SO I REFLECTED on all this and concluded that the righteous and the wise and what they do are in God’s hands, but no man knows whether love or hate awaits him. 2All share a common destiny—the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the clean and the unclean, those who offer sacrifices and those who do not.
As it is with the good man,
so with the sinner;
as it is with those who take oaths,
so with those who are afraid to take them.
3This is the evil in everything that happens under the sun: The same destiny overtakes all. The hearts of men, moreover, are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live, and afterward they join the dead. 4Anyone who is among the living has hope—even a live dog is better off than a dead lion!
5For the living know that they will die,
but the dead know nothing;
they have no further reward,
and even the memory of them is forgotten.
6Their love, their hate
and their jealousy have long since vanished;
never again will they have a part
in anything that happens under the sun.
7Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for it is now that God favors what you do. 8Always be clothed in white, and always anoint your head with oil. 9Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun—all your meaningless days. For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun. 10Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the grave, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.
11I have seen something else under the sun:
or the battle to the strong,
nor does food come to the wise
or wealth to the brilliant
or favor to the learned;
but time and chance happen to them all.
12Moreover, no man knows when his hour will come:
As fish are caught in a cruel net,
or birds are taken in a snare,
so men are trapped by evil times
that fall unexpectedly upon them.
Original Meaning
THROUGHOUT THE PRECEDING material and reaching back into chapter 7, Qohelet has been anxious to affirm the superiority of wisdom over folly and of righteousness over wickedness. At the same time he has sought to make his readers think about what wisdom and righteousness really are and how far they are truly attainable, about the expectations that the wise person should have about how life will work out, and about the best way of thinking and living in the light of all the facts. He has particularly emphasized the way in which wisdom and righteousness often do not seem to bring sufficient reward, highlighting the challenge that this reality (and the reality that wicked fools prosper) presents to the notion of a morally coherent universe. The present section continues in this vein, as Qohelet continues his reflection on all he has observed and thought about (“all this,” 9:1).
The NIV rendering of the opening verse is somewhat unsatisfactory. It implies that the first part of the verse is intended as a comforting statement along the lines of 8:12, affirming that the righteous are in a “better” place overall than the wicked. Its second part presumably provides alternatives (love and hate) that lie in the future, although human beings do not know which one lies ahead. It is then difficult to see how verses 1 and 2 cohere together, since verse 1 speaks of two possible fates, whereas verse 2 speaks of a common destiny for all. A more literal rendering of the admittedly terse Hebrew in 9:1–2 should help us toward a more satisfactory understanding:
. . . the righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hand of God. Both love and hate—humankind does not know—both are before them. Both—just as for everyone (there is) one fate.
The point of verse 1 is to emphasize that the righteous and the wise, perhaps against their expectation, will experience in life both “love and hate,” which may simply be another way of saying “good and evil.” Their experience is in this respect no different from that of the wicked and the foolish—everyone has a mixed experience of life. The lack of knowledge mentioned then refers either to general ignorance that this is indeed the case (perhaps especially among the wise and righteous themselves) or to specific ignorance as to the precise mix of “love and hate” that each individual will have to endure. Human beings cannot know in advance how much of each they will encounter.
The point is then developed in the remainder of verse 2, as those who share both the common life and the common fate are enumerated—the “destiny” in question (Heb. miqreh, as in 2:14) being death, as will become clear. The righteous and the wicked have already been mentioned in connection with death in 7:15; 8:14. The Hebrew text next refers to those who are “good and clean” on the one hand, and “unclean” on the other. Since the phrase “good and clean” disturbs what would otherwise be a neat list of opposites (righteous/wicked, clean/unclean, etc.), the LXX has often been appealed to for the reading “good and bad, clean and unclean” (cf. NIV).
Whether neatness was ever Qohelet’s concern is, of course, an important (and unanswerable) question. It may be that the combination “good and clean” is intended to clarify that it is not simply ritual cleanness to which Qohelet refers, but moral cleanness (cf. Heb. ṭhr, e.g., in Job 4:17; Ps. 51:10; Prov. 20:9), as in another contrasting pair, “good man/sinner.” It would have been as natural for an early translator (i.e., in the LXX) as it has proved for modern ones, who did not read the text in this way, to supply a reference to “evil” after “good.”
