THE WORDS OF the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem:
2“Meaningless! Meaningless!”
says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless.”
3What does man gain from all his labor
at which he toils under the sun?
4Generations come and generations go,
but the earth remains forever.
5The sun rises and the sun sets,
and hurries back to where it rises.
6The wind blows to the south
and turns to the north;
round and round it goes,
ever returning on its course.
7All streams flow into the sea,
yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from,
there they return again.
8All things are wearisome,
more than one can say.
The eye never has enough of seeing,
nor the ear its fill of hearing.
9What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
10Is there anything of which one can say,
“Look! This is something new”?
It was here already, long ago;
it was here before our time.
11There is no remembrance of men of old,
and even those who are yet to come
will not be remembered
by those who follow.
WE MOVE SWIFTLY, as the book opens, from the speaker to words that are spoken; yet the speaker intrigues us. He is, according to the NIV, “the Teacher” (vv. 1–2). Traditionally rendered as “Preacher” (KJV, NASB), the Heb. is qohelet, probably meaning “participant in an assembly” (Heb. qahal, Gk. ekklesia, “assembly”; see the Introduction), or perhaps “one who assembles (a group).” We will refer to him for the sake of simplicity as “Qohelet” in the commentary, without meaning the reader to take this as a proper name.
Qohelet addresses his gathered listeners, the Israelites. He is “son of David, king in Jerusalem” (v. 1). We immediately think of Solomon, yet it is not likely that the historical Solomon is truly the speaker. More likely Qohelet merely adopts the persona of a Davidic king for a while (probably to be identified with Solomon by his readers, although “son” itself need only imply a descendant) in order to facilitate those aspects of his exploration of “life under the sun” that require Solomon’s type of experience. He “becomes” for a while a king within the world of the text (see the Introduction), later abandoning this disguise in favor of others.
In the same way that Qohelet thus presents himself to us in different guises so that we may explore different aspects of reality with him, so too Qohelet himself is “presented” to the reader by still another person—the one who transmits his words to us and who makes himself known to us explicitly in 12:9–14. For all we know, we only have access to Qohelet’s words at all because this person thought them of sufficient value to pass on to his “son” (12:12).
Whether this “editorial voice” is also to be identified throughout 1:1–2 is unclear. It is true that Qohelet is referred to in 1:1–2, as in 12:9–14, in the third person, and it is possible therefore that our “second voice” is here adding to his later epilogue an introduction to Qohelet and his words. Yet it is also possible for authors to refer to themselves in the third person, especially when introducing previously delivered sayings or previous writings that were produced, as it were, by “another person” (the author as he was back then). It is therefore difficult to know for sure whether parts of 1:1–2 derive from Qohelet himself or not.
This issue in any case is only important if one believes there is some conflict of perspective between Qohelet and his admirer, so that the speaker and the transmitter of his words are not saying quite the same thing. It has indeed been suggested that 1:2, along with its parallel in 12:8, represents too much of an overstatement:
1:2: “Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.”
12:8: “Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Everything is meaningless!”
Qohelet does not elsewhere, it is argued, speak of everything as hebel (the Heb. word behind NIV’s problematic “meaningless”; see further below). It has even been suggested that 1:3 is overly anthropocentric, being focused on the usefulness of the world for human beings, whereas the remainder of the book is not (e.g., 12:1–7).1
The second of these points may quickly be addressed: It is not at all clear why one author (or an author with his editor) cannot look at the world now from one perspective and now from another. The whole book of Ecclesiastes, as we will see, contains such shifts in perspective, as human existence is considered from different points of view, with the aim of commending certain viewpoints over others. The first point, however, requires a more extended discussion, for everything depends on what we think hebel means. Here we come to a crucial matter of interpretation, given the frequency with which hebel occurs in Ecclesiastes (more than thirty times outside 1:2) and its importance in Qohelet’s thought.
