TEXT [Commentary]

  2.   Where can we find justice? (3:16-22)

16 I also noticed that under the sun there is evil in the courtroom. Yes, even the courts of law are corrupt! 17 I said to myself, “In due season God will judge everyone, both good and bad, for all their deeds.”

18 I also thought about the human condition—how God proves to people that they are like animals. 19 For people and animals share the same fate—both breathe[*] and both must die. So people have no real advantage over the animals. How meaningless! 20 Both go to the same place—they came from dust and they return to dust. 21 For who can prove that the human spirit goes up and the spirit of animals goes down into the earth? 22 So I saw that there is nothing better for people than to be happy in their work. That is our lot in life. And no one can bring us back to see what happens after we die.

NOTES

3:16 courtroom . . . courts of law. Lit., “place of justice” and “place of righteousness,” respectively.

3:17 In due season. This phrase is to intentionally remind us of the similar phrases in 3:1 and thus binds the two sections together.

3:18 proves. This is a suggested extended meaning of the Heb. root barar [TH1305, ZH1405], which normally means “to separate, select out.” For a full discussion, see Crenshaw (1987:103).

3:20-21 they came from dust and they return to dust . . . the human spirit goes up. According to Gen 2:7, humans were created from the dust of the ground and the breath or spirit of God. Thus, to say that the dust returns to the ground and that the spirit either goes up or down is a way of describing the reversal of the process of creation, that is, death. There is no hint here of even the slight possibility of continued conscious existence. Qoheleth’s thought is quite simply that death for animals and death for humans signifies exactly the same thing: the end.

3:21 who can prove . . . ? Lit., “who knows?” Crenshaw (1986) definitively shows that this marks a rhetorical question with the assumed answer, “No one knows.”

COMMENTARY [Text]

The Teacher passes now from one frustration to another. In the previous section (3:1-15), he expressed his unhappiness over humans’ inability to know the “times.” This, in essence, is a crisis of control. In the present section, he raises a second major problem with finding meaning in this life—the problem of death. He comes to the problem of death through the issue of retribution: Do people get what they justly deserve in life? All three of these issues—control, death, and retribution—reverberate throughout the Teacher’s autobiography. This section also demonstrates how the Teacher’s thinking will occasionally waffle between what he has learned through tradition and what he observes in real life—that is, “under the sun.”

In terms of real life, the Teacher begins by stating that he finds evil in a place where he expected to find justice, namely, the courtroom. The court is a human institution, but according to the Old Testament, it was to be run by godly kings, priests, and other leaders. The court was a place where wrongs were to be righted, victims helped, and sinners/criminals punished. In the Teacher’s estimation, though, this institution was “corrupt.” We will see this message repeated elsewhere; good people are treated as if they are wicked and wicked people are rewarded as if they are righteous!

At this point, though, the Teacher remembers his past theology lessons. If retribution does not come from fellow humans, at least it will come from God (3:17). God will give people what they deserve!

However, as soon as the Teacher expresses this idea, he throws a question mark over it. In the concluding paragraph to this chapter, he raises the specter of death. In 3:18-19 he certainly does not deny the idea of the afterlife, but he also does not warmly support it. His view, at first, is an agnostic one: Who knows? He begins by comparing people and animals, not to the advantage of animals but rather to point out that humans are like animals. They both live by breathing, but they also both end their lives by ceasing to breathe. This leads the Teacher to the sad conclusion that “people have no real advantage over the animals,” and, thus again, life is ultimately meaningless (3:19). So, while at first he seems to be agnostic about the afterlife, the final verse seems to deny it altogether. His ultimate denial of the afterlife fits in with his other teachings on the subject, in chapters 9 and 12.

This assessment leads the Teacher to a third carpe diem expression (3:22). He again resignedly suggests that the best we can do is try to find happiness in work, something that he has already pointed out as having no ultimate significance (2:18-23).