Episode 310: Pete Enns – Pete Ruins Ecclesiastes (REISSUE)

Pete: You’re listening to the Bible for Normal People, the only God-ordained podcast on the internet, serious talk about the sacred book. I’m Pete Enns.

Jared: And I’m Jared Byas.

Pete: We are very excited to let you know that 2026 will be the tenth anniversary of The Bible for Normal People. I mean, I’m sure you already knew that because you track our every move, but you know.

Jared: Alright. Rather than the normal tenth birthday stuff, like video games or Nike blazers, we’re asking for your support. But if you wanna send us video games, I don’t think we’ll turn you down. 

Pete: Now as you know, our values are curiosity, playfulness, and accessibility. We’ve been able to bring the curiosity and playfulness, but over the years, we’ve needed folks like you to help with accessibility.

Jared: That’s right. We’ve been able to give free access to nine seasons of the podcast, dozens of pay-what-you-can classes, which we mean, by the way. We only want people to pay what they can, even if that’s just a buck. And we’ve given away lots and lots of scholarships for people to get into our Society of Normal People. 

Pete: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast over the years and it’s been meaningful, and you have the means of supporting us, we’re launching a short campaign over the next month to raise 60,000 dollars. It’s been a few years since we’ve had a campaign, but we have a few things we’d like to do.

Jared: Yeah, one thing we’d like to do is provide Spanish-language captions for all our classes. That accessibility is important, especially so people feel welcome in our Society of Normal People. We also have a lot of older folks in our audience, so we want to simplify our website and launch a simple-to-use app for our Society members. We help dozens of folks each week navigate our website, and it’s time to make things easier. 

Pete: So, to keep things accessible, available in Spanish, and easy to navigate, please continue joining the campaign as we continue our mission to make the best in biblical scholarship available to everyday people. 

Or, if you just want to give us a little tenth-anniversary gift because you like the podcast, that’s great, too. We’re really swinging for the fences with this one.

Jared: That’s foreshadowing, by the way. If you want to contribute, just go to thebiblefornormalpeople.com/give. And thanks to everyone who has supported us over the years. You truly make this show possible. And as a gift to folks, every time we hit a goal in this campaign, we have some fun videos to share with everyone. We’re going to be running the bases, of course, this campaign is going to be baseball-themed. And every time we hit one of our goals, we’re going to post a video of me and Pete as a thank-you. 

So if you want to help out, or just want to see Pete drink a lot of milk while talking about the Bible, go to thebiblefornormalpeople.com/give. 

Pete: 

Hey, folks. In sticking with the biblical canonical order, today’s Pete Ruins episode is Ecclesiastes, and it’s a reissue of Episode 52 from way back in June of 2018. Did that even exist? Yes it did.

I love the book of Ecclesiastes. I’m glad we’re reissuing this. It’s a book that’s meant a lot to me personally in my own journey of faith. If you’ve read The Sin of Certainty, Ecclesiastes is all over that. And what I love about it is it’s so counter-intuitive. It’s so different from what we find elsewhere in the Bible for really being a case for allowing people to struggle with faith in God. And the Jews who gave us the books of the Hebrew cannon, who made the decision, whenever that happened, they could read, and they could understand the tensions between some parts of the Bible and other parts of the Bible. 

But they put them in there anyway.Because this really captures something of Israel’s ancient faith, and it certainly captures something of my own faith of sometimes just struggling, what’s God up to, nothing makes sense, this is ridiculous. You know, I like this book so much I used it as my one entry in our children’s Bible, God’s Stories as Told by God’s Children. And there I feature my seven-year-old granddaughter who is having a really bad day at school, nothing makes sense, everything is so stupid. And the fact that nobody gets mad at her for feeling this way, not her mom, not her brother, nobody including God. You’re allowed to have your bad days, and God understands. Even if you’re fighting against God, God gets it. I just think there’s a lot to be said about this book, and it’s a favorite one of mine to read.

Now, as usual, with a Pete Ruins episode, if you want to hear an extended side note about Ecclesiastes- it’s going to be focusing on death, by the way- you can get our online exclusive Pete Ruins episode by becoming a member of our online community, the Society of Normal People. By the way, that also gets you all of our classes, all of our bonus episodes, and an ad-free podcast feed, which I think is pretty great. So head on over to thebiblefornormalpeople.com/join to sign up. With all that said, I hope you enjoy this reissue of Episode 52.

Everybody. Welcome to this podcast on the book of Ecclesiastes, and let’s get right into it. This is probably… No, not probably. This is my favorite book of the Old Testament, because it is so unflinchingly honest about the realities of faith and struggling with faith and when faith and God don’t make sense. And this is the kind of book that I wish we were more free to speak about, even in our own lives in church, and in polite Christian company, but this guy is not interested in playing church, he is very honest about his own struggles, and for that reason, I appreciate it and… I hate the word “appreciate it,” I really like this book. I don’t appreciate it. I like it. I like it because, you know, I can’t say that I liked this in my 30s or 20s, necessarily. It’s more like in my 40s, you know, midlife, you start thinking about things differently. And some of the thought, this is like a good midlife kind of book. And I think that it is, I wouldn’t recommend Ecclesiastes for, you know, your junior high Bible study or something, because I think you have to have lived and experienced things to get to a point to interrogate God the way this author is. So let’s leave it at that. 

But I just like talking about this book—I wrote a commentary on it in 2011 and actually, you know, I have a tie to this book, that’s more than just academic because a topic of the book, which we’ll get to, is death, and how death is the leveler of everything. That’s one of his more uplifting themes, in the book of Ecclesiastes. But I started writing this book in 2006, around the time my father died, and I finished it right after, a few months after my mother died in 2009. And then it was eventually published in 2011. So I just found it to be sort of a a connection for me and the book that I was sort of, you know, this book is about death and my writing of the commentary sort of is bookended by death and I had to, you know, think about things as everyone does, sooner or later when loved ones pass on. So, with that in mind, I have nine things about the book of Ecclesiastes that I’d like to talk about, and why nine? Because it’s baseball season. That’s why I could have made 10, I could have made eight, I could have made 12, but I made nine. Nine innings. Nine people in the field. See how effortlessly I seam together my personal life, and my professional life? Witness that. Anyway…

Okay, so, let’s talk. The first four are question words. The first four issues are what, who, when and why? And I think those are questions worth asking of any biblical book, when we approach it and to try to understand it. What is it about? Who wrote it? When was it written? And why was it written? That’s the question, we need to ask ourselves an awful lot. Why was it written? 

