Ecclesiastes 3:1-11

This is the sixth post in my Ecclesiastes series.  Previous Post (2:24-26)

In chapter 3, we see a shift at the beginning to a declaration that life is not meant to be the same at all times.  In verses 1-8, the language of “a time to” and “a time for” is repeated over and over again.  The author could have stated verse 1 and left out 2-8, and the reader could have understood.  However, with the wide range of opposing examples, it helps the reader to visualize and relate to the concept of there being a time and a season for everything.

What I see in this is that there is no formula to life.  Sometimes it’s this, other times it’s that.  The author does not state any timeframes, and therefore the “when” and “how long” for each time or season is unknown.  Thus, we should not expect to know what life ought to look like.

Verses 9 and 10 seem to shift in thought:

What profit is there to the worker from that in which he toils?  I have seen the task which God has given the sons of men with which to occupy themselves.

These two verses seem unrelated to the verses prior in chapter 3.  They look again to the God-given task of labor, and he asks the (rhetorical?) question about the profit of man’s labor.  This seems like it belongs back in chapter 2, but for some reason it is sandwiched here within a section on times and seasons for things.  I do not understand the point of these two verses being here.

Many Bibles have verse 11 starting a new section, but in my opinion, it is a continuation of the verses prior that seems to wrap up the thought and add an extra addition to the sense of mystery in man’s not knowing what might be next.  It also completes the sandwiching of verses 9 and 10.  Verse 11 states:

He has made everything appropriate in its time.  He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end.

The use of the word “appropriate” after “everything” is interesting.  Life can often seem hard and messy, yet everything is somehow appropriate in its time by God’s design.  The ESV even replaces “appropriate” with “beautiful”, which is even more interesting.

Let’s say my family had another family over for dinner.  With us and our children, and our guests with theirs, there was a total of eleven mouths to feed.  They have left, and our kitchen and dining room are filled with dirty dishes, cooking pots and pans, leftover food, food on the floor from the young children, etc.  It’s a massive mess and it must be cleaned.  Could this be a micro example of an appropriate time to clean up?  Is it a beautiful thing to be serving our guests by cleaning the kitchen?  Could it be that part of the meaning that can be taken away from these verses is that even boring, tedious, laborious tasks like this are all a part of the design of life and can and should be viewed as a good thing, and never as a waste of time (which is how it can very easily feel)?

Shifting to the next sentence, we see that while God has placed a sense of eternity within us, he did it in such a way that we won’t fully know it.  Though, I’m not sure if the verse is saying that we will not find out anything at all, or if we won’t find it out fully.  Either way, there is an element of not knowing.  And when this is put in the context of there being an appointed time for everything, it adds a comforting factor to the unknowns of life.  We  may not know the when’s and the why’s, but in the proper time we may be able to see how beautiful it was.

Ecclesiastes 2:24-26

This is the fifth post in my Ecclesiastes series.  Previous Post (2:18-23)  |  Next Post (3:1-11)

Verse 24 is perhaps the first positive outlook presented in this book.  The author has been so consumed with the declaration of vanity over nearly everything up until this point.  As I said in an earlier post, he has wiped the slate clean and when you have read the book from beginning to 2:23, you are left wondering where the purpose in anything is.  In fact, the first time I read verse 24, I assumed that this positive thought was about to be destroyed in the next couple of sentences.  Here is what it says:

There is nothing better for a man than to eat and drink and tell himself that his labor is good.  This also I have seen that it is from the hand of God.

Typically, the author’s “this too” language points to vanity, but in this case, it is from the hand of God.  Finally, an observance that is good and not something that is meaningless.  And what is striking about this is the plainness in what he declares as good.  Three simple things:  eat, drink, labor well.  Eating and drinking are straight-forward and are required to live, and something we all already enjoy.  The laboring is more interesting here.