The ritual and sacrificial realm is not in any case excluded from the area of Qohelet’s concern, for he mentions next “those who offer sacrifices and those who do not.” If we are to imagine, as the progression of the list of pairs itself suggests overall, that the first-mentioned attribute is that of a righteous person, then it is assumed here, as it was in chapter 5, that the righteous and good person will engage in temple worship. The point of 5:1–7 was simply to draw attention to the dangers of engaging in the rituals of worship without possessing any intention to bring the whole self before God in an attitude of reverence and awe.
The final word pair in verse 2 refers to “those who take oaths” and “those who are afraid to take them.” The latter are presumably reluctant to swear an oath because they lack integrity. They do not intend to follow through on their words and therefore shy away from making a clear commitment of a binding nature (cf. the force of the oath in 8:2, whether uttered by the wise man or by God).
Both the virtuous in moral conduct, religious observance, and social relationships, then, and those who lack virtue share a common—indeed, an “evil”—destiny (v. 3). The emphasis is on the unfortunate nature of the fate, as is often the case when Hebrew raʿ / raʿa is used in Ecclesiastes (cf. comments on 1:13). This being the case, and given the clear distinction in 9:1–2 as to character (if not fate) of the righteous and the wicked, it is more likely that Qohelet has in mind, in referring to the “evil” found in human hearts in verse 3, the misery that is commonly endured rather than the moral corruption that produces at least some of that misery.
Human “hearts . . . are full of evil” in the same sense that in 8:6 “the evil of a person is great upon him” (NIV, “a man’s misery weighs heavily [Heb. rab] upon him”). The heart experiences its full measure of misery (cf. also the Hiphil of rbh, “multiply,” of having great experience of something in 1:16; 5:17). It is likewise probable, given that Qohelet has just distinguished wise from foolish, that he is maintaining that the “madness” that is linked to folly throughout the book (cf. Heb. holela in 1:17; 2:12; 7:25; also the forms of hll in 2:2; 7:7; 10:13) is commonly experienced by all people rather than characterizing them all.
We should thus understand 9:3 as somewhat reiterating, in reverse order and with emphasis on the negative, the contentions of 9:1–2. There is a common human destiny (death), and during life both the righteous and the wise are by no means untouched by misery and folly. In the terms used in verse 1, they know hate as well as love. The following translation of 9:3 results:
This is the miserable thing in all that is done under the sun: One fate comes upon all. Moreover, the human heart knows its full measure of misery and folly during life—and after it, they join the dead.
The unsatisfactory life, at least in degree, comes to an unfortunate and absolute end. Verse 4 probably does not hold out “hope” in this context (NIV) but speaks rather only of “certainty” (Heb. biṭṭaḥon, which connotes trust and security): Anyone who is currently among the living may be certain that he or she will know some misery and then death. It is the fact that the living thus know something, however, whereas the dead know nothing (v. 5), that brings to Qohelet’s mind what looks like another traditional proverb: “A live dog is better off than a dead lion” (v. 4).
We may well imagine that this proverb was not widely used in Israel in quite the way that Qohelet uses it here. Of itself, it looks like a piece of wisdom designed to encourage dishonorable self-preservation (the dog not being highly regarded among ancient Near Eastern peoples) over glorious and heroic death (such as a “lion-hearted” warrior might welcome). Qohelet’s scope is not so large. His interest here, so far as we can tell, is only in the contrast between life and death in the single regard that the living are conscious while the dead are not. The dead have no further “reward” (śakar; cf. 4:9) or return on their investment in life and are not even held in other people’s consciousness (they are forgotten, 9:5, as in 2:16). They no longer possess a “part” (Heb. ḥeleq, cf. 2:10, 21; 3:22; 5:18–19) of or share in life (9:6).