So first, what is the book about? Well, this is why we get into some controversy with the book of Ecclesiastes, because what the book is about, what it’s trying to do, is something that people don’t readily agree on. And in fact, you can have polar opposite opinions about what the book is about, which is hard to do for most books of the Old Testament, or most books of the Bible. You know, if somebody says, “What’s the Genesis about?” No one’s going to say, “Well, it starts off with the destruction of the world, and how God killed Noah and his family in a flood, and then how God encouraged the Tower of Babel to be built.” Those are opposites. Those are counter understandings of what Genesis is actually doing. But with Ecclesiastes, you basically have two options. One is, it’s either sort of a negative, depressing, kind of realistic, no holds barred, let’s talk about life kind of book, or it’s something that somehow really does fit with the mainstream of Old Testament theology. Those are the two points of view. I am in the camp—and I’m going to say this is the majority camp—of the first opinion, I don’t think this is a book that is meant to be uplifting. It’s meant to be sobering, but also give you a way forward, which we’ll get to, that’s actually the ninth point, which we’ll end the podcast with. This book is not meant to be uplifting. I think it’s more meant to give people of faith permission to be honest, and to even interrogate God and to just sort of say, “Forgive me, life sucks right now. I don’t see the point of it.” And you have this in the Bible, and it always amazes me, sort of like lament psalms, where, you know, the Bible was edited together, the Old Testament reached the shape that we more or less know it in the, probably, the centuries before the time of Jesus. It was, you know, the late post-exilic period and even the time of the first century AD. So, you know, this Bible was edited together, and it always struck me as unusual, but also wonderful, that the editors of the Bible kept these voices, even something that can be a little bit of an embarrassment, like the book of Ecclesiastes.

Okay, so I think it’s a negative book and specifically, I don’t think there’s much of a mystery as to what the book is about, because you just have to read the introduction, the first few verses, and you get the gist, right? So it starts with the words of the Teacher—we’ll get into that in a second—the words of the Teacher, the son of David, King of Jerusalem, and then the New Revised Standard Version has “’Vanity of vanities,’ says the Teacher, ‘vanity of vanities; all is vanity.’” Okay, what’s the book about? That’s what it’s about, right? We have this introduction, where we are told that this is what this teacher says, “All is vanity.” What does vanity mean? Well, vanity doesn’t mean being vain, looking into a mirror and saying, “Boy, I’m beautiful,” but vanity means that something is in vain. Other translations, I think the NIV has “meaningless,” which is fine. One of my favorite words that others have used too, for describing this Hebrew word “hebel,”—H-E-B-E-L, pronounced “hevel,” with a V—that another way of looking at his life is absurd. That’s sort of like an existential kind of word that we get from the 20th century and Sartre and people like that. Another way of understanding this this point of everything has vanity or meaningless is what my kids used to say to me when they were young, and I had them do things that made no sense to them. And they said, “Dad, this is just stupid. This is so stupid. I can’t believe- This is dumb. This is so stupid.” It just meant this is just- Makes no sense. It’s an affront to reason. “No! This is dumb, this-” It’s senseless, right? So what is the point of the book? What is it trying to get across? Well, “’Stupid of stupids,’ says the teacher, ‘stupid of stupids; all is stupid,’” all is senseless, all is absurd. And that phrase—you know, we’ll stick with the New Revised Standard Version, because that’s the Bible that I tend to read from an English—the “vanity of vanities” is sort of like holy of holies or Lord of Lords. It’s a way of saying it’s big. It’s one of these extreme kinds of terms. So the Lord of lords is like, “Yeah, the Lord!” The vanity of vanities means it’s the most absurd thing. That’s what life is, right? Everything is absurd. 

Okay, so that’s the what. You know, if you pay attention to introductions to books—when I teach books to my students at Eastern University, we almost always read the first chapter or two, because that usually lays out what the book as a whole is about, and that’s the case here. So, I mean, the book is handing us its meaning on a silver platter. The question is, what are we going to do with that? That’s the point. So that’s the what. The “who” is a little more complicated. I think the bottom line is that, who wrote Ecclesiastes, nobody knows. The book itself is anonymous. Now it does say “the words of the Teacher,” now let’s get into that right away. The Hebrew doesn’t say that, and a lot of your English translations probably have it right, that says “the words of Qoheleth,” and this is a name of somebody, and we don’t know who Qoheleth is. In fact, it probably isn’t even a real name, it’s a pseudonym. It’s a name taken on for the purpose of this book. And, you know, we don’t know who wrote verse one, “the words of Qoheleth, the son of David King in Jerusalem,” we don’t know who wrote that. We have no indication, right? And he goes on, he first introduces this Qoheleth character for the first 11 verses and then in verse 12, Qoheleth himself speaks in the first person. So, see, you’ve got this framework in Ecclesiastes, it begins and ends with a third person narrator talking about Qoheleth, and then Qoheleth himself as doing the speaking in most of the book, but that doesn’t tell us anything about who wrote it, and it tells us nothing of the identity of Qoheleth. We don’t know who he is. 

See, the problem here is that Qoheleth is- first of all, it doesn’t mean teacher or preacher. Those are the conventional translations and those are wimpy words. You know, “Oh, the teacher, let’s listen to what the teacher says,” or “Oh, the preacher, oh the preacher, authoritative preacher.” He’s not preaching, he’s not teaching, he’s more bemoaning the fact that life is hebel, that life is vanity, life is meaningless, absurd, stupid, senseless. That’s really what he’s doing. And I would rather just leave it as Qoheleth. Now, what does Qoheleth mean? Nobody knows. But I think the best—and I hope this isn’t TMI here—but the the best explanation that I can find is actually a very old one in Jewish thinking, that it’s supposed to make you think about a Solomonic- Solomon- persona. Okay? Let me put it this way, in First Kings 8:1, we read about Solomon who assembles the leaders of Jerusalem, and Qoheleth comes from a Hebrew root word, a verb “Qahal,” which means to assemble. So this may be sort of code. Solomon didn’t write this but think Solomon as you go through Solomon is known for his wisdom. But what this book is doing at the end of the day, it’s undercutting the wisdom idea. You know, I did a podcast on Proverbs where wisdom is elevated, it’s even connected to God at creation, well, the book of Ecclesiastes has issues with this. He’s not convinced that this actually explains life, and we’re gonna see why in a second. So we don’t know who wrote the book, we don’t know who Qoheleth is, all we know is we have this person here, who is called the Son of David, King in Jerusalem. Okay. This is why people think, “Well, it’s the son of David, who is a son of David? Well, the first one is Solomon, or it might be a descendant of David. So it might be Solomon or someone in the Davidic line to write this.” And I suppose that’s possible, but you see, here’s the problem with even that view. 

