29. Ecclesiastes 2
What is the meaning of life? Few questions strike at the core of human existence as succinctly as this. And the responses given will likely change drastically depending on who you ask. Some look for purpose in leaving a lasting legacy, accomplishing great feats, or giving their all for a religious cause. In Ecclesiastes Chapter 2, Qoheleth claims to have tried all that and found every possible endeavor equally incapable of providing any lasting meaning in life. His conclusion invites us to lay aside our delusions and expectations in favor of a simpler view, one that revels in the temporary pleasures we can find in each day. Listen to this week’s episode to hear Qoheleth’s story and learn his four steps to a happy life!
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Editor: Janna Connor
Notes:
2:1- “Enjoy pleasure” is literally “look upon good.” This use of טוֹב (tov) initiates a number of hyperlinks back to Genesis 1–3 within this chapter.
The NET Bible Notes suggest hevel “is a synonym to מְהוֹלָל (méholal, ‘folly’) in 2:2a and an antonym to טוֹב (tov, ‘worthwhile, beneficial’) in 2:1b and 2:3c.” But I’m not sure that Qoheleth would agree that hevel is the opposite of good. His whole dissertation here is about how to find good to enjoy in the midst of life’s hevel. Just because something is confusing or exhausting does not automatically mean it is bad.
Bible Project describes three really disturbing realities about the world Qoheleth is going to discover in these following chapters — the inevitable march of time, the universality of death, and the randomness of life. And he’s going to show that death eventually devours the wise, foolish, rich, and poor alike. No one can game life. In light of that truth, he believes we must give up searching for lasting significance and just enjoy the moments we have.
2:2- “The Hebrew lischok, ‘laughter,’ is best understood as mockery. Often the last refuge from absurdity is irony and mockery. While these may make you feel superior to those trapped in pursuit of permanence, they do nothing to improve the way you engage impermanence.” — Ecclesiastes: Annotated & Explained, Rabbi Rami Shapiro
Qoheleth’s belittling of laughter may be a shot at Proverbs 17:22. Nevertheless, he is not saying that laughter is never appropriate; in the next chapter, he will acknowledge that it has its uses. At this point of his monologue, he is exhausting every possible avenue for finding lasting meaning in life. Laughter is as ephemeral as his other pursuits.
“I decided to enjoy myself and find out what happiness is. But I found that this is useless, too. I discovered that laughter is foolish, that pleasure does you no good. Driven on by my desire for wisdom, I decided to cheer myself up with wine and have a good time. I thought that this might be the best way people can spend their short lives on earth.” — The Good News Translation
I like The Message Bible’s translation of these verses also: “What do I think of the fun-filled life? Insane! Inane! My verdict on the pursuit of happiness? Who needs it? With the help of a bottle of wine and all the wisdom I could muster, I tried my level best to penetrate the absurdity of life. I wanted to get a handle on anything useful we mortals might do during the years we spend on this earth.”
2:3- This could be literally translated, “I followed my heart to carry away my body with wine while leading my heart in wisdom.”
“BDB suggests that this use be nuanced ‘to draw, to attract, to gratify’ the flesh, that is, ‘to cheer’ (BDB 604 s.v. מָשַׁךְ 7). While this meaning is not attested elsewhere in the OT, it is found in Mishnaic Hebrew: ‘to attract’ (Qal), e.g., ‘it is different with heresy, because it attracts [i.e., persuades, offers inducements]’ (b. Avodah Zarah 27b) and ‘to be attracted, carried away, seduced,’ e.g., ‘he was drawn after them, he indulged in the luxuries of the palace’ (b. Shabbat 147b). See Jastrow 853–54 s.v. מְשַׂךְ. Here it denotes ‘to stretch; to draw out [to full length],’ that is, ‘to revive; to restore’ the body (HALOT 646 s.v. משׁד [sic] 3).” — The NET Bible Notes
“The Masoretic text reads ‘grasping folly’ (le’ehoz besikhlut), but this translation adopts a frequently proposed emendation, assuming that a scribe inadvertently dropped ‘not’ (lo’) in copying because it had the same two letters, lamed and ’aleph, that begin the next word, le’ehoz. The idea is that Qohelet gave himself over to drinking and revelry yet clung to his perspective of wisdom.” — Translation and Commentary, Robert Alter
Alter is suggesting we assume a copyist error because you can’t be wise while doing stupid stuff at the same time. Qoheleth would likely disagree. I think the text makes sense as is. Qoheleth pursued wine, wisdom, and senseless behavior all at the same time.