It is certainly true that to translate hebel as “meaningless,” as the NIV does, causes serious difficulties for the interpretation of the book as a unified work, for even a cursory reading of Ecclesiastes demonstrates that Qohelet does not consider everything “meaningless.” On the contrary, he is constantly to be found recommending certain ways of being to his listeners precisely because it is possible for human beings to know the goodness and joy of existence (cf., e.g., 2:24–26; 3:12–13, 22). “Everything” is not “meaningless.”
Consideration of the use of hebel elsewhere in the Old Testament does not lead us in this direction for its meaning either. Hebel means “breath” or “breeze” (Isa. 57:13), and thus by extension things that are insubstantial or fleeting or actions that are in vain or to no purpose (BDB, 210–11). Ephemerality is thus one of the main associations of hebel, including actions that are “passing” in the sense that they make no permanent impact or impression on reality; they are futile or pointless, and their effects do not last. It is plainly true that everything to do with human (indeed, all mortal) existence, even if not meaningless, is nevertheless “ephemeral” or “fleeting.” Consider the following texts (Ps. 39:5; 144:4; Prov. 31:30):
You have made my days a mere handbreadth;
the span of my years is as nothing before you.
Each man’s life is but a breath [hebel]. (Ps. 39:5)
Man is like a breath [hebel];
his days are like a fleeting shadow. (Ps. 144:4)
Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting [hebel];
but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised. (Prov. 31:30)
Nothing lasts—neither beauty nor life itself. It is particularly clear that throughout Ecclesiastes 11:7–12:8, hebel most naturally refers to this transient nature of human existence. It makes little sense for Qohelet to advise a young person to be happy while living reverently before God only then to remind him that “youth and vigor are meaningless” (11:10)! It makes great sense for him, however, to offer this advice in the context of the brevity of youth, just as people generally are urged to enjoy all their years because “everything to come is fleeting” (11:8, pers. trans.). The summarizing conclusion that follows the graphic description of aging and death in 12:1–7 as well as all of Qohelet’s words (12:8) most naturally refers likewise to the fleeting nature of all things, not to their meaninglessness. If 12:8 has this meaning for hebel, then 1:2 most likely does so as well. Other verses where hebel is best translated in a similar way include 6:12, 7:15, and 9:9.
There is no conflict between Qohelet and his editor. Both wish us to understand, as the foundational truth on which Qohelet premises all his words, that life is “like a breath.” The seriousness with which they wish their readers to grasp the point is indicated in the structure of 1:2, which is better seen in the NASB than in the NIV: “ ‘Vanity of vanities,’ says the Preacher, ‘Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.’ ” The fivefold repetition of the word hebel (translated here “vanity”), and in particular the repetition of the phrase habel habalim, “vanity of vanities”—a construction that conveys intensity and superlative, as in “heaven of heavens” (lit., Deut. 10:14; NIV “the highest heavens”) or “Song of Songs” (Song 1:1, i.e., the best of songs)—drives home the message. We may translate Ecclesiastes 1:2 this way:
“The merest of breaths,”
says Qohelet,
“The merest of breaths.
Everything is a breath.”
It is not, however, just the ephemerality of reality, from the mortal point of view, that Qohelet has in mind in using hebel. It is also the elusive nature of reality, that is, the way in which it resists our attempts to capture it and contain it, to grasp hold of it and control it. This is true at the level both of understanding and of action. The way in which the world works is in some measure comprehensible to us, yet in significant measure beyond our grasp. It resists our attempts to sum it up (thus passages like 1:12–18; 7:23–29). Connected with this is also a resistance to our attempts to manipulate the world through our actions so that it produces consistent and predictable outcomes. The world has its own rhythm and order, to be sure, but it is not controllable by mortal beings.
At times Qohelet underlines this truth by representing reality as a solid and relentless entity on which human activity does not have significant impact and in respect of which human achievement seems trivial and insignificant (e.g., 1:1–11). Here it is the ephemeral, phantomlike nature of the human being when contrasted to the larger ongoing reality that disallows mortal control, for mortal actions have a fleeting, insubstantial nature in respect of the universe. The case is similar to that in Psalm 39:6, 11 (following on from 39:5, cited above):
Man is a mere phantom as he goes to and fro:
He bustles about, but only in vain [hebel];
he heaps up wealth, not knowing who will get it. . . .