First of all, for it to be Solomon, it sort of is a bit of a struggle, because he says that he sought wisdom—and I’m looking here now in chapter two, verse nine, and this is the Qoheleth speaking, he says, “So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem.” If that’s Solomon, there’s only really one—maybe two if you want to count Saul, right?—there’s David and Saul, those are the only two who were before him in Jerusalem. It seems like an overstatement to say “all who were before me in Jerusalem,” this seems to be something that comes from a later time. Okay. And also in chapter two, beginning in verse one, he’s like, looking back at his career at the things that he did, you know, and the thing is, you know, in the Bible, kings, they don’t look back on their career, they just die, right? I mean, look at—I mean, again, I say this, every podcast, don’t do this when you’re driving—but in chapter one, verse 12, where the words of Qoheleth actually begin, he says, according to the New Revised Standard Version, “I, the teacher,” I, Qoheleth, “When King over Israel in Jerusalem, applied my mind to seek and search out by wisdom all that’s done under heaven.” It seems like somebody’s writing this who’s looking back on his career, in retrospective fashion, not somebody who is like a king now, but somebody who was king. Which is not a mistake, I think this is part of the clue of this book that “the who,” think a Solomonic persona but don’t try to identify with Solomon himself, because this is the irony of the book. It’s using a Solomonic kingly persona, and what are kings known for? If anything, it’s seeking wisdom and following the path of wisdom. It’s using a Solomonic kingly persona, a royal persona, to undermine that very notion because this guy’s having a bad day, and he doesn’t see it working out at all. Another way of putting it is this book is pessimistic, which is why you don’t hand this to somebody who has been a Christian for 15 minutes. This somebody who’s lived and has reason to be pessimistic about even keeping up with this whole Israelite thing, why bother? So bottom line is “the who” is unlikely Solomon, in fact, it’s probably impossible for other reasons—which we’ll get to that’s the “when” question—but it’s not Solomonic. It seems to be a retrospective, but there’s still a royal Solomonic kind of persona that the writer is adopting, not to lie to people, not to fool people, but just to get his theological point across. This is his literary vehicle for getting across the theology that he wants to get across. 

Okay. Now, the “when” question, this is the third one, we’ve gotten what, who, and now when? When was it written? This is another issue that scholars do have some disagreement with. But very little, there are some scholars who think that the book of Ecclesiastes might be pre-excilic, but you know, 95% of them say there’s no way this is a pre-excilic book. This is a post-exilic book. Why? Because the kind of picture you have here of the Hebrew language—it’s getting very geeky here—but the Hebrew of the book of Ecclesiastes shows the evolution of Hebrew, which changed over time,—English changes, all languages change over time—and this language fits with post-excilic, even late post-excilic Hebrew. The book of Ecclesiastes has a lot more in common in terms of how Hebrew works with the Dead Sea Scrolls, which are second and first century than it does with, say, something in Genesis. There are indications that this book is like- I mean, for example, there is an Aramaic feel to the book of Ecclesiastes, which makes most sense when the Israelites were influenced by the language of Aramaic. Well, when did that happen? That happened during the exile and after, that’s when Aramaic was an international language, at least during the Babylonian period. And that’s when you start having Aramaic really influencing the Hebrew language. I mean, not to get off track here but you have, like, portions of Ezra and Daniel, which are also post-excilic books, half of which are written in Aramaic. And biblical scholars, when they see a, not just a little hint, but the substantive Aramaic influence on the Hebrew language, they usually conclude, and reasonably so, that this probably comes from a time when Aramaic was in the air. 

Another indication of this book being a bit later than—well, way later than Solomon, hundreds and hundreds of years after Solomon—is that you have a couple of what they call loan words. Like, can I borrow word and give it back to you, but these are loan words where one language borrows words from another language and uses it as their own. I mean, in English, a loanword is “kindergarten,” right? So that’s clearly a German influence. And that’s, you know, millions of words like that in English. But in Ecclesiastes, there are a couple of words that are Persian-era words. Right, the Persians defeated the Babylonians in 539 BC. That’s how the Judahites, the southern kingdom, came back from exile. So we’re talking late sixth and really into the fifth century, and even the fourth century, because then Greek culture took over in the late fourth century, so you’ve got about a 200 year period where the Persian world is very influential, and you have a couple of words and Ecclesiastes that are Persian words. In chapter two, verse five, you have this word “Pardes,” P-A-R-D-E-S, which is where we get “Paradise” from, it means garden. In chapter eight, verse 11, you have this word “Pitgam,” P-I-T-G-A-M, which means “sentence” like the kind of sentence a judge would give out in a trial. And you have this- You also have, you know, there are others who think, for example, Dr. C.L. Seow, who is my favorite Ecclesiastes commentator, I think his commentary in the Anchor Bible series is the best commentary out there, hands down on Ecclesiastes. But he also argues that money is a focus of the book of Ecclesiastes and is different than other books of the Old Testament, and money was not minted, coins were not minted until the Persian period. So that’s another reason that he has at least four—and he knows much more about this than I do, I’m not gonna talk about it—but this is a reason why he says this is, you know, fourth century, fifth century at the earliest and it reflects the musings of someone speaking about the reality of faith in the wake of the Babylonian exile. And as I never get tired of saying, there’s so much of the Old Testament that just snaps together like a chalk line quickly, and gives you a straight view of things, if we remember the importance of the exile for how the Bible took shape, and how some of these things were written. 

You’re not going to have Ecclesiastes during the time of David and Solomon. You’re gonna have an Ecclesiastes after a crisis, which actually gets to the “why” question. See, this is we’re actually now in number four, the “why” question. This is somebody who wrote this as disillusioned about the story of their faith, and how God is always there when you need him and you know, just have faith in God, everything’s gonna be okay and God rewards the righteous and, you know, punishes the wicked. This is sort of like the book of Job and lament Psalms. You have writers taking issue with that basic biblical narrative and saying, it doesn’t work. At least it doesn’t work for me. And what you have here is a 12 Chapter argument on the part of this guy saying, it doesn’t work. And not only that, but you have more—I don’t want to overstate this—but you have more of an individualistic feel in the book of Ecclesiastes, like, I’m pondering this, I’m thinking this through, it’s not about the community and covenant, it’s more of an intellectual… I don’t want to say exercise, but it’s an intellectual process that this guy’s going through, and he’s thinking through, what does it mean to be an Israelite? What does it mean to hold on to the traditions of the past, in view of these present realities, where the world is so much different? And I don’t really know how much sense any of this makes. If that’s not a book for modern people, I don’t know what is. I think it’s just so beautiful that this book is in the Old Testament. 

So anyway, okay, those are the four W-questions, the what is the book about? Who wrote it? When—and those are two related issues—and then the why question. And all those things are related; who, what, when and why are intertwined. And how you answer one helps you answer the other. Okay. Now, the remaining points, what I’d like to do is sort of go through… Boy, I wish I had 10 hours to do this, but to go through the argument of the book itself, as I see it, and again, you know, I’m not making this stuff up. This is my opinion. Some may disagree, but I think for the most part, not too much. The first thing, right—actually, no, this is point 5, I’ve got 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, I’ve got these five, sort of, points to his argument. And this is point five of the podcast if that’s not too much math for you. Okay. So the first thing is that there is no profit in anything we do. That’s his main complaint. And again, you see this at the very beginning of Ecclesiastes, you just have to read the introduction. In fact, we need to do that here. Just, this lays out what he means by, “There’s no profit in anything we do.” Alright, what is profit? Profit is a surplus, profit is you put X into something and you get X+ out of it. That’s where profit is right? If all you do has no surplus to it, then you start questioning, why am I doing anything? Right? So he says this in chapter one, right. The words of Qoheleth, the son of David, King in Jerusalem, this is what he says, “Vanity of vanity, says the teacher; vanity of vanities; all is vanity.” That’s verse two. Well, verse three, he tells you why. “What do people gain from all the toil in which they toil under the sun?” What do people gain, that word “gain” is profit? What do- Some translations say “What do people profit?” What did people gain? What do they profit from all their toil, right, from all the work that they do from their business? At the end of the day, what do they actually gain? And then he moves on in verse four, and he’s continuing this, he says, “A generation goes and a generation comes but the earth remains forever.” Notice he doesn’t say “a generation comes and a generation goes,” he says “a generation goes and generation comes.” In other words, a generation going, what does that mean? They die. And a generation comes, another generation takes its place. What do people gain from all the toil at which they toil under the sun during the days of their lives? A generation just dies, and another one comes and takes its place. You know, this, my German parents- growing up in a German home is interesting. I don’t recommend it. But I do. There’s the saying in German, “Wir sitzen in der nächste Reihe,” we’re sitting in the next row. And this beautiful image that Germans have is of a theater, think of a movie theater with stadium seating, and every row is filled with people. Well, the first row will eventually get up and walk out of the theater that represents death, and then every row moves down one. And so what you say is when you’re in the second row, you look at the people in front of you who are about to die, and you say, “Well, we’re sitting in the next row, we’re next up,” you know. And I’ve heard Germans say this as they get older, saying, “Well, I’m sitting in the next row, it’s, my time is next and I know that I’m going to have to go.” 

