written taking as its starting point the NIV translation of 1:2: `Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless!` – which does seem an appropriate match to the rest of the book’s contents, up almost to the end. The NASB, CEV, GNT, NLT and others read that introductory verse similarly. However, I’m coming to see the significance of the ESV footnote that says that the Hebrew word often translated `meaningless` can also refer `to a “mist,” “vapour,” or “mere breath,” and metaphorically to something that is fleeting or elusive`, that is, utterly transient. Which opens up the possibility that at its very beginning and end (perhaps even from as late as 12:13) the Teacher is saying that the reflections that follow – quite possibly being earlier reflections, even teachings, from his own journey – all demonstrate an utter transience, which must be transcended through the recognition of the Eternal God. Like with Job, it may be in the opening and close that we find undiluted truth, even though there are jewels from time to time throughout. In that case, as Kidner suggests, the book as a whole can be seen as put together by a man of faith as a deliberate pointer to God: `Path after path will be explored to the very point at which it comes to nothing. In the end, only one way will be left…`)