You rebuke and discipline men for their sin;
you consume their wealth like a moth—
each man is but a breath [hebel].
The very thought of Psalm 39:5 is found in Ecclesiastes 2:18–19 and elsewhere. However, the truth that human activity characteristically does not make the impact on reality that people hope for and may indeed have been led to expect—that it is from this perspective pointless or futile—is not only represented in terms of phantoms who are unable to exert force on solid reality. Qohelet frequently underlines the same truth by using a quite different metaphor—by combining a hebel-saying with a reference to “chasing after the wind” (Heb. reʿut/raʿyon ruaḥ, as in 1:14, 17; 2:11, 17, 26; 4:4, 6, 16; 6:9). Here the image is of something that is solid trying to grasp something that is not. To chase the wind is to seek to grasp hold of and control something beyond our grasp and uncontrollable. This is self-evidently futile; it makes no more sense for a person to expect to grasp wind than for a ghost to expect to get hold of a chair.
Again, the point is not that human activity intrinsically, whether in the realm of thought or action, is “meaningless”—Qohelet clearly does not believe this. He commends wisdom over folly (e.g., 2:13–14) and advocates all sorts of activity as good and worthwhile in itself (e.g., 9:7–10). The emphasis lies not on whether certain ways of being or doing possess meaning in themselves, but on whether these ways of being or doing succeed in achieving the goals that humans often set before themselves.
Qohelet thinks not. The human attempt to impose self on reality in this way is a foolish undertaking, which can only end in pain and frustration. Human goals should be set in accordance with the nature of reality, not in defiance of it; otherwise human existence becomes embroiled in pointless striving. The nature of reality is that human beings cannot grasp it and mold it to their own ends, any more than they can as solids grasp and mold the elusive and invisible wind, or as phantoms shape the universe in their own image. Their thought and actions in this regard cannot bring them the control they desire.
The term Qohelet often uses to signify that which mortals are aiming for and might achieve, if only they could gain control over reality, is found in the question that follows in verse 3: “What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun?” The Hebrew word yitron (NIV “gain”) is unique to Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament; it derives from the verb ytr, meaning “to remain over, be left over.” The idea is that of surplus, and the question is asked from the perspective of someone who thinks of life in a particular way, as if it were raw material to be invested in, manipulated and shaped, given added value by what is done with it, and marketed as a means of accruing capital. A closely associated word is motar, found in Ecclesiastes 3:19 and in Proverbs 14:23; 21:5 (where it is used of financial gain):2
All hard work brings a profit [motar],
but mere talk leads only to poverty. (Prov. 14:23)
The plans of the diligent lead to profit [motar]
as surely as haste leads to poverty. (Prov. 21:5)
The person who asks about yitron brings a capitalistic, consumer-oriented perspective from the world of business and commerce and applies it to life more generally. What kind of profit accrues, asks Qohelet from this perspective, from a person’s labor “under the sun”—another unique Ecclesiastes phrase, which refers to life in this present world and is synonymous with the phrases “under heaven” (e.g., 1:13) and “on earth” (e.g., 8:14). What reward is there on the balance sheet of life for all the “labor at which he toils” (lit., “toil at which he toils,” Heb. ʿamal, often with the sense of sorrow and trouble, although in Eccl. one can also find joy in it, e.g., 2:10), that is, all the effort and hard work that human beings put into the business of living?
This question receives no explicit answer at this point in the book. The response is implicit, however, in the reflection that is offered in 1:4–11 on the nature of creation and history, particularly if we accept that NIV’s “wearisome” in verse 8 is not the best translation. The rare Heb. word yageaʿ, if it has the idea of weariness in it at all, must refer here to the metaphorical weariness of “all things” as people endlessly and ceaselessly follow the circuit of life (and thus become, like any human worker toiling endlessly and ceaselessly, “tired”), rather than to the effect that watching their toils has on the human observer. The very rarity of the word (only found elsewhere in Deut. 25:18; 2 Sam. 17:2) should caution us in our understanding of it, however, for the verbal root ygʿ is itself used to refer to the hard work that produces weariness as well as to weariness itself (cf. also the related noun yegiaʿ, which can refer to labor and its fruits).