See, what is the profit of all this? Well, what brings that into question is the fact that a generation goes, a generation comes, it just keeps happening and there’s nothing we can do about it. This is a punch to the gut, and we’re not even out of- we’re in the middle of verse three, alright? And then he says something that is commonly misunderstood—if you’ll allow me to say that—he says, “a generation goes and a generation comes but the earth remains forever,” and that word, “but-there” can be very distracting because he’s not saying “Okay, a generation goes, and generation comes, that’s bad. But here’s what’s great, the earth remains forever.” It’s not- That “but” is not a contrastive kind of use of that word. He’s saying, you know, “A generation goes a generation comes,” I’d rather just say, “and the earth remains forever.” In other words, the earth remains unchanged, nothing changes. You’ll see he goes on to explain this, and this is in verses 5, 6, 7—you know, 5, 6, 7, and 8. He says, basically, if you want an illustration of how the earth remains forever, look out the window. He says, look at the sun, the sun rises, and then it goes down, and then it hurries to the place where it rises. What in the world does that mean? Well, this is an ancient conception of the cosmos, not a modern one. What you have is the earth popping up from the horizon, and it goes on its course and it drops down to the other side. Now the question is, you know, if you’re an ancient person, but the next morning the sun comes up again, at that same spot opposite of where it went down, how does it get there? Well, it sort of runs underneath, you know, and it hurries to the place where it rises. Think about this, the sun rises, it’s at noon, it comes back down, it sinks in the west and here’s what the sun does at nighttime when you’re sleeping. It hurries up, it pants, it hastens to the other side and goes back up again. The earth remains forever. 

So if you want to see the futility of existence—that’s another good word for hebel—if you want to see the futility of existence, just look at the sun. The sun does this every single day, and what profit does the sun have? Nothing. All it does is this every single day with no payoff, nothing to show for it other than that I’m doing the same thing every day. And then he says, well, look at the wind, right, the wind blows to the south. It goes around to the north. Round and round, goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns. The wind just goes all over the place and then it just starts all over again, huh? The wind comes from the north, it goes south. Well, then, the wind comes back again, it starts in the north, goes south or it goes east and west or it goes- it just keeps going around in the circles and the wind has nothing to show for. Or he says, look at the streams. They run into the sea, but guess what? The sea isn’t full. Those poor streams, all they do is flow into the sea but how much difference does it make? Nothing. The sea is never full and if it gets to a point where the sea says, Okay, listen, thanks for your effort. I’m full now. And you’ve done your thing here, you’ve shown me your profit. You’ve shown me the gain of your labor. Right? This is- Ecclesiastes is demonstrating by nature itself how futile life is. Very different from Psalm, let’s say, 19, “The heavens declare the glory of the Lord.” Look at creation, isn’t it beautiful? Qoheleth says, Look at creation. Oh my gosh, I’m getting depressed thinking about it. Creation is just like us. Our lives are modeled after the sun and the wind and the streams. Are you depressed yet? You should be, because that’s what he’s trying to do. You know, he’s digging a dagger into us here. So, and he continues—we’re not gonna read the whole book, don’t worry, but just the introduction is important—In verse nine, he says, “All things are wearisome, more than one can express.” Everything is just, it just makes you weird to think about it. And then he continues in verse nine, he says, “What has been is what will be, what has been done is what will be done. There was nothing new under the sun.” That’s, you know, that’s one of the phrases in the book, that’s very well known, there’s nothing new under the sun. It’s all the same, things don’t change. You may say, “Well, no, some things change.” Well, he addresses that, in verse 10, he says, “Is there a thing of what you just said, ‘See, this is new?'” And he says, “No, it has already been in the ages before us, nothing is new.” Now you might say, I can think of something new. I can toss my car keys up in the air and let them drop, and they will go to a certain height and drop down to certain… and drop down to the earth,] obviously, because of gravity. And then those 10 keys will be in some configuration, random configuration, and that is new, that has never happened before. So, sorry Qoheleth, there are new things. He would say, “So what?” That’s not even significant. We’re not talking about that. We’re not talking about whether you can, you know, draw a picture of a monkey in a way that no one else has ever drawn it before. He’s talking about life as a whole. There is nothing new that happens. You can fake yourself out into dropping your car keys or drawing monkeys and stuff, and try to make it seem as if it’s new, but at the end of the day, it’s not new.