In the context, in view of the apparent meaning of “love” and “hate” in 9:1, we should probably interpret the first part of verse 6 as once again concerning their experience of love, hate, and jealousy. The dead are beyond all such experience of life, whether good or bad. They cannot know these intense emotions. Experience of and reflection on life may bring its own trials, and it may sometimes seem that it would be better to be without them (1:18; 4:2–3); yet in the end, life is better than death.
With this stark description of reality articulated, Qohelet now turns once again to advice for the living (vv. 7–10), picking up the thread from 8:15. Life is indeed a mixed bag; death awaits us all. What is the wise response? It is to seek joy where it may be found. We should eat and drink in “gladness” (śimḥa), knowing that God himself delights in what we do (v. 7).1 We are “always [lit., in every time] [to] be clothed in white” and to have our heads anointed with oil (v. 8)—outward signs of joy, indicating a festive and celebratory atmosphere (cf., e.g., Ps. 23:5; Est. 8:15). If married, we are to “enjoy” (lit., “see”) life with our spouse throughout our days, albeit that those days are brief (NIV “meaningless”; Heb. hebel, v. 9). For this is indeed our “share” (ḥeleq again; NIV “lot”) in life—the reward for all the toil and effort that we invest (cf. 2:10; 5:18–19). This is the only “profit” that there is, and we had better enjoy this lot because after death it disappears (9:6). That reality is what should spur us on to live our lives wholeheartedly and with commitment (v. 10). Whatever our hand “finds” to do, we should do.
The play on the impossibility of “finding” any large-scale explanation of the universe throughout the preceding chapters is obvious. If the reality of death is to set the context for the living of life (7:1–12), then “finding” should best be directed at the business of living in itself. For there is not only no doing or “working” in the place of the dead, but no “planning” (Heb. ḥešbon; better, “attempt to comprehend the scheme of things,” cf. 7:25, 27), knowledge, or wisdom. It would be best in life, as it is inevitable in death, to abandon the futility of pursuing a comprehensive grasp of the universe.
Verses 11–12 provide a tailpiece that underlines the message of verses 1–10. Life’s outcomes (other than death) are not predictable in their specifics; good and bad come to all. We might expect that the swift would always win the race and the strong the battle, and that the wise, the brilliant, and the learned would receive all of life’s rewards. This is not so, however. The things that human beings so often covet and seek to develop and that are by no means bad things in themselves—bodies fit and strong, and minds well educated and sharp—do not bring control of the “times” (ʿet, “time,” v. 11 [cf. 3:1–11]). Things often happen to people2 that are unforeseen and beyond their control, and no one knows when a particular “time” will occur (ʿet again in v. 12a, which does not refer to the “hour” of death, but to any particular “time” that lies in the future).
The human situation is somewhat akin to that of fish or birds. A fish does not anticipate the moment of capture in a “cruel” (lit., “evil”) net, nor does a bird have any idea that in a moment it will find itself entrapped in a snare. Thus do evil or bad times come on us “unexpectedly” or suddenly.
Bridging Contexts
OVER AGAINST WHAT is claimed in much modern pseudo-Christian theology, the Bible never promises that any human being will know in this life only good health, financial prosperity, and happiness. Moreover, it certainly never ties faith and righteousness to the attainment of these things in any simplistic way. It is true that the way of faith and obedience to God is in the end the blessed way, and God’s blessings can include good health, financial prosperity, and happiness. It is untrue, however, that the faithful and obedient person will only and ever possess such things and can somehow be sure of avoiding illness, disaster, and death if he or she can simply muster enough religious devotion. To believe this is to believe something profoundly unbiblical; to teach it is to insult every Christian throughout the past two thousand years who has known illness, poverty, and misery; and to press it on the sick, the poor, and the unhappy of the present day is to place a millstone around the neck of those who are drowning, rather than offering them the comfort and hope of the gospel. God is much more concerned to make us holy and to shape us in the image of Christ than he is to make us happy, rich, and healthy.