Certainly a statement that “all things are hard at work” fits the context much better as a summary of verses 4–7 than the statement “all things are weary.” The remainder of verse 8 (which commentators have struggled convincingly to connect with an opening statement about weariness) then makes good sense as a threefold response of human wonder to the threefold exposition of creation’s workings in verses 5–7. Creation is a vast and intricate reality, which escapes the grasp of human beings in speech, sight, and hearing; we are unable to find the words for it, and all our looking at it and listening to it cannot comprehend it.
With such an understanding of verse 8 in mind, we may return to the remainder of verses 4–11, the argument of which proceeds as follows. The world is an essentially unchanging place, unaffected by the “generations” that come and go (v. 4)—those specific periods of time that elapse within the larger span signified by “forever,” periods inhabited by human beings who enter a stage of history and exit again after only the brief performance of life. The sun rises and sets as it always has, only to “hurry” (lit., “gasp, pant,” in its eagerness and speed to fulfill its mission) back to its starting point and rise once again in the new morning (v. 5).
In a similar manner, the wind blows south and north (directions chosen to balance the east-west movement of the sun), endlessly moving through the world yet remaining within its prescribed circuits (v. 6). The water cycle remains the water cycle, as moisture evaporates and returns as rain to feed the streams (v. 7); all the flowing of the waters does not change anything about the volume of the sea. All these various natural phenomena toil steadily away, around and around, going about their appointed tasks without variation (v. 8); there is “nothing new under the sun” (v. 9), no “thing” (v. 10) that breaks the rule of regularity and predictability seen in “all things” (v. 8).
The human participants in the drama of creation—those who pass across the stage that creation provides—are relatively insignificant when considered in this context. The sands of passing time sweep over and erase the marks they have made, so that they are obliterated: “There is no remembrance of men of old, and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow” (v. 11). It is as certain as the erosion of footprints on the seashore, as they too concede to the overwhelmingly repeated reality of the tide. It is only because there is no remembrance, indeed, that the illusion of radical newness can captivate anyone: If there were remembrance, it would be acknowledged that the allegedly new things were already “here before our time” (v. 10).
The answer to the question of verse 3 is not explicit in this rumination on the nature of the world “under the sun” and the transience and fragility of human life when considered in this context. Yet a twofold implicit response may be detected. (1) There is indeed no “profit” worth speaking of, for history moves endlessly on, and the achievements of the individual person can only appear trivial when considered over the longer term. The massive reality of history overshadows all those tiny mortal beings who stand all too briefly within its reaches—ephemeral beings who soon pass away. Achievement does not last; the mark one makes on the world is soon erased.
(2) A second answer comes to the hearer as a question: Why do you imagine that a “surplus” for the puny individual is a realistic aim, when creation itself, in all its awesome mystery and complexity beyond mortal grasping, is not ordered to produce a surplus through its toil but is content, as it were, to go on with its tasks, endlessly and cyclically, in consistency with its nature? The massive reality of creation thus critiques the aspirations of all those tiny mortal beings who themselves stand within creation as transient creatures. There is no reason to assume that individuals should “gain” from their toil when creation as a whole does not, nor that some new profit should be individually attained by human toil “under the sun” when the general rule is that there is “nothing new under the sun.”
We will find, as we proceed through the book, that Qohelet continually returns to these two themes, urging on his hearers the futility of human thought and activity in pursuit of common human aspirations, on the one hand, while urging a revision in their thinking and the embrace of reality as it actually exists, on the other. There is indeed much that is incomprehensible and futile (hebel), from one point of view, as mortal beings, whose life itself is fleeting, insubstantial, and unable to be grasped and retained (cf. “chase the wind”); but there is no need, Qohelet will tell us, for the chase. It is possible, acknowledging the way things really are, to live a contented life in harmony with reality.