That brings us to the sixth point. There is no profit at anything we do, point five. Why? Because life is hard, and then you die. Death is the grand leveler of humanity. And I’m gonna suggest that this is the problem that Qoheleth is talking about. If I had to summarize his book, in my opinion, and this, you know, there are many ways of coming at the book, but this is one way of sort of summarizing his point. He says, listen, we die at the end of this. It doesn’t matter what we do, nothing we do has any true benefit, because at the end of the day, we die. And he says later on, don’t tell me that, you know, our spirit goes up and the spirit of animals goes down or something like that. We don’t know that. But have you ever thought about, or know people who thought, about the afterlife? And they say I don’t actually know what happens after death. Yeah, but we believe that, you can believe all you want to, I just don’t see it. There’s no evidence for it. Right?” I think, Qoheleth is sort of there. There’s no reason to think that there is an afterlife. It just seems like you die and that’s it. And that all the toil that we have in this life has no profit. We’ll get back to that in a second. But death is the leveler. And this is where we get to verse 11, which is for me just one of these moments in the Bible. For the first time I really took this into account when I was writing my commentary. And I said, my goodness gracious, this is so obviously true. Verse 11, “The people of long ago are not remembered, nor will there be any remembrance of people yet to come by those who come after them.” Translation: We don’t remember the people who have flipped in the past, who have died, you know, the untold millions and billions and billions of people who have lived, who’ve died, how many of those do people today actually remember or call to mind? You know, I asked my students, how many of you know the first names of your grandparents and most of them can raise their hand, but not all of them. And then I say, how many of you know the names of your great grandparents, their first and last names, and where they lived and what they did? Very few people raise their hands. And once you get to great, great grandparents who go back three, four generations, they don’t- they have no idea. This is your flesh and blood. I have in my computer—I have a Mac, so I use iCal to keep track of my life, which sometimes works—but I’m not ashamed to say this, I have alerts in my calendar to remind me of my parents’ birthdays and of the anniversaries of their death, just so I can call them to mind and remember. I remember them at other times too but these are special days. And these are my parents who raised me, right. And I tell you, you know, I don’t think about them necessarily every day. I mean, they’re never far from my mind, but I don’t think about them every day. And then, you know, just don’t even think about your parents. You know, I sometimes, you know, if you watch the Academy Awards or something, and they have “in memoriam,” you know, I didn’t know that person died. And then you just forget about it right away. You know, like, “Oh, I remember that guy in that movie. Oh, he produced this. Oh, that’s- Wow, that’s amazing.” But as soon as you say it, that person’s out of your memory. You know, you a think of like, you know, famous people that maybe you’ve watched and you ask yourself, you know, when did Michael Jackson die? And when’s the last time you thought about Michael Jackson, who’s like one of the most influential pop singers in the world ever. I know when he died 2009, only because that’s the year my mom died. He died a couple of months after she did. And I remember that. But if it weren’t for that, I wouldn’t know. How ’bout that? Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, name somebody you know, from the 20th century, When did they die? When did Albert Einstein die? The guy who changed how we think about the cosmos, like, do we ever think about it? Yeah, it takes a lot to call the dead to mind. And then on top of that—if that’s not enough of a dagger this guy gives—”Oh, and by the way, you’re gonna die one day too, and everybody’s gonna forget you.” And you know, honestly, it’s hard to argue against that. That’s a really good point.. Now, we might say, “Yeah, but Jesus,” but okay, just don’t go there too quickly, because I think you can go there, but not yet. You have to let this book have its way, and sort of let this writer express his theology. 

So life’s hard, and then you die and death is the leveler of all things. In chapter two—I don’t want to leave this too quickly, because it’s a very important point—but in chapter two, you can start, for example, in verse 13. And verse 13, is one of the few sort of high points of the books, one of the few places where he’s positive for like a verse or two, and you think maybe he’s turning a corner, he’s not going to be so depressed, but it doesn’t last very long. So, verse 13, he says, “Then I saw that wisdom excels folly, as light excels darkness.” You can see this in the book of Proverbs, right. There he says, this great saying, “The wise have eyes in their head, but fools walk in darkness.” That’s a great proverb. Again, that’s, that could be right out of the book of Proverbs. It’s not but it’s the kind of thing you would expect and sort of mainstream wisdom literature of the Bible. But he continues, he doesn’t stop there, look what he says, he says, “Yet, I perceived that the same fate befalls all of them.” What differences that make being wise, you’re just gonna die anyway, what’s the payoff? What’s the purpose of it? Then I said to myself, what happens to the fool, will happen to me also. Why then, have I been so very wise? See, what’s the profit? What is the payoff for being wise, because my end is the same as that of the fool. And I said to myself, that this also is vanity, for there is no enduring remembrance of the wise or of fools seeing that in the days to come, all will have been long forgotten. This guy is just concerned about death, and why death is this leveler and how death is what makes no sense of anything. See, in other parts of the Old Testament death is not much of a problem. It is a problem, but when you die, you are buried with your ancestors, and that is a sign of a good death and a pleasing death, and in a rough death, is you go to a place like Sheol it’s called, where you have sort of this- it’s sort of like Hades in Greek thinking. There’s disembodied spirits that are there and going to Sheol, it’s not a good place. It’s not hell—there’s no hell in the Old Testament—but it’s sort of like this. It’s not as good a death as being buried with your ancestors. That’s a sign of comfort and a sign of God’s presence and continued presence with you and with the people. But this guy, Qoheleth, is calling all that into question, right? He just says you die and you’re forgotten. There is no memory of you, even though you’re supposed to live on in the memories of your children and grandchildren for generations to come. How many of us have that? That’s his problem. Okay, can you feel sort of existential angst here in what he’s doing? So basically then he says, “So I hated life. Because what is done under the sun was grievous to me. It’s grievous to me, because everything is vanity,” and that wonderful phrase, “chasing after wind.” What payoff do you get from chasing after wind? Nothing, there’s no profit, there’s no gain in it, because you never catch it. You can keep running. Run, run, run all day, like the sun runs up and down, you know, and back and forth. But nothing’s gonna come out of it. 

AD BREAK 41:10

So, I mean, I want to keep reading here in chapter two, he says. “So,” this is verse 18 now, “So, I hated all my toil, in which I had toiled under the sun, seeing that I’m going to die, and I must leave it to those who come after me.” You know. I want to leave things for my kids when I’m gone. And he’s saying this, “I’m leaving things to come after me and who knows whether they will be wise or foolish, yet they will be the master of all for which I toiled, and use my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity.” This also is stupid. See, I’m gonna work my whole life and okay, maybe the payoff is, I’m gonna leave it to somebody else, we see that’s wrong, too. Because I am now leaving it to someone who didn’t work for it. They don’t toil and they get what I had. And on top of that, they should be complete fools, and they shouldn’t have any stuff. Like, it’s so stupid, I could leave it and it’s out of my control and leave everything to somebody who comes after me, and they waste the money or they’re just horrible people. They’re fools. So what’s the comfort in that? That doesn’t make me feel any better. Right? And so he goes, in verse 20, “So I turned and gave my-” here we go, “I turned and gave my heart up to despair, concerning all the toil of my labors under the sun, because sometimes one who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge,” as he has, “and skill must leave all to be enjoyed by another who did not toil for it.” That’s the thing that he says in the next verse. “This also is vanity and a great evil,” to benefit from something you didn’t toil for.

Verse 22, “What do mortals get from all the toil and strain with which they toil under the sun?” Rhetorical question, the answer is nothing. “For all their days are full of pain and their work is a vexation, even at night their minds do not rest.” All I do is work and stress. Especially if you think about what all this is about. You even have more stress and vexation, and you basically just toss and turn all night. Right? So what’s his main problem? Point five, there is no gain, there’s no profit to anything we do. And even if it looks like it is, temporarily, point six, yeah, you die. That is the proof that there is nothing to gain. Okay? Are you depressed yet? Fine. So now we get to point seven where he basically says, “Okay, listen, this is the way it is,” you see, he doesn’t argue against it as he says, this is the way that it is. Don’t try to figure it out, and rather enjoy what you have, go with the flow. And we come here to this part of Ecclesiastes is also very well known. It’s pretty famous. It’s sometimes called these Carpe Diem passages, “seize the day” passages, or probably better, they’re called the “nothing better than” passages. And we have one in chapter two which is actually the first one. There are several of these in the book and you’ll recognize it right away, I’m sure. He says in verse 24, after all this stuff that he’s talked about, right, we’re all gonna die, I could leave my stuff for my kids, but who knows what’s going to happen with that? And I’m despairing, and vexation, and sleepless nights and pain. And then he says, verse 24, “There is nothing better for mortals than to eat and drink and find enjoyment in their toil.” And I want to really stress this point here, because sometimes this is read as good news. This is great isn’t nothing- nothing’s better than that. He’s not saying, “Wow, nothing’s better.” For him to say nothing is better is a tone of resignation. He’s resigning himself to like, listen, I’m gonna get beaten up, here’s the best that we can do. That’s what he means. There’s nothing better. This is the best that we have for mortals to do. Eat, drink, and find enjoyment in their toil. In other words, just be alive, eat and drink, maybe have a good time occasionally, and in your toil, find these pockets of some sort of happiness. And he says, “This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?” And we’re gonna get to that because this is actually, we’re sort of playing a little bit here with point eight and we’ll get to that in more detail in a second. See he’s not happy with God, right, when he says, “This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, eating and drinking and finding enjoyment.” He’s not saying “Thank you Lord for your kindness and goodness and benevolence and mercy, and love for me.” He’s saying that this situation we find ourselves in is from the hand of God. Like I said, we’ll get to that in a sec, there’s a couple places we need to look at. But his problem is with God at the end of the day, and how God has set up the universe. Okay, but let’s leave that for a second. He says here, you know, this is nothing better for mortals to do, than to eat and drink, and find some enjoyment in life. And he says, later on, you know, to eat and drink and find enjoyment in the few years that God has given us.

