Introducing Ecclesiastes

Ecclesiastes 1-2

            The very first Bible study I ever taught was on the book of Ecclesiastes, when I was in high school. I can’t say it was the best Bible study I ever led; nor can I say that I fully understood it.  (Mr. Harks, our youth counselor, took me aside afterward and spent some time on the distinction between Law and Gospel.) The truth is the book appealed—and still does appeal—to my dark side. And read on a surface level, the book itself is pretty glum. Reduce it to a t-shirt and you have, “Life sucks and then you die.”

            Derek Kidner, a respected scholar of the wisdom literature, comments that there are two main options in interpreting the book. First, it could be Solomon’s own interior debate about the value and purpose of life, a “debate with himself, torn between what he cannot help seeing and what he still cannot help believing,” a struggle between faith and sight (2 Cor. 5:7). Second, it could be understood as a “challenge to the man of the world to think his own position through to its bitter end, with a view to seeking something less futile.” That is, it could be understood as a response to the nihilist, the atheist, the one who says this life is all there is. “If this life is all there is,” the Preacher seems to say, “you’ll have a pretty dismal time of it. Want to reconsider?”

            Under the first view, one of the more poignant verses in the book is 3:11, “He has made all beautiful in its time; moreover, He set eternity in man’s heart.” On the one hand, the author is aware of the beauty of the world; on the other, he is keenly aware of its trials, travails, and contradictions. Yet he knows that he is more than a beast: a beast wouldn’t even notice the tension; an animal doesn’t live in dread of its death or of its legacy. He senses there must be something more and can’t turn his heart from that confidence.

            On the second view, it is the believer who can look the futility, the nonsense, the contradictions of life full in the face. And he does so, to drive the unbeliever to the deciding point: either it is glum, depressing, and pointless … or there’s more—one who sets eternity in human hearts, who provides, who determines. Sometimes you have to push the argument to its bitterest conclusion to cause someone to draw back and create space for the Gospel.

            On either view, I find this a strangely, darkly compelling book—even if I can’t teach it with any more clarity than I mustered 25+ years ago.

            One more introductory technicality: nowhere does the author identify himself as Solomon. He identifies himself as the Preacher, a son of David, a king in Jerusalem. Frankly, those titles could make him any of a number of people from kings before the exiles to kings-in-name only after it. For myself, I see no reason to think the author is anyone but Solomon.