The brutality of his unmasking of the world of human desire and action is thus balanced throughout the book by the gentler unveiling of a better way of being. There is no yitron to be found under the sun (2:11; 3:9; 5:16), but none need be found. To pursue yitron is pointless, but there is no need for the pursuit. There is sufficient reward in life itself, if it is received as a gift from God and lived well.
In sum, then, we will not be interpreting hebel in this commentary to mean something like “meaninglessness” or “absurdity,” as the NIV and various other modern translations and interpretations have done. The view taken here is that this kind of interpretation is (perhaps unknowingly) too much indebted to an influential modern French existentialism and insufficiently grounded in biblical texts. Qohelet is not Camus.3 With the word hebel he refers to the fragile, fleeting nature of existence, which should cause us to seize the moment and live well in it before God, while at the same time leading us to spurn the desire for any control of life and to disdain that insane grasping after yitron, which so often characterizes human activity. We will translate and interpret hebel in a manner that fits this general context, stressing the ephemerality of existence or its elusiveness and resistance to intellectual and physical control.
Qohelet’s own alternative to the impossible attempt at “getting ahead of the game” in life is set out in numerous ways throughout the book, but perhaps nowhere is it stated more eloquently than in 4:6: “Better one handful with tranquillity than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind.”
Bridging Contexts
IT IS ONE of the glorious curiosities of Christian faith that a book of ancient texts is held to represent in its totality the communication of God, not just to ancient but also to modern peoples: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16). When these words were written, the New Testament did not yet exist as a collected body of texts. Their primary reference is to that body of literature acknowledged as Scripture by Jews and Christians alike, known to the former as “Tanakh” and to the latter as “Old Testament.” These are the foundational Scriptures of both church and synagogue, to which Christians have added their stories of Jesus and the early church, the apostolic letters, and apocalyptic visions.
The whole Christian Bible thus comes to be received as that which addresses the entire people of God. What God had to say to Israel through his various human agents is received as speech directed also at the church. From time to time throughout Christian history this attitude to the Old Testament has been questioned, whether by Marcion in the second century A.D. or by later Marcionites in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Yet the theological and historical grounds for adopting it are unassailable. It is impossible to see how we can be followers of Jesus and not regard his Scriptures as our own.
Thus, when Qohelet addresses the qahal, the assembled Israelites, we must also gather on the fringes of the crowd and listen to his words as the ekklesia—the word that is frequently translated in the New Testament as “church.” We recognize, of course, that he speaks as a person of his own time, who stands at a particular juncture in history and therefore does not know everything we know about the world and about God’s redemptive plans for it. He already speaks as one voice among many Old Testament voices that witness to the reality of God and to the truth inscribed in his creation and enacted in history; yet we must hear his utterance as one witness among a still larger cloud of witnesses stretching down through the Gospel writers and on to people such as Paul, James, and John.
We stand at a different juncture in history, and the concerted voices that offer testimony to us are many more than Qohelet could ever have known of. All this is only to say, however, that we must perhaps work harder than the first readers of Ecclesiastes to understand what God has to say to us through Qohelet. It is not to say that God does not speak to us through him and that we can afford to wander off and listen to an orator more to our liking. Whoever our anonymous and mysterious Qohelet is, he utters words that must be taken deeply seriously.
Qohelet’s convictions about both the ephemerality of reality and its elusive nature are widely shared within the Old Testament, using imagery other than “breath.” Psalm 90, for example, contrasts the eternity of God with the brevity and fragility of human life in this way (vv. 3–6):
You turn men back to dust,
saying, “Return to dust, O sons of men.”
For a thousand years in your sight
are like a day that has just gone by,
or like a watch in the night.
You sweep men away in the sleep of death;
they are like the new grass of the morning—
though in the morning it springs up new,
by evening it is dry and withered.