This is the best that we have, the best that we have, is don’t think about it, don’t try to figure it out. See he says in chapter seven, we can’t do all this stuff. And in chapter seven, he talks about the benefits of wisdom and he says, too much wisdom is not good, because you think about stuff too much. But too little wisdom makes you a fool, and you do dumb things. So it’s best to sort of stay in the middle. And he says, if you think about this stuff too much, you go crazy. The best you can do is basically don’t do what I’m doing right now. Don’t think about this stuff too much. Just try to enjoy yourself while you’re here, you know. Go join a bar softball league, or, you know, take voice lessons, or get a nice car, you know, just find some enjoyment for yourself while you’re here, because at the end of the day, you’re going to die. Right? That’s that Robin Williams movie. What’s the name of it again? “The Dead Poets Society,” right? Carpe diem, seize the day, one day, you’re going to be worm food. So live the life that you have—by the way, I think that’s good advice. I think differently about the afterlife, and all that stuff. But I think you know, we, you know, what people say life is not a dress rehearsal. This is the one life you’re given, live it. And I think we sometimes don’t take that seriously enough, because we’re always thinking like, well, you know, this doesn’t stop here, we keep going. But I think, you know, this gift of life that we have, so I’m going to look at this and take this seriously and say, you know, I do need to sort of seize this day as I have it and whatever. So okay, enough of that stuff. 

So that’s the seventh point. Don’t try to figure it out, enjoy what you have, go with the flow, because there’s nothing better than just trying to enjoy life. And then the eighth point as I just hinted a couple minutes ago, the eighth point is that all this, this situation we find ourselves in? All this is God’s fault. And we are helpless, we can’t do anything about it. Back to chapter one. The first words that come out of Qoheleth’s mouth, is—again as I’ve read before, “I Qoheleth, when King over Israel-” Actually the Hebrew is better translated, and you’ll read this in commentaries too—it says, “I am Qoheleth, when I was king over Israel in Jerusalem, I applied my mind- I applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom, all that’s done under the sun.” So he’s doing what kings are supposed to do. He’s searching out by wisdom, all that’s under the sun. Wisdom is a mark of royalty. What makes you a king, is that you’re wise. Remember Solomon. See, this is why people connect this with Solomon, because he’s known for wisdom and he’s a king. Wisdom is what makes you righteous, it makes you just, it makes you godly, all this wisdom is like the bomb, right? And here’s what he’s doing. I applied my mind to seek, to search out by wisdom all that’s done under the sun. And you think he’d show up and sort of come out where- You’re supposed to come out when you ask that kind of question. When you seek things, you’re supposed to say, “Oh, and isn’t God great?” But he doesn’t say that. Let me read it again. I am Qoheleth, when I was king of Israel in Jerusalem, I applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom, all this and under heaven. It is an unhappy business that God has given to human beings to be busy with.” And, you know, “it’s an unhappy business,” you could also translate that, “it is a grievous task that God has given to human beings to be busy with, I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun, and see all is vanity in chasing after the wind.” 

See, the first words out of Qoheleth’s mouth, he gives his own sort of conclusion to what he found out. “Listen, I’m king,” you know, this kingly persona. Right? Remember that the kingly persona is the vehicle for him to do his theology. I personally don’t think this person is a king. I think this is post-exilic, again, there is no king on the throne. Right? But he’s using the old world idea of royalty to say a new world kind of thing. And so, you know, “I’m king and I’ve done the kingly thing, I’ve been wise,” you can read chapter two, you know, I built, you know, planted gardens and irrigated things, all these things kings are supposed to do. I applied wisdom to everything and I’m not coming out with a conclusion that God is great, God is good. Rather, it is a grievous task that God has given us. This is not what I signed up for, this was not in the brochure, so to speak, is what he’s saying. And verse 15, it’s this little proverbial saying, he says, “What is crooked cannot be made straight and what is lacking cannot be counted.” See, 14 and 15, “I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun, and see all is vanity, in chasing after the wind.” What is crooked cannot be made straight, what is lacking cannot be counted. In other words, here’s the situation that God has given us. It’s crooked, it can’t be straightened, it’s lacking, it can’t be countered. In other words, there’s nothing that you can do about it. That’s it. This is the way things are because God is at fault. This guy, at the end of the day, has a problem with how God has set up the universe. Nothing goes anywhere, including our lives. And this is what God has done, giving us a grievous task. Yeah, wisdom’s, okay. It helps with getting through life. But at the end of the day, even wisdom doesn’t give you much benefit because we just die. 