“The LXX, Syr., and two Hebrew manuscripts have ‘under the sun’ in place of ‘under heaven.’” — The Lexham Textual Notes on the Bible
The NET Bible Notes claims, “Qoheleth himself did not indulge in drunkenness; but he contemplated the value of self-indulgence in his mind…. It was a purely mental, cognitive endeavor; he never actually gave himself over to wanton self-indulgence in wine or folly.” I understand how the “I sought in my heart” statement could make this sound experimental, but the phrase could also be translated, “I pursued with my heart” or, in more modern vernacular, “I followed my heart.” Many Christians are uncomfortable with the idea the wisest man ever to live could have indulged in drunkenness. But we cannot neuter the text to make us more comfortable within a reality of our own making; to borrow a phrase from the political right, “Facts don’t care about your feelings.”
“You can deaden yourself through drink, but drunkenness isn’t transformative; you cannot escape the reality of impermanence.” — Ecclesiastes: Annotated & Explained, Rabbi Rami Shapiro
2:4- Vineyards hyperlink us back to the first time the word showed up — at the end of Noah’s story.
These verses closely parallel an ancient Egyptian text called The Teaching of King Amenemhat I:
“[I MADE MY HOUSE ADORNED] WITH GOLD,
its ceilings in lapis-lazuli, [its walls in silver, its floors in hard stone,]
its doors in copper,
its bolts of bronze,
[made for eternity, equipped for everlasting life.
I know this, as it is I who am] its Lord of All.”
2:5- “The noun פַּרְדֵּס (pardes, ‘garden, parkland, forest’) is a foreign loanword that occurs only 3 times in biblical Hebrew (Song of Songs 4:13; Ecclesiastes 2:5; Nehemiah 2:8). The original Old Persian term pairidaeza designated the enclosed parks and pleasure-grounds that were the exclusive domain of the Persian kings and nobility (HALOT 963 s.v. פַּרְדֵּס; LSJ 1308 s.v παράδεισος). The related Babylonian term pardesu ‘marvelous garden’ referred to the enclosed parks of the kings (AHw 2:833 and 3:1582). The term passed into Greek as παράδεισος (paradeisos, ‘enclosed park, pleasure-ground’), referring to the enclosed parks and gardens of the Persian kings.” — The NET Bible Notes
In Hearing the Message of Ecclesiastes, Christopher Wright sees this as a hyperlink back to Eden. God created and saw tov (good); Qoheleth creates and sees only hevel.
2:7- I’m not quite sure why the KJ went with “great and small cattle.” It’s literally “livestock of cattle and many flocks.” Elsewhere, the translators knew צֹאן (tzon) means sheep, but here they lumped the sheep in with the cattle unnecessarily. Earlier English versions maintained the proper distinctions.