Psalm 103:15–16 and Isaiah 40:6b–7 return to this same theme (cf. also Isa. 51:12):
As for man, his days are like grass,
he flourishes like a flower of the field;
the wind blows over it and it is gone,
and its place remembers it no more.
All men are like grass,
and all their glory is like the flowers of the field.
The grass withers and the flowers fall,
because the breath of the LORD blows on them.
Surely the people are grass.
The elusiveness of reality is also well captured in a passage like Job 28:12–28, as verses 20–28 show:
Where then does wisdom come from?
Where does understanding dwell?
It is hidden from the eyes of every living thing,
concealed even from the birds of the air.
Destruction and Death say,
“Only a rumor of it has reached our ears.”
God understands the way to it
and he alone knows where it dwells,
for he views the ends of the earth
and sees everything under the heavens.
When he established the force of the wind
and measured out the waters,
when he made a decree for the rain
and a path for the thunderstorm,
then he looked at wisdom and appraised it;
he confirmed it and tested it.
And he said to man,
“The fear of the Lord—that is wisdom,
and to shun evil is understanding.”
The Old Testament is at pains throughout to remind us in this way of the nature of reality so that we are not deluded, and the New Testament communicates no different message. It too knows of a creation marked by hebel, albeit one that will one day give way to a new order of things. Romans 8:20, for example, speaks of a creation subjected to mataiotes, the Greek rendering of the Hebrew hebel in the LXX of Ecclesiastes. This noun and its related verbal and adjectival forms in fact appear in various New Testament contexts, characterizing many activities or objects of fascination that the New Testament authors consider to be futile, ephemeral, and lacking substance (a “chasing after wind”). Note the following verses (italics added):
For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools. (Rom. 1:21–22)
You must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. (Eph. 4:17)
If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless. (James 1:26)
For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers. (1 Peter 1:18)
For they mouth empty, boastful words. (2 Peter 2:18)
The words in 1 Peter 1:18 are indeed followed, after a reminder about how Peter’s readers were redeemed, by a characterization of their lives outside of Christ precisely in terms of the “grass that withers” in Isaiah 40. James echoes this thought in James 1:10–11 in urging the rich not to be arrogant, while also picking it up using different imagery in 4:14 in advising his readers that all life should be lived out in awareness of its fragility and ephemerality: “Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.”
We are reminded by this verse in particular of Jesus’ teaching (e.g., Matt. 6:25–34) about getting on with life without worrying overly much about its extent or its practical aspects, which are ultimately beyond our control. The Old Testament use of “grass” as a metaphor for life is in the background of this teaching also, although here it is used as much to convince us of the preciousness of human life to God as to remind us of its brevity.
It is clear from all this that Qohelet is touching on an important biblical theme in emphasizing the ephemerality of reality and its elusive nature. Creation is indeed throughout the Bible a vast and intricate reality, which escapes the grasp of human beings in speech, sight, and hearing—incomprehensible and uncontrollable, to be reckoned with rather than owned or manipulated. It is, for those who refuse to accept this, a site of futility and emptiness; no “gain” can be made from it as a result of striving and struggling with it in pursuit of our own interests.
The New Testament in its own way underlines this theme again and again, assailing attempts to “profit” from God’s world in this way. Just prior to his teaching on worrying in Matthew’s Gospel, in fact, and connected with it, Jesus warns his listeners against storing up ephemeral treasure on earth and about worshiping money rather than God (Matt. 6:19–24). A central theme of his ministry, enacted in his own life, is that the proper way in which to respond to the nature of reality is to give away one’s life rather than hold on to it, to open our hands and let things go rather than to close our fist around them, grasp hold of them, and try to use them for personal advantage (e.g., Matt. 5:5, 38–48; 16:24–25; 19:16–24; 20:24–28).
The apostle Paul, whose own life was characterized by a similar letting go of life, puts it forcibly when he writes to the Christians in Philippi: “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Phil. 1:21). Life for the Christian is “Christ”—to hold him at the center of our attention, to trust him and follow him, and to imitate him. If there is “gain” at all, it lies only in death, whether the dying is daily and unto self or whether it is final and literal.