Qohelet emphasizes that each of us is destined to experience both good and evil, both love and hate, both misery along with the effects of folly, and joy along with the effects of wisdom, and in the end to know death. In doing so, he is speaking the truth—a truth widely proclaimed elsewhere in the Scriptures. Job knew God’s blessing in life, for example, especially wealth and good health (Job 1–2). But God’s sovereign plan for his life involved the removal of both wealth and health and the loss of almost everything else. God has given, and God may take away (1:21), and the point is that Job never got to understand why God had done this. We, the readers of the book of Job, understand something of why bad things happened to Job, for we have access in the opening chapters to the heavenly court. Job was kept in the dark, however, and had to remain content as his trials came to an end simply with encountering the God Who Is (Job 38–42). God’s plans remained undisclosed, even when Job’s material blessings were restored (42:12–17). God remains God.
At the center of the biblical story stands our Lord and Savior himself. He walked a pilgrim path, lacking a place to lay his head (Matt. 8:20). Although he did heal the sick, he certainly did not teach that faith in and obedience to God bring inevitably in their wake prosperity, health, and happiness; rather, he warned his disciples to beware of wealth (e.g., Matt. 19:16–26; Luke 16:19–31) and to know that they would face constant threats to life and limb (e.g., Matt. 5:11, 44; Luke 21:12–19). Jesus’ own life was a life marked by alienation, pain, and eventually death. His followers could not avoid a similar fate. The apostle Paul is a good example, knowing constant danger, frequent need, and ever-present illness (2 Cor. 11:23–30; 12:7–10), which prayer to God did not affect. His conclusion from this last experience was not that his faith was weak or that God did not exist but that God’s power was being revealed in his weakness. He goes on to say something that those who are devotees of modern pseudogospels can never say:
Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Cor. 12:9–10)
Biblical faith is not about control. Nor is it about manipulation of God so that God will do as we wish. It is idolatry, not true faith, that has at its heart control and manipulation, as one recent author has clearly seen and has powerfully expressed in respect of modern religious forms, particularly in North America:
The Good News is packaged and marketed . . . as a religious product: offering “peace of mind,” “how to get to heaven,” “health and prosperity,” “inner healing,” “the answer to all your problems,” etc. What is promoted as “faith in God” often turns out, on closer inspection, to be a means for obtaining emotional security or material blessing in this life and an insurance policy for the next. This kind of preaching leaves the status quo untouched. It does not raise fundamental and disturbing questions about the assumptions on which people build their lives. It does not threaten the false gods in whose name the creation of God has been taken over; indeed, it actually reinforces their hold on their worshippers. This kind of “gospel” is essentially escapist, the direct descendent of the pseudo-gospels of the false prophets of the Old Testament. It is simply a religious image of the secular consumerist culture in which modern men and women live. It lays itself wide open to the full blast of the savage criticism of Marx and Freud.
. . . At the heart of idolatry is the attempt to manipulate “God” or the unseen “spiritual world” in order to obtain security and well-being for oneself and one’s “group” (whether family, business corporation, ethnic community or nation-state). Biblical faith, in contrast, is the radical abandonment of our whole being in grateful trust and love to the God disclosed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ: so that we become his willing agents in a costly confrontation with every form of evil and unjust suffering in the world.3
Qohelet does not yet express a fully Christian faith, of course. This is most clearly seen in our section, perhaps, in his insistence that life is better than death and in his reasons for thinking so. Those who know of the resurrection of the dead cannot be so stark in their differentiation of the two (note Paul’s statement that he desires “to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far,” Phil. 1:23). Yet Qohelet’s faith is truly Christian faith in its insistence that God is God and we are not, that God’s ways in the world are beyond us and beyond our control, that believers live the same human life as anyone else, and that they encounter the same range of human experiences even while God is present in their midst. He reminds us that “biblical faith . . . is the radical abandonment of our whole being in grateful trust and love to . . . God,” not something we practice out of self-interest. He also reminds us at the same time, however, that this expression of trust and love to God is not consistent with the wrong kind of self-denial.