If you’re home and have a Bible, flip over to chapter three, because he comes out this another way too. And I just want to talk about this because it is probably the best known section of the book of Ecclesiastes because it’s a song sung by the Byrds in the 60s wrote by Pete Seeger, you know, “Turn, Turn, Turn,” and you know, I’m not going to read the whole thing, but it begins in chapter three, “For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven.” Now, you look at that and say, “Oh, isn’t it nice? Like, just chill out,” you know, sort of hippie talk, you know, “Just chill out. Don’t try to control the universe, there’s a time for everything, everything-” sort of Zen, karma thing, you know, “Everything’s gonna happen at its right time. Don’t worry, it’s all gonna be okay.” But that is not what this guy’s saying [Laughs]. He’s not saying, “Dude, chill, it’s going to be okay. Everything has a time and a season. Don’t try to control things.” He’s saying, for everything, there is a time and a season under the sun and as we’ll see, there’s nothing- You have no control over this. Like, for example—we can’t read all these things—but he says, “There’s a time to be born in a time to die.” How much control do we have over the time of our birth at the time of our death? None. Who sets those times? God does. “There’s a time to plan this and there’s time to pluck up what is planted.” Who has control over agriculture? Nobody. God sets these things up and you just have to act, right? “A time to keep signing the time to speak A time to love, a time to hate. A time for war and a time for peace.” He has like 12 of these things that he mentions is a time for this and a time for that. Like, everyday common kinds of things, “A time to seek, a time to lose, a time to keep, a time to throw away, a time to embrace, a time to refrain from embracing.” Some of these things are a little bit cryptic and to get into all those, you know, would take us a long time. But it’s not exactly clear what he’s getting at in terms of these individual lines of, you know, a time for this and a time for that. But he gets to the point, he summarizes it beautifully after this list is over. The list is verses one to eight then in verse nine, look what he says. He says, “Looking all these things. There’s a time for this, a season for that,” blah, blah, blah. He says, “What gain have the workers from their toil? Seeing that there was a time for everything that God sets up, what can we possibly add to the equation? We can’t do anything about it.” Right? “What gain have the workers-” verse nine, “from their toil? I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. He has made everything suitable for its time.” That word suitable is very distracting to me, because he’s made everything fitting in it’s time. That’s another way of translating that in verse 11. But again, don’t assume that he is complimenting God and this is like a nice little thing to say about God. “God is great. He’s made everything suitable and its time,” No. He’s made everything fitting in its time. He has set everything up like this. This business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. He’s made everything in his time. He’s put this time for war, time for peace, time for birth, time for death, time for mourning, and all that, he has done that. We don’t control it. But here’s what God has done for us. Right, verse 11—one of the more pivotal verses, I think, in the entire book—”He has made everything suitable for its time. Moreover, he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from beginning to end.” Right? The power of this, to me is just, it’s considerable. God has put everything in its place. What he’s given us is the power to think about the passage of time. He has put a sense of past and future into their minds. We think of past and we think of future actively. We’re abstract thinkers, no other creature really does what we do, at least not the level that we do it. And on top of that, not only has he put the sense of past and future into their minds, “Yet they cannot find out what God has done from beginning to end.” Do you see the trick that God is playing on us—this is what Qoheleth is saying—the trick that God is playing on us, is, again, I don’t think God plays tricks. That’s my opinion, but I’m just telling you] what I think this guy is saying, right? That everything has its time its place. God does that and God gives us the ability to think past and future so we think about what God is up to, but we can’t fathom what God is up to. And that’s frustrating for human beings. I remember the first time I started thinking of the absurdity of eternity, I was young, I was maybe seven, eight years old and trying to get a handle on what it means to be forever. My dog doesn’t think about that. But I did when I was a kid. And it really threw me for a loop and it still sort of does, you know, what does that even mean? Eternity backwards and eternity forwards? What was there before the Big Bang? You know, and things don’t ever end? And is that good news? I mean, what is happening here, right? It’s human beings who have that ability, and animals don’t. 

And so then he continues, right—and this is chapter three, the middle in verse 12—he says, “After all this, he goes, I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live. Moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil.” Right. That’s not positive, that’s- this is God’s “gift,” put in quotation marks, he’s being sarcastic. That’s why I like this guy. “It’s God’s gift that they should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil. I know that whatever God does, he endures forever, nothing can be added to it, nothing can be taken away. God has done this, so that all may stand up and all before him.” And you can even say “All may stand up and be afraid of him. That which is already has been, that which is to be already is.” Oh, my… You know, this is a guy putting it on the line there. Right? He really has an issue with God—we can go on and on about this, but we won’t.

Okay, time is moving along here. Thank you for your patience. We’re going to look at one last thing. And this is the ninth point and final point and this is dealing with the epilogue. And the epilogue is the, you know, the end of the book. And it begins—in my opinion—begins in verse eight, because here we have the narrator taking over again. And he ends, sort of, you know, here in the epilogue, the way he began, he says in chapter 12, verse eight, “Vanity of vanity, says Qoheleth, all is vanity.” So he’s reminding you, like a good preacher, I guess, maybe that’s why he’s called a preacher, you say it at the beginning, say it at the middle, say it at the end. And here’s at the end, he’s reminding you of the overall point of this. And you’d like him just to put a period there, and let’s just- can we get on with reading a nice Psalm or something at this point? But he says, you know, he keeps going in verse nine. And he says, first of all, that this Qoheleth person is wise. And at this point, we’re maybe thinking he’s anything but wise, he’s sort of just depressing and he’s a downer and I don’t want to read this book anymore. But I just love how this book, the frame and narrator as he’s called, he doesn’t try to get Qoheleth out of anything. You know? That’s not the point here. He’s not trying to make God look good here at the end. But he says instead, in verse nine, he says, “Besides being wise, Qoheleth also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many proverbs.” And that doesn’t mean the book of Proverbs, it means just what he’s written in this book,” And the teacher, Qoheleth, he sought to find pleasing words, and he wrote words of truth, plainly.” Pleasing words doesn’t mean words that make you happy. It means words that make sense. In other words, he’s really sought to get his point across clearly. And then verse 11—this is very important—he says, “The sayings of the wise, like Qoheleth, are like goads. Like nails firmly fixed, are the collected sayings that are given by a shepherd.” See, the sayings of the wise are like goads. What is a goad? A goad is a long stick that you poke sheep with to get them to go in a certain direction. And to really make the point quite literally, you embed a nail at the end of it, and you poke them in it really, really hurts. See, the words of the wise sometimes hurt, they are uncomfortable. I just love how this book ends like this. These are uncomfortable words that he’s saying, you’re not supposed to get to this point say, “This is- I just feel so uplifted. Thank you, Jesus. You know, I’m just so happy now in the Lord and my faith. This is wonderful.” You’re supposed to get to the end of this and say, “Man, I don’t even know where to go. Why do I bother with all this stuff? Right? This just hurts. And I don’t see the point of any of this. Right?” 

So “The sayings of the wise are like goads, like nails firmly fixed or the collected sayings that are given by a shepherd.” And then verse 12, “Of anything beyond these, my child,” see that the narrator is now speaking to whoever’s reading this right? And he says, “Of anything beyond these my child beware of making many books, there is no end and much study is a weariness of the flesh.” And, you know, teaching at a Christian college and having gone to seminary and taught at seminaries like it’s finals time everybody says this, you know, “Oh, making of many books there is no end and much study is weariness of the flesh, hahaha, you know, I’m not going to read or study.” You know, clearly he’s not talking about that. What he’s saying though, is this, he’s saying “Listen, Qoheleth is wise and his words hurt. And beyond these, however, my child-” In other words, don’t try to go beyond, don’t try to add to what Qoheleth says. What do you mean by that? Well, remember Qoheleth is this royal persona, it’s this kingly figure who, if anybody has figured it out, it’s him. It’s this great king. And that’s why you have to go back and really read the beginning of chapter two, he lays out all his kingly accomplishments—his fictional kingly accomplishments, because he’s presenting himself as a king—and it’s like, this is like super king, who’s wise and who’s accomplished, who does all the things kings are supposed to do. And he just doesn’t see the point of it. Right? 