It is only in and through Christ that there is ultimately any “newness” that is worth speaking of in terms of creation—whether the newness of all things as they will appear in the future, when the kingdom of God fully breaks into our present age, or the newness of life that is lived in the present in anticipation of this amazing future (2 Cor. 5:17; Gal. 6:15; 2 Peter 3:13; Rev. 21:1). The Old Testament already knew of both aspects of newness (e.g., Isa. 65:17–25; Jer. 31:31–34), albeit without knowing the full story of how they would be realized.
As far as we can tell, Qohelet did not himself believe in such things; at least, he does not mention them. He restricts himself to the consideration of things as they can be observed within the limits of this present life. What he has to say is still fundamental, however, even to the Christian who knows more than he, for the Christian life is as much about living faithfully in the light of present God-given reality as it is about waiting expectantly for the dawning of the new reality that God will one day initiate.
Contemporary Significance
From the day we arrive on the planet, and blinking, step into the sun,
There’s more to be seen than can ever be seen, more to do than can ever be done. . . .
There’s far too much to take in here, more to find than can ever be found;
But the sun rolling high through the sapphire sky
Keeps great and small on the endless round,
In the circle of life.
The Lion King, from which these words are taken, is one of those movies about which I have in recent years been warned by some of my Christian friends who have the best interests of my children at heart. “It’s very ‘New Age,’ you know,” they would say, in hushed and knowing tones. Undeterred, I took my family to see it anyway, and it is undoubtedly true, although unsurprising, that the movie betrays the influence of that strange mixture of ancient and modern idolatries known as New Age spirituality.
Yet many of its themes (and this too is not surprising in our “pick and mix” culture) are at least as indebted to biblical and Christian thinking as to anything else. My friends never mentioned this. I assume that they misunderstood the direction of the indebtedness. I assume this because I have so often before encountered similar things among Christians in the West, and particularly among those living in the United States or influenced by American religious culture.
To put the matter bluntly, many Christians do not possess a robust and biblical doctrine of creation (even if they spend much of their time arguing about “creationism” and why it is better than “evolutionism”). Lacking this, they often assume that ideas about creation they encounter are pagan, when in fact they are (or could be redeemed to be) biblical and Christian. They often fail to understand, indeed, that one reason why many idealistic people are uninterested in or hostile to Christianity is precisely because they consider Christians to have no place for creation in their thinking, with the result that they have contributed to the rapacious exploitation of our planet, which has brought us by degrees to the edge of global ecological disaster.
The theme song of The Lion King, at least in the edited version offered above, is almost a Christian song. It captures the wonder of creation—how it escapes our comprehension and control and yet mysteriously and effectively provides an environment in which the “circle of life” can continue. The “circle” is a deliberately chosen image, since it reminds us that human beings are themselves part of the matrix of life and do not stand in isolation from it. The emphasis of the song is on living in harmony with what is there, rather than objectifying it, manipulating it, and seeking to mold it to personal advantage. As the song tells us in another place, “all are agreed as they join the stampede, you should never take more than you give.”
This too is (almost) a Christian thought. We find ourselves here almost in the world of Genesis 1–2 and of Psalms 8, 19, and 104—a world that comes to us as a wondrous gift to be cared for on behalf of its Creator and Owner, in which there is kinship between human beings and beasts and harmony between human beings and the earth; in which there is a glad and joyful use of the things God has given us, but always in an attitude of worship and praise that offers everything back to God, who gave it. The main difference between the Bible and The Lion King song lies, of course, not in the religious view of the world that both thus possess, but in the view that they take of the Giver and his relationship with his world.
We may contrast both these religious perspectives on the world with a common modern worldview that has both religious and secular forms, one that is not truly biblical at all. According to this view, the world may or may not have been created by God, but if it was, God does not continue to have much interest in it. It is passing away and set to be consumed by fire (1 Cor. 7:31; 2 Peter 3:10–13, quoted out of context). Thus, the created order should not figure in any central way in our understanding of human destiny. We should focus rather on our various human goals and ends, whether the redemption of our souls (the religious version of the heresy) or the pursuit of happiness and fulfillment (the secular version).