Working is part of God’s design for man.  We see this in Genesis 2:5 and 2:15, where labor is closely tied to the creation of man:

Now no shrub of the field was yet in the earth, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted, for the Lord God had not sent rain upon the earth, and there was no man to cultivate the ground.

Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.

The creation of man and the idea of labor goes all the way back to creation.  Man was meant to work, and I believe this design is for our good (which of course is a huge and interesting theological concept that this post will not go into).  But for the sake of these verses in Ecclesiastes, labor is to be seen as good, and is to be seen as being from God.

In verse 25, the author supplies some reasoning for his statement in 24 as a rhetorical question:

For who can eat and who can have enjoyment without Him?

The question implies the answer of “nobody can.”  An argument could be suggested that there must be at least one atheist in the world who is able to eat and enjoy things.  This is common grace.  Remove God, and all life and sources of food cease to exist, believer and non-believer alike.  And, as we will see in verse 26, the eating and the enjoyment that the atheist is experiencing is ultimately part of God using them for the helping of the ones who are good in God’s sight:

For to a person who is good in His sight He has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, while to the sinner He has given the task of gathering and collecting so that he may give to the one who is good in God’s sight.  This too is vanity and striving after wind.

There is a lot going on here that is worth looking into, so let’s start with the idea that God gives wisdom and knowledge and joy to people who are good in His sight.  How do we know who is good in God’s sight?  We do know, from the New Testament, that through the death and resurrection of Jesus, believers have been justified through faith.  When God looks at believers, he sees that Jesus has made them clean, and this to God is a good sight.

Also on this idea, we see here that wisdom and knowledge are listed along with joy.  How can this be, especially when looking back to 1:18 which says that “in much wisdom there is much grief, and increasing knowledge results in increasing pain”?  I’m not entirely sure, as the topic of wisdom and knowledge is very interesting in the Bible, but one observation is the difference in the source of each.  In 1:17, the author says “And I set my mind to know wisdom…”  The source of this seems to be himself, whereas 2:26 states that it is given by God.

Moving on to the next part, the author states that even sinners have a God-given task, which is to labor so they can give to the one who is good in God’s sight.  I’m not entirely sure how this works or looks practically, but it is interesting to see purpose in the lives of those who are not God’s people.  Yet the meaningfulness of this seems to apply only to God’s people and ultimately does nothing for the sinners, even though they are accomplishing a God-given task, as he states “this too is vanity and striving after wind.”

I did have to contemplate what the “this” is specifically referring to when he says “this too is vanity and striving after wind.”  Up until now, this language has been used to dub all of the preceding statements as meaningless.  However, my take on this particular section is that the “this” is referring only to the task of the sinner.  I am hoping this will be clarified as we read further into the book.

Ecclesiastes 2:18-23

This is the fourth post in my Ecclesiastes series.  Previous Post (2:12-17)  |  Next Post (2:24-26)

In the previous section, the author ended by saying he “hated life” because everything he did was grievous to him and meaningless.  The result of this is that he also hated all the fruit of his labor.  And this was most likely not the present enjoyment of the fruit of his labor, which in the beginning of chapter 2 he clearly enjoyed, but rather in what happens to it all when death becomes him.

This is a very interesting thought because once you are dead, why should any possessions you once had even matter?  Are not most men pleased that they are able to leave an inheritance to their children?  Clearly something about this is a negative thought to him.  Verse 18:

Thus I hated all the fruit of my labor for which I had labored under the sun, for I must leave it to the man who will come after me.

Wether or not the recipient of his inheritance is a wise man or a fool has importance to him.  If it had no importance, I don’t think he would have mentioned this as he does in verse 19:

And who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool?  Yet he will have control over all the fruit of my labor for which I have labored by acting wisely under the sun.

He is clear that, wise or not, someone will inherit the fruits of his labor.  He must, however, hope that he who gains control is wise.  A fool who acquires a large inheritance is more susceptible to squandering it and wasting all of the hard work and wisdom it took to build it.  Thus it is not a mystery as to why this thought occurred to him.  If I spend hours and hours building a fragile work of art, I’m not going to want to put it in the hands of a child.  The same applies for the inheritance you pass down.