There has always been within the Christian tradition an ascetic tendency that understands true spirituality as involving the shunning of created things (e.g., food, wine, sex) rather than the enjoyment of these things in thankfulness to God who has blessed us with them. Qohelet helps us see that the latter is the truer spirituality. We are certainly not to worship created things, but neither are we to behave as if God did not make the world good (Gen. 1). Recognizing that our experiences in life will be mixed, we should not spend time worrying about the future while failing to live well in the present. We should concentrate instead on living out the present before God (Eccl. 9:7–10; cf. Matt. 6:25–34)—acting out our existence heartily and joyfully as we eat, drink, and enjoy our most intimate relationships.
Jesus himself, although he knew alienation, pain, and eventually death, was also to be found feasting and partying with his friends (e.g., Luke 7:34; John 2:1–10). He set his face against gloomy religion and insisted that serious religion should be wedded instead to joy (e.g., Matt. 6:6–18, noting the possible allusion to Eccl. 9:8). His generous, joyful faith was opposed, of course, by the teachers of the law and the Pharisees (e.g., Luke 7:31–50), who, like the poor, are always with us. Those who follow Jesus need to know, as he did, the difference between the laughter of fools (Eccl. 7:1–6) and the joy of the wise.
Contemporary Significance
The war in Vietnam is going well and will succeed4
We are people much given to prediction, and prediction implies control. We imagine we understand the world; we can see how it is going. Yet we are constantly surprised. The Quarterly Review of 1825 asked, “What can be more palpably absurd than the prospect held out of locomotives travelling twice as fast as stagecoaches?”—to which one might respond, “human beings who ask questions like this.”5 Seven years before the introduction of anesthesia in 1846, French surgeon Dr. Alfred Velpeau said that “the abolishment of pain in surgery is a chimera.” Eight years before the first successful operation for stomach cancer in 1881, British surgeon Sir John Eichsen gave the opinion that “the abdomen, the chest and the brain will be forever shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon.” In the computer field, IBM chairman Thomas Watson predicted in 1943 a world market for about five computers. Finally, Richard van der Riet Wooley, the British Astronomer Royal, said in 1956, “space travel is utter bilge.”
All were mistaken. It has been calculated, further, that two-thirds or more of the forecasts made by American social scientists between 1945 and 1980 have likewise proved to be mistaken, giving them a batting average substantially lower than the three witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The fastest runner in the Olympic Games and a “sure bet” for the title is tripped in the course of the race and falls. One of the least favored horses in the British Grand National wins because of an unprecedented and chaotic mess at one of the fences, which put many other horses out of the race. One of the best-trained and mightiest armies in the world fails to win a guerrilla war, despite confident predictions. Highly qualified and educated people end up in poverty, hunger, and dishonor.
“The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all.” This seems obvious. Yet we are highly resistant to believing it. We live in a world in which cause and effect are often visibly in connection with each other. I press a light switch, and the light comes on. The swift usually win races. It is this visible connection between cause and effect that makes plausible the idea that somehow the universe can eventually be mastered by human beings, given enough time and sufficiently well-developed technique. It is, after all, only a large and complex machine (isn’t it?), and we are in so much control of it already.
This promise of control is a seductive one and lies at the heart of much of the advertising with which we are every day deluged. To control our lives—so it is suggested—we need only buy this product, eat this kind of food, and avoid that sort of drink. No longer need we be the victims of our frailty and mortality. We can define and shape ourselves and become the persons we really want to be. Self-expression, self-fulfillment, and self-actualization lie at the heart of our cultural agenda as we tread the path towards superhuman status through self-empowerment. Their advocates are found in every corner of society—from the advice columns of newspapers and magazines through to schools, where sometimes the point no longer seems to be to learn things but to “find oneself” and be the best person one can be. We are constantly urged, in fact, to believe in ourselves and to better ourselves—in our individual choices and actions. In accordance with our personal ambition, we are encouraged to make and remake ourselves in our own image or in some other human image of perfection.