In practice both versions can coexist quite happily in the individual life, since the narrowing of the religious vision of life simply to the future state of the soul can leave plenty of scope (depending on which deprivations are thought absolutely necessary for the soul’s good) for enthusiastic participation in the secular dream as far as the body is concerned. This is why many North American Christians can seemingly participate without a moment’s religious self-doubt in a rapacious type of capitalism that pays no attention to the social and ecological costs it accumulates. This is why materialism generally (which is apparently not thought to jeopardize the arrival of the soul in heaven) is not spoken of in the church half as much as (the apparently much more dangerous) sex, whereas in the Gospels the emphasis falls in the opposite direction.
This brand of religious secularism is also why so many people in the modern world who take the name “Christian” are in many respects indistinguishable (aside from a few personal rules that make them eccentric) from their non-Christian counterparts, for they have largely bought into the secular dream. While talking a good Christian talk, they are in fact pursuing with all their might precisely the same goals as everyone else. They are looking for happiness and fulfillment in this life (albeit with an insurance policy for the next life in their pocket); they are looking to make their mark (or for their children to do so); they are looking to manipulate the world so as to achieve their own personal and family goals.
The fact that many Christians are doing this in a Christian subculture rather than in the world at large matters little. They are still approaching the world in a fundamentally irreligious manner, in the same way that a secular person will often do, and especially in these days of weariness with modernity, with even greater irreligiosity than a sensitive and idealistic person who is not a Christian.
To all those who try to “gain” from life, whatever it is they claim to be doing, Qohelet presents stark reality—reality that does not change simply because we wish it to, but remains fundamentally as it is in spite of all that comes under the heading “progress.” The more things change, the more they stay the same. The universe is not designed to enable “gain” to happen, and those who attempt to fly in the face of reality can only ever know grief and frustration in the end. The universe is not designed to contain gods and heroes, but mortal beings who accept the limitations that have been set upon their lives and get on with them in quietness and humility.
This life on earth is intended to have as its center the God who created everything and who holds everything in his hand. He calls us to love him and our neighbor and to care for the “garden” he has entrusted to us. The culture at large has decided it would like reality to be different; thus, it dethrones God, worships gods and heroes who burst through life’s limitations while patently failing to love their neighbor (think of most of the movies you have seen in the last decade), and exploits the earth for its own ends. The church cannot quite decide, it seems, which reality it will embrace, and it is so much caught between the two that it often even has a view of Christian leadership that has more of the god and the hero than the servant about it.
It is foolish for us to think, however, that we can walk on the world’s path for the whole of our lives and then simply present our “insurance policy” to God at the end and to inherit the kingdom of God as well. Qohelet, by not even dwelling on the afterlife, helps us to get this much clear: There is a choice to be made now about which version of reality we will embrace and which path we will follow, and this choice has consequences for now. It also has consequences for later, for life everlasting comes, not as an arbitrary add-on to just any kind of life that is lived here and now, but as the natural extension of the life that is lived with God in the present and, because it is lived with God, is also lived in community with neighbor and earth.
The Christian writer C. S. Lewis grasped this thought clearly and expressed it beautifully in story form in The Great Divorce. The characters in this story, whose natural home and comfort zone is in hell, have never come to terms with, confronted, or lived out reality. Their lives have been lived in darkness and delusion. On a day-trip to heaven, a brief window of opportunity for redemption opens up before them, but they find reality unutterably painful to the touch. They are like wraiths and shadows suddenly facing the sunlight. Mostly they desire only to retreat from the light and from the pain. Having refused to come to terms with reality while alive, they cannot embrace it when dead. It is the embrace of reality that Qohelet urges upon us, for the good of our lives in the here and now. A Christian interpretation of Qohelet must make it clear, however, that it is also for our good in the hereafter.
What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? (Matt. 16:26)