So, if the king can’t get past where he is now, neither can you see. That’s why he says, “Beyond these, my child, beware of the making of many books, there is no end.” We could keep on writing a book of Ecclesiastes again and again and again, and you could probably too, my child, but don’t. There’s nothing more to say. “Much study is awareness of the flesh.” If you keep thinking about this, and trying to figure it out, it’s exhausting. Can I get an amen? It is exhausting to think about this stuff. And then he says in verse 13, this epilogue says, “The end of the matter, all has been heard.” He says, the end of it, no more talking, the end has been heard. “Fear God and keep his commandments, for that is the whole duty of everyone.” This is his solution. And some might find it unsatisfying, I find it tremendously satisfying. He says, “All has been heard,” here’s what you do, Israelite, listen to Qoheleth, he’s not an idiot. He’s observed things. And you know what? You probably feel this too, you might feel the same existential crisis that he does. Here’s your solution. Don’t try to figure it out. Don’t try to solve the riddle. Instead, keep being an Israelite anyway. Fear God, keep the commandments. It’s like, was it Winston Churchill who said, when you’re going through hell, keep going. Don’t stop, don’t stop, keep going. And in Christian language, we say something like, no matter how bad things get, keep trusting in Jesus and following that path. No matter how many horrible things happen, no matter how much agony you’re in, mentally, emotionally, intellectually, spiritually, keep going, keep following Jesus, Jesus is faithful. I think that’s the Christian way of putting it. This Old Testament, Israelite way of putting it is, maintain fear of God, which is the Wisdom tradition and keep the commandments, which is the Mosaic legal tradition. Without discounting any of the stuff that Qoheleth said, but actually, in view of what he said, here’s your solution: Keep moving anyway. For that is the whole duty of everyone. 

And I need to pause there for one second—this is one of the last things I’ll say—the whole duty of everyone. There’s an interesting Hebrew phrase that pops up four times in the book of Ecclesiastes. And for you nerds out there it is, kol ha’adam. “Kol” means all, “ha” means the, and “adam” means human or man or person. And that’s where we get the name Adam from. So kol ha’adam literally, “For this is all the man,” which this, you know, the New Revised Standard Version Translate is, this is the whole duty of everyone, which is fine. But my point is that this shows up three other times in the book, and it shows up in 3:13 and in 5:18. And in both of those places, it’s these, nothing is better than passages, where Qoheleth says, it’s the seeking of everyday pleasure and enjoyment, that is kol ha-awdam, that is all the man. That is what our duty is, this is what we’re made for, this is our purpose, this is what we do. Andkol ha’adam then in 7:2, he uses it one more time to talk about death. Death is kol ha’adam, this is what is for every one death. So see, Qoheleth is saying—and this is the, I think, the only place in the epilogue you get a slight correction of what Qoheleth is saying—he’s saying he’s wise, listen to what he’s saying. But he’s saying what is kol ha’adam? What is the whole duty of everyone? What is “all the man?” What is it that sums up our human existence? It’s not the seeking of everyday pleasure to make sense of life to numb yourself against the absurdity of death, and it’s not even death. That is not all the man. What is all the man, is fear God and keep the commandments. That is actually what sums up your existence as an Israelite. And I just, I love the paradox of how he says that without discounting Qoheleth’s observations. He doesn’t say, “No, no, no, he’s wrong. Don’t listen to this guy. He’s a freak.” You know, why have 12 chapters and then just try to discount them at the end? There’s something that’s worth saying. And the epilogue is telling us there’s something we’re saying. That’s why we’re looking at this and he’s wise and it hurts, I know, but take it to heart, just don’t go beyond it. What you have to do now is fear God, keep the commandments. That is kol ha’adam, that is all the man. Keep being an Israelite anyway. 

So I think for me, the payoff of this book—again, this is not the kind of thing I would do casually, in, you know, a Bible- Like, if I’m asked to give a Bible study someplace, I’m not going to go to Ecclesiastes unless they asked me to. Because I think this is a book for people who have weathered storms, who have seen life, and have every reason, so to speak, to be despondent, and to be in despair, as Qoheleth says he is in chapter two. But the solution is to stay the course anyway. And I think what this does is gives us permission to feel what we’re feeling, experience what we’re experiencing, and also to relieve us of the pressure of having to figure it out. But to move forward anyway, and fear God and keep the commands anyway, follow Jesus anyway. Which is paradoxical, because a lot of what this book is doing is undermining that very notion, that God is worth fearing or listening to, right. See, if you get to this place where Qoheleth is—well, I guess, the frame narrator is not technically Qoheleth but the guy who’s responsible for the book—if you can get to where he is, and say, this is absurd, but I’m going to keep believing in God anyway, and obeying God, and fearing God. At that point, that person becomes almost indestructible, you can’t do anything to that person. When you face the absurdity of it all, and then still say, I’m still going to trust in God—use that language now—this is a very powerful book. But the thing is that you almost have to earn the right to get to it. You almost have to earn the right to explore this book and to engage it, and to take it seriously. And I’ll end with this, the thing that is so mournful to me, and even annoying to me at times is when people try to soft pedal Qoheleth’s words and try to make him sound really Orthodox and normal, like a good churchgoer. He’s not. This guy would not be able to teach Sunday school in your church, he’d be kicked out, and he wouldn’t be able to watch your kids, and he would be just the sort of atheist-agnostic who used to be a strong Christian, but isn’t anymore. I think that’s sort of how Qoheleth would be characterized today, and I think that’s, you know, a lesson for us, that part of the tradition of faith—this is in the Bible, don’t forget, right?—part of the tradition of faith is acknowledging the journey that Qoheleth is on, but then not saying, I’m not going to stop until I figure it out, saying, I can’t figure it out. I have to decide whether to trust God somehow or not. And that’s what this guy is saying is, you know, in our language, trust God, keep moving forward, do the best that you can, because God is real anyway. Right. And as he says, at the very last verse, “For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil.” Which is exactly the thing that Qoheleth undermines in his book, he says, that doesn’t exist. But the epilogue is saying, listen, keep both of these things in front of you. Take seriously how you see life, but also, keep moving anyway and trust that God somehow, some way, will make it make sense. But that’s the tension in life that we have to sort of live with, I think, and that’s what this book is saying. 

So permission to be an adult, but also then the serious challenge to not allow that to shape the rest of your life, but to keep trusting God anyway. And I’ll tell you, that’s meant a lot to me over the past 10, 15, 20 years, but again, I think it’s more of a midlife thing than anything else. 

Jared: Well, thanks to everyone who supports the show. If you wanna support what we do, there are three ways you can do it. One, if you just wanna give a little money, go to thebiblefornormalpeople.com/give.  

Pete: And if you wanna support us and want an all access pass to our classes, a free podcast and a thoughtful community of people asking tough questions about the Bible and faith, you can become a member of our online community, the Society of Normal People at thebiblefornormalpeople.com/join.  

Jared: And lastly, it goes a long way. If you just wanted to rate the podcast, leave a review, and tell others about our show. In addition, you can let us know what you thought about the episode by emailing us at info@thebiblefornormalpeople.com.  

Outro: You’ve just made it through another episode of The Bible for Normal People.

Don’t forget you can catch our other show, Faith for Normal People, in the same feed wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was brought to you by the Bible for Normal People Team.