2:8- “The term סְגֻלָּה (ségullah) denotes ‘personal property’ (HALOT 742 s.v. סְגֻלָּה 1) or ‘valued property, personal treasure’ (BDB 688 s.v. סְגֻלָּה 2). Elsewhere, it refers to a king’s silver and gold (1 Chronicles 27:3). It is related to Akkadian sug/kullu ‘flock’ (AHw 2:1053–54) and sikiltu ‘private property [belonging to the king]’ (AHw 2:1041). The term refers to the personal, private and valued possessions of kings, which do not pass into the hands of the state.” — The NET Bible Notes
The end of this verse has an oft-debated phrase — שִׁדָּ֥ה וְשִׁדּֽוֹת (shidah vashidoth). “The NJPS connects it to the Mishnaic Hebrew noun שִׁדָּה which became שִׁידָּה (‘a strong box, chest’; Jastrow 1558 s.v. שִׁידָּה) and renders the phrase ‘coffers and coffers of them’ in apposition to the phrase ‘the luxuries of commoners’ (וְתַעֲנוּגֹת בְּנֵי הָאָדָם). KJV and ASV take the phrase in apposition to ‘male and female singers’ and translate it as ‘musical instruments.’ However, there is no known Hebrew term that would justify this approach. The LXX related the term to the Aramaic root שׁדא (‘to pour out [wine]’) and rendered the phrase as οἰνοχόον καί οἰνοχόας (oinochoon kai oinochoas), ‘a male-butler and female cupbearers.’ Aquila took a similar approach: κυλίκιον καί κυλίκια (kulikion kai kulikia), ‘wine cups and wine vessels.’ This is reflected in the Vulgate and Douay: ‘cups and vessels to serve to pour out wine.’” — The NET Bible Notes
However, the word shidah is likely related to שַׁד (shad), a word that means “breasts.” American Christians may recognize the word from the title El Shaddai given to Yahweh in the Tanakh (or the popular Amy Grant song). Scholars previously translated that as “God Almighty,” but modern scholarship emphasizes the likely connection to shad, suggesting a motherly figure rather than a militaristic one. Thus, this verse literally reads that Qoheleth obtained the delights of the sons of Adam, breasts upon breasts. In other words, Qoheleth is boasting of his conquests of countless women. His referring to women simply as “breasts” and “the delights of men” may disgust us today, but such language is not foreign to the Bible. In Judges 5:20, Deborah celebrates her military victory with a song of praise to Yahweh that includes the line “Have they not all obtained? Have they divided the plunder? To every strong man, a maiden or two.” As problematic as that is on its own, it gets worse because the last phrase literally reads, “To every strong man, a womb and wombs.” In the Bible’s patriarchal culture, it was not uncommon to refer to women simply as wombs or breasts, akin to today’s locker room talk of “pussies” and a “nice piece of ass.” Most people don’t expect that kind of language in the Bible, but it certainly is there.
2:9- “This is a verbal hendiadys in which the second verb functions adverbially, modifying the first: ‘I became far greater.’ Most translations miss the hendiadys and render the line in a woodenly literal sense (KJV, ASV, RSV, NEB, NRSV, NAB, NASB, MLB, Moffatt), while only a few recognize the presence of hendiadys here: ‘I became greater by far’ (NIV) and ‘I gained more’ (NJPS).” — The NET Bible Notes
2:10- It’s imperative we remember that Qoheleth is not denying the value of these pleasures. He is simply stating they cannot bring lasting happiness. Many Christians assume the Bible has a negative view of sensual delights and earthly pleasures. But Qoheleth praises the joy he received in these pursuits even while lamenting their transience. These things can actually make you happy for a time. And at the end of the day, everything can only make you happy for a limited time, so just enjoy whatever you have in front of you for as long as it is there.
“Note that Koheleth doesn’t say he found no pleasure in luxury. On the contrary, his heart reveled in all of it! This is what makes Koheleth so convincing. He isn’t an ascetic who takes no pleasure in life, but rather a person who found real joy in his indulgences….
What Koheleth discovers isn’t that there is no joy in pleasure, but that joy is no less fleeting than everything else. One pleasure has to be replaced with another and then another. There is no end to pleasure’s pursuit, and you are left panting in exhaustion, with nothing to show for all your efforts.
‘[Jesus said:] If you do not know yourselves, then you exist in poverty and you are that poverty.’ (Gospel of Thomas, logiaon 3b)
What is the folly and madness Koheleth explored? He doesn’t say, but we can speculate that he devoted himself to the distractions of his day. Had Koheleth lived today, he might have surrendered himself to Internet gaming, daytime soap operas, hyperbolic and vitriolic radio, or the voyeurism of reality television — Jerry Springer, and even Oprah” — Ecclesiastes: Annotated & Explained, Rabbi Rami Shapiro
2:11- This isn’t just labor in the sense of work but anything that is laborious or anxiety-inducing.