I think he is foreseeing the potential negative effects of leaving behind a sizable inheritance.  Receiving a large inheritance may cause the beneficiary to not need to work and be able to live off of what was received.  This is not God’s design for man in this life.  In fact, the author goes so far as to call this a “great evil” in verse 21, and he despairs of this thought in verse 20.

I find this quite interesting.  It seems, by what he is saying, that the best design does not include the concept of inheritance.  Let every man work for what he earns.  Is that what he is suggesting here?  But what happens if he makes more than what is needed and has an inheritance left over?  Is it a great evil to receive this?  If so, what should be done with what the dead leave behind?

Verse 22 takes a shift out of pondering inheritance, but is connected in thought.  He says in 22-23:

For what does a man get in all his labor and in his striving with which he labors under the sun?  Because all his days his task is painful and grievous; even at night his mind does not rest.  This too is vanity.

What does a man get?  Obviously he receives a means of being able to pay for housing, food, water, and the things necessary to live without having to rely on someone else.  But clearly the author knows this, so what then is he getting at?  Clearly he perceives all as meaningless in the end.  But at this point, I’m not quite sure how the author would answer his own question here.  This is definitely a depressing statement for man, that our work is grievous and painful, and that even our rest is plagued by a restless mind.

Solomon – Polar Opposite Views On Wisdom?

While the author of Ecclesiastes is a debated topic, many think it was written by Solomon.  The book of Proverbs makes it clear in the first verse that it was written by Solomon.  So we have two different books, probably written by the same guy.  But interestingly, there are two verses that give a polar opposite view of the results of wisdom and understanding:

“Her [wisdom and understanding personified] ways are pleasant ways and all her paths are peace.”  Proverbs 3:17

“Because in much wisdom there is much grief, and increasing knowledge results in increasing pain.”  Ecclesiastes 1:18

Clearly peace is not the same thing as grief, nor is pain the same thing as pleasant.  Considering that there is no argument over that, what then make sense of these two verses.  Can they both be true at the same time?  Is wisdom and understanding a grievously pleasant and peacefully painful thing?  Are we supposed to do the math and determine that wisdom is just average then in every regard?

How can these two verses be understood so that they are both true, but can be in harmony with each other and not be a ridiculously obvious contradiction?

Ecclesiastes 2:12-17

This is the third post in my Ecclesiastes series.  Previous Post (2:1-11)   |  Next Post (2:18-23)

In verse 12, he is shifting gears a bit, but continuing the thought process.  Instead of looking at pleasure and possessions, he is looking at wisdom, madness, and folly.  He starts out with a question:

for what will the man do who will come after the king except what has already been done?

Again, like he has done a few times already, this is a rhetorical question with the implied answer of “nothing.”  This points back to verse 1:9:

That which has been is that which will be, and that which has been done is that which will be done.  So there is nothing new under the sun.

But why does he mention this again in 2:12?  He starts by saying what he is now going to consider, then adds this in, and then in verse 13 he goes back to wisdom and folly.  It is sandwiched in the middle with no clear explanation.  Perhaps it is to say that when considering these things, it is easy for him to come to a solid conclusion because there will be nothing new in terms of wisdom or folly.  His conclusion will be a lasting one because nothing that will happen in the future will be able to change it.

Wisdom Is Greater

Now he makes a judgement about wisdom versus folly in 13-14:

And I saw that wisdom excels folly as light excels darkness.  The wise man’s eyes are in his head, but the fool walks in darkness.

If there is darkness, and light is introduced, the light wins.  Wisdom is greater.  In terms of humanity, the one with wisdom can see with the mind.  He can make decisions and think rightly because his mind can see clearly as if in a lit room.  The fools eyes are elsewhere and therefore the decisions he makes are not based off of clarity and sight of the mind, but off of other impulses.