We are invited to pursue the body beautiful, to take control of our personal health and fitness, to invent our own value and belief systems, all with a view to gaining personal fulfillment. We are given ever-increasing permission to ignore—and if necessary to dispense with—whatever and whoever stands in our way in this quest, be it life in the womb, children, spouses, the poor, foreigners, or the aged. Churches often play the same kind of game, although what they advertise as the means of human control is religion rather than irreligion. The fundamental belief is the same, however: Correct belief and correct technique can give me the edge (in respect of life temporal and, in this latter case, eternal).
The idea that we have any such control, Qohelet and other biblical writers remind us, is a myth. It is true that the universe is an ordered place and that cause and effect are features of its reality. Yet the universe is not a machine. It is a personally created and governed space, whose Originator and Sustainer is the living God. Our human vocation is to love God, to love our neighbor, and to look after the earth—not to take advantage of the order of the universe to engage in self-centered and manipulative living. Indeed, cause and effect will only get us so far in life. The pursuit of health and education, for example (perfectly good things in themselves), will only disappoint us in the end, if they are invested by us with ultimate value. For beyond cause and effect there is God, who will not allow the idolatry of the self ultimately to exist.
The God of order, therefore, brings chaos to life, so as to remind us that we are not in fact gods who control the present or the future. Instead, we are mortals in need of repentance in dust and ashes. Every time a prediction fails, every time the swift do not win a race and the strong a battle, every time our health breaks down, or we find ourselves poorer rather than richer, or we discover we are miserable rather than happy—every such occasion is a moment of grace and an opportunity to look reality straight in the eye. It is a moment in which we are helped to remember who controls the times.
All the occasions are important, for as the preacher used to thunder in the movie version of Pollyanna: “Death comes unexpectedly.” Qohelet puts it this way: “No man knows when his hour will come . . . men are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them” (9:12). Death is the ultimate proof, if we need one, that our pretensions to be gods are utterly foolish, but death is also the phenomenon that makes it too late to address our error.
The reminders of reality that we graciously receive from God are necessary in a world so utterly conceited about itself and its achievements and so determined to convince us all how wonderful it is. A Merrill Lynch advertisement appearing on Canadian TV around May/June 1999 captures the conceit well. Against the background of various events from the end of the 1980s (among them the fall of the Berlin Wall and the crumbling of apartheid in South Africa), the words “Human Achievement” appear on the screen and a voice says, “The world is ten years old. Go get ’em, kid.” As I pointed out earlier, constructing chronology in terms of the godlike self has been one of the basic moves of the egomaniac since ancient times. We proclaim mastery of the universe by taking control of time itself. The world is not ten years old, of course, and it is God who carries out his plans in it, not mere mortals. As we did not create it, so there is a limit (unacknowledged in the advertisement, naturally) to what we can achieve in it.
The Christian path through the madness and folly of our culture is this: to fear God and live to God’s glory, to keep ourselves from idols (1 John 5:21), and to do what we do in life, in this context, with all our might (Eccl. 9:10). This includes the ordinary things of life (eating, drinking, loving). Neither our evident mortality and vulnerability nor our sense of the complexity of everything must be allowed to distract us from following this path. We are not (or should not be) Christians in the first instance, after all, because we want to escape mortality and vulnerability or because we want to understand everything about the universe. We are Christians first of all because God is God.
It is this reality, in turn, that gives us our true hope that despite all the trials and puzzles of life, things will work out well in the end. The 1999 movie Shakespeare in Love captures the truth well, and at the same time captures the truly Christian optimism about the world we find in Shakespeare’s writing—an optimism so noticeably lacking in many modern plays and novels (in which there is no notion of a governing Providence that oversees all). At various times in the movie, characters are moved to proclaim their belief that everything is going to work out. When asked how this will happen, they reply, “I don’t know—it’s a mystery.” Christians know something of this mystery (e.g., Rom. 16:25–27; Eph. 1:9–10), but not all.
Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? (Rom. 11:34)