“A good example is provided by the nineteenth-century philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard. In his own personal journal, Kierkegaard recorded that he was living lavishly on his inheritance as a student. He experienced feelings of boredom and futility; he attributed these feelings to his excessive pursuit of pleasure. He became so agitated with his struggle to find meaning and direction in his life, at one point, he considered suicide. Through reason he finds a solution, writing: ‘What I really need is to come to terms with myself about what I am to do not about what I am to know, except insomuch as knowledge must precede every act. It is a matter of understanding my destiny, of seeing what the Divinity actually wants me to do; what counts is to find the truth, which is true for me, to find that idea for which I will live and die.’ This is the traditional fundamental idea behind existential philosophy — each individual is responsible for determining that which gives meaning to their life. That ‘idea’ or purpose becomes the reason for their continued existence and worthy of self-sacrifice — the affirmation of a person’s existence.” — Philosophy of Qohelet, Joel Steele
The Good News Translation summarizes these verses well:
“Yes, I was great, greater than anyone else who had ever lived in Jerusalem, and my wisdom never failed me. Anything I wanted, I got. I did not deny myself any pleasure. I was proud of everything I had worked for, and all this was my reward. Then I thought about all that I had done and how hard I had worked doing it, and I realized that it didn’t mean a thing. It was like chasing the wind — of no use at all. After all, a king can only do what previous kings have done. So I started thinking about what it meant to be wise or reckless or foolish. Oh, I know, ‘Wisdom is better than foolishness, just as light is better than darkness. The wise can see where they are going, and fools cannot.’ But I also know that the same fate is waiting for us all. I thought to myself, ‘I will suffer the same fate as fools. So what have I gained from being so wise?’ ‘Nothing,’ I answered, ‘not a thing.’ No one remembers the wise, and no one remembers fools. In days to come, we will all be forgotten. We must all die — wise and foolish alike. So life came to mean nothing to me, because everything in it had brought me nothing but trouble. It had all been useless; I had been chasing the wind. Nothing that I had worked for and earned meant a thing to me, because I knew that I would have to leave it to my successor, and he might be wise, or he might be foolish — who knows? Yet he will own everything I have worked for, everything my wisdom has earned for me in this world. It is all useless. So I came to regret that I had worked so hard. You work for something with all your wisdom, knowledge, and skill, and then you have to leave it all to someone who hasn’t had to work for it. It is useless, and it isn’t right! You work and worry your way through life, and what do you have to show for it? As long as you live, everything you do brings nothing but worry and heartache. Even at night your mind can’t rest.”
2:12- “‘Having tested pleasure, I turned to folly and madness.’ Perhaps these would surpass wisdom. For this is the task of the sage, to do all that can be done that those who follow might learn from their example.” — Ecclesiastes: Annotated & Explained, Rabbi Rami Shapiro
The end of this verse is a little difficult to translate. It literally reads, “What the man who comes after the king? That which they have already done.” However you translate it, the idea is that the king is the richest and most powerful person in the land, so if he says he’s exhausted these pursuits, who are you to think he might have missed something?
“The Hebrew text reads עָשׂוּהוּ (’asuhu, ‘they have done it’; Qal perfect 3rd person masculine plural from עָשַׂה [’asah] + 3rd person masculine singular suffix). However, many medieval Hebrew MSS read עָשָׂהוּ (’asahu, ‘he has done’; Qal perfect 3rd person masculine singular from עָשַׂה), reflected in the LXX and Syriac. The error was caused by dittography (ו, vav, written twice) or by orthographic confusion between ו and ה (hey) in הוו (confused as והוו) at the end of 2:12 and beginning of 2:13. The 3rd person masculine singular referent of עָשׂוּהוּ ‘what he has done’ is the king, that is, Qoheleth himself.” — The NET Bible Notes
2:13- This is literally, “Then I saw there is more leftover from wisdom than from stupidity.” Put another way, neither the cautious life nor the brazen life inherently last any longer than the other, but there’s a bit more of a net positive when you try to live the best life you can for yourself and others.
2:14- Though the concept of wokeness today is quite controversial, Qoheleth challenged his audience millennia ago to live awake and aware of reality around them rather than stumbling in the dark like a fool. To Qoheleth, the fool is somebody who hears wisdom like what he is offering now but rejects it so that they can live in their nice neat little bubble.