This verse also sounds like a proverb, to which there is a similar line in Proverbs 2:13.

The Fate Of All Men

Verses 15-16:

Then I said to myself, “As is the fate of the fool, it will also befall me.  Why then have I been extremely wise?”  So I said to myself, “This too is vanity.”  For there is no lasting remembrance of the wise man as with the fool, inasmuch as in the coming days all will be forgotten.  And how the wise man and the fool alike die!

Certainly there are major benefits to wisdom, but he is saying here that it was worthless to be so wise.  The Bible has many good things to say about wisdom, so how can it be vanity?  There must be a lens through which he is viewing this that we must be mindful of so that we don’t come to the conclusion that one of the wisest men in history tells us that it’s worthless to be wise.  I think he must be viewing wisdom in terms of what is left of it after death.  What counts at that point?

Hatred of Life

He says in verse 17 that he “hated life, for the work which had been done under the sun was grievous to me.”  This is interesting because just back in verse 10 he said “for my heart was pleased because of all my labor…” This seems like a contradiction.  However, I think he is working in different scopes.  In verse 10 he seems to be looking at the moment.  He is in the scope of living life out.  In verse 17, he’s in the scope of looking at life as a whole and what happens at death.  So in that scope, seeing how all his work does nothing in the grand scheme of things, it then seems grievous.  So I would not consider this a contradiction.

But why hate life?  This is a very strong statement.  How can absolutely everything be futile?  Is it helpful to be as negative as he is?  I don’t think the feeling of hating life is meant to last.  I think he is trying to help his readers wipe the slate clean and rid of all ideas of what has any sort of value in life, and then work on rebuilding it.  I don’t think he intends for us to join him permanently in hating life.

Conclusion

There is no real conclusion to come to in this section, as it is in the middle of a chapter and in the middle of a thought process he is taking his readers through.  But he is continuing to point out different aspects of life and determining it all to be futile.  He even challenges things that we may have never thought could have been considered worthless, namely, wisdom.

I think it is interesting that my Bible has a title for this specific section of verses called “Wisdom Excels Folly.”  This almost seems like a completely moot point given his conclusion that both wisdom and folly are both just futility in the end.

Ecclesiastes 2:1-11

This is the second post in my Ecclesiastes series.  Previous Post (1)  |  Next Post (2:12-17)

In verse 1, the author makes the decision to experience the fullness of what this life has to offer in terms of material possessions and pleasure.  He says to himself, “come now, I will test you with pleasure.  So enjoy yourself.”  What is it that he is testing for?  He isn’t explicit about that, however, I think he is testing it all to see if he can find some real purpose, something that is not just vanity.  He seems to find no value though, because he declares upfront again at the end of verse 1, “and behold, it too was futility.”

The latter half of verse 2 talks about testing pleasure.  He asks the question, “what does it accomplish?”  We all want to believe that God created us to have pleasure and enjoy things, so therefore it should be a good thing, at least when enjoyed in a proper context.  But by asking the question the way he does and supplying no answer, it seems that he is implying that it accomplishes nothing.  In terms of everlasting purpose, it would seem that he is right.  But I don’t think he’s saying that pleasure shouldn’t be had.  Perhaps he would suggest that pleasure can be good, but that we should not have a perspective that pleasure is what we seek for ultimate fulfillment.

Verse 3 gets a little confusing:

I explored with my mind how to stimulate my body with wine while my mind was guiding me wisely, and how to make hold of folly, until I could see what good there is for the sons of men to do under heaven the few years of their lives.

I don’t think it was any mystery of the effect on the body when one drinks wine.  Yet he says he “explored with my mind how to stimulate my body with wine.”  So what is he trying to do then?  He makes it even more interesting by trying to merge in the guidance of a wise mind to the process of drinking wine.  Perhaps he recognized that wine can make one a bit goofy, but he wanted to try and see if he could turn that into good.  But, this is made more unclear when he talks about doing this “until I could see what good there is for the sons of men to do.”  Most people do the majority of the things they do without alcohol.  So ultimately, I’m really not sure what he is trying to say here.

In 4-11 he explores all that the material world provides.  He had everything, and a lot of it.  He says in verse 10, “All that my eyes desired I did not refuse them.  I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure.”  Our culture is very caught up in the pursuit of more and more.  Rare is the person without want.  We keep thinking that if we only had this or that, then we’d be really happy, yet the more we get, the more we want.

Listen to nearly any hip-hop song, and many other popular pop songs these days and you’ll find lyrics about sex are paramount.  Our culture is sex-craved, and seemingly sex-starved, because people can’t seem to get enough.  He must have experienced this as well, for in the latter part of verse 8, he had many women to have sex with: “I provided for myself…the pleasures of men – many concubines.”

Then we get to his conclusion of it all at verse 11:

Thus I considered all my activities which my hands had done and the labor which I had exerted, and behold all was vanity and striving after wind and there was no profit under the sun.

All the wealth we think we need, all of the possessions we think we need, all of the sex we think we need, all amounts to nothing in the end.  No profit!

Conflict With The Heart?

Here is something interesting that the author writes in verse 10 shortly before saying all is vanity:

I did not withhold my heart form any pleasure, for my heart was pleased because of all my labor and this was my reward for all my labor.

I can’t tell if his heart being pleased is a good thing here, especially because it is within the context of not withholding from any pleasure as a reward for his labor.

I have definitely felt pleased with my work before, to the point of wanting to reward myself with something.  But is that a good thing?  I think it can be either good or bad depending on how your self-rewarding is done.  Sometimes I may just want something, and I use my work as a reason for why I deserve it.  Other times I have needed something and set a goal for myself to work towards it.

But unfortunately we can’t tell which direction he is going here, as it could go either way.  In the end though, it was for no profit, and was striving after the wind, no matter which way we look at it.  But it does leave me to wonder what his point in writing this line was.

Conclusion:

The main conclusion in this section is that all pleasure and possession is meaningless.  But we can’t just leave it at that.  We are in the middle of a chapter in the middle of a book.  There is plenty of time yet for the author to bring up more points and draw more conclusions and tie it all together.

The question that I have currently is this:  What metric does he have to consider all these things vanity?  In order to say something like that, you need to have an idea of what is NOT vanity.  I can tell you that a single penny is pretty much worthless, because I know that even to buy a single lunch would cost 600-1500 of those. I have something to compare it to.

If all he did was tell us that everything is meaningless, but didn’t say what is meaningful, this book would be either be meaningless, or amazingly depressing.  So we must continue reading.

Ecclesiastes 1

This is the first post in my Ecclesiastes series.  Next Post (2:1-11)

Had a great talk with a friend yesterday, and we decided it could be beneficial for me to work my way through the book of Ecclesiastes, a book not often studied.  In fact, I can’t even remember if I’ve ever read through the entire book, so I am excited to see what is inside.  Without consulting commentaries, articles, or anything other than the Bible, I am going to read through and explore what it has to say, commenting on my thoughts and what I find most interesting.  And so we begin at chapter 1:

Conclusions First:  All Is Vanity

In verse 2, the author (who I’m assuming is Solomon, though supposedly there is debate around that) quickly lays the cornerstone for which to build the rest of the chapter by stating:

“Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher, “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.”

This is a very bold way to start a book.  But, I found that knowing the author’s conclusion at the beginning was helpful in understanding the rest of the chapter.

Now jump ahead to parts of verses 13 and 14 to give a better understanding for his observations in 3-11 where he says:

And I set my mind to seek and explore by wisdom concerning all that has been done under heaven…  I have seen all the works which have been done under the sun…

This helps to validate his observations in verses 3-11.  He sought to find out more about life, and he must have thought hard and witnessed much, because he claims to “have seen all the works which have been done.”  I don’t think we are to understand this in terms of him having literally seen every little detail of everything that everyone had ever done, but rather to understand that he labored vigorously to think about all aspects of life.  Clearly, he believes he saw enough to declare that “all is vanity”, and, as we’ll see later, how even the process of learning about wisdom and folly is “striving after wind.”

Verses 3-11

The interesting thing about verse 3 is that it is a question, and it is the only question asked in the chapter:

What advantage does man have in all his work which he does under the sun?

If we were to take this question at face value, we could come up with numerous answers.  One example:  The work we do provides us means to care for our families.  No work, no food.  However, I don’t think this is what he is getting at with this question.  I think this question comes loaded with the answer already, namely, that there ultimately is no everlasting advantage, because all is vanity.

Verses 4-7 talk about the seeming never ending cycle of life and happenings on this earth.  It continues to move forward, generation after generation, the sun rising and setting, streams don’t stop running.  Nothing we do or do not do effects the cycles.  Then in verse 8 he states:

All things are wearisome; Man is not able to tell it

This is an interesting shift.  All things are wearisome.  By that, he is essentially saying that all things are tired or worn out due to continuously working.  This was written potentially 3000 year ago, and yet the Earth still functions without missing a beat.  I’ve never thought of it as looking wearisome, but perhaps he had a picture of the new Earth in mind, and what it might be like for everything to be perfected.  That, in fact, may be a big influence as to why he considers all things vanity.

What then does “Man is not able to tell it” mean?  What does the “it” refer to?  If I had to guess, I think he is stating that the breadth of what he is trying to describe is not only beyond him, it is beyond anybody’s capability to describe it.  But why “tell it” instead of understand it?  Maybe it’s one in the same.  In order to tell something or describe something well, you must understand it first.

Verses 9-11 continue to drive home that there is nothing new.

The Grievous Task

The author sets up an interesting and a discouraging paradox.  He set his mind “to know wisdom and to know madness and folly” and he claims to have “seen all the works which have been done under the sun.”  It was a task that he set forth to do that he must believe that he accomplished, as there is a tone of finality not only in his saying that he saw “all the works”, but also in his confidence to claim that “all is vanity.”  But after all his searching, he describes even the process of seeking to be “striving after wind.”

There is no positive outlook that the author gives from the process of seeking knowledge and wisdom, or from the end result of having more of each.  In fact, there are some harsh repercussions that he discovered, which he states in verse 18:

Because in much wisdom there is much grief, and in creasing knowledge results in increasing pain.

This is some serious motivation to evade wisdom and knowledge.  But I don’t think anything in this life will ever be motivation enough to avoid it.  It’s a requirement for life.  You can’t not know anything or not try to make wise decisions.  Even our nature is cursed with it back from the creation of man when Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 3).

It is also a task that’s been given to us by God.  There’s purpose to it, but at the same time, the author says it is an affliction to us!  He says this in verse 13:

It is a grievous task which God has given to the sons of men to be afflicted with.

That is the paradox.  We are to continue seeking knowledge and wisdom, which helps us in certain ways, and is a task given to us by God, but yet it is one that is grievous, afflicting us with increasing grief and pain.

Other Things to Consider From Chapter 1

I think it important not to make a full theology of wisdom and knowledge based on Ecclesiastes 1.  There are some very interesting observations in here that are important to include and to be mindful of.  But there are still 11 chapters to go in this book, and we do not know how the author intended for the reader to understand this, so we must approach it carefully.

We also don’t know if the author’s current state had anything to do with the seemingly negative outlook.  I’ve certainly written some more discouraging and negative things when life felt hard or if I was in a darker place.  Could that have effected this book?

Conclusion

There is nothing optimistic in this chapter.  “All is vanity” and we are afflicted with a task that we must do which causes grief and pain.  However, there is more to this book, and I hope the author better explains all of this and puts the sandpaper to the jagged, splinter-filled plank he just handed us.  Though that is my hope at this point, it doesn’t mean that the rest of the book will make this any more comfortable.  So, we will read on.