2:15- Qoheleth is in many ways similar to a “second generation Christian.” Sometimes when people convert to conservative wings of Christianity after their 20s, they enforce strict rules upon their children in order to protect them from harms they experienced in the outside world. That next generation then grows up sheltered within the confines of the church, forbidden to engage in normal childhood, teenage, and young adult behavior. Yet they still experience anxiety, abuse, depression, and everything people outside their bubble struggle with as well. They see friends die young or divorce or get stuck in a dead-end job and wonder, “Why am I living this way if it’s not paying off? Why am I trying to live by all these rules and standards if I’m going to end up just like the person who doesn’t give a damn?” This is Qoheleth’s question, “Why then am I excessively wise?” This reality is frustrating and baffling for many people. That’s why Qoheleth spends so much time on it. A transactional view of faith (if I do x, God will bless me with y) is not healthy. It leads only to frustration and burnout. It is better to realize that people who live by the book sometimes die early or have a hard life and people who bend or break the rules sometimes live long and have an easy life. God does not promise you an easy life if you check a certain number of boxes. Life is a gamble. Indulging in vices might put your health at risk, or you might end up being one of these people who makes it to one hundred and tells the news it’s because you drink whiskey, smoke cigarettes, and have lots of sex. We all know people who eat anything they want and are in perfect shape, and we all know people who strictly limit their diets yet get cancer at an early age. You can’t game life. You can stack the odds in your favor, but at the end of the day they’re still just odds. Partying all the time may not be healthy, but neither is refusing to party ever. Better to live life with all its risks because no matter how hard you try, the risk will never be zero.
2:16- As we’ve discussed previously, the ancient Hebrews didn’t have the same concept of eternity that we do today. What is often translated eternity or forever is literally “into the age.” Qoheleth observes that once you breathe your last breath, the clock starts ticking on your legacy. You will be forgotten eventually, whether you were the best person ever to live or the worst. This is similar to the end of consciousness view presented in Disney Pixar’s Coco. You live on as long as you are remembered, but once you are forgotten, you are truly dead. Qoheleth has been unable to find any empirical evidence of life continuing beyond the grave.
“According to [Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics], the highest pursuit by which to attain happiness is the human’s intellectual ability to reason. Thus, humans must seek to excel at the one thing that no other natural being on earth is capable, i.e., living rationally by employing our superior intellect. Living rationally through intellect requires the human to deliberate carefully, unemotionally, and intentionally to understand reality concerning which actions to take to maximize happiness. The reality is, virtuous living will result in happiness. The end goal is to live a virtuous complete life. To accomplish this the person must develop habits of moral virtue — taking the right action. It starts with intentionally performing the right action through reason. A single virtuous act does not constitute virtuous living any more than choosing to tell the truth on a single occasion makes a person honest. It is through repetitively preforming virtuous acts that turn into habits that people become virtuous. Cicero, in his dialogue between two characters (Balbus and Cotta) in Nature of the Gods, compares virtue in a legalistic fashion with the ‘nature of the gods’ to emphasis their action or nonaction in human affairs. The argument here is: no one attributes virtue to God. In antiquity, gods were credited when humans experienced good fortunes — i.e., they must have done something that pleased the gods. Likewise, the gods were also credited when humans experienced bad fortunes — they fail to please the gods by making inadequate sacrifice, etc. However, no one ever praised or thanked the gods for being virtuous. Cicero’s point was, the way a person lived had no impact on whether or not that person would experience good or bad fortune. Cicero’s primary focus was to understand the nature of the gods pertaining to human affairs. In this dialogue, however, Cicero demonstrated an important element in ancient thought — that humans were solely responsible for their virtuous or non-virtuous acts. Moreover, he introduced a new way to understand divine influences in human affairs. Indeed, a deity’s primary role was not to exercise punitive measures on humans who practiced deviant behavior nor was it to issue rewards for good behavior. ‘The fact is that one’s character, and the kind of life which one has lived, has no bearing on one’s good or evil fortune.’ This argument strongly resembles the one found in Qohelet’s contention” — Philosophy of Qohelet, Joel Steele
2:17- Hate does indeed mean “hate” here. We must be careful not to neuter the sharpness of Qoheleth’s words. They give voice to the emotions many of us have but don’t feel able to admit.
The word translated grievous is the stand Hebrew word for evil (רַ֤ע, ra).
“There is nothing you can do to escape the harsh reality of hevel. Indeed, the more you seek to pile up worldly defenses against the inevitability of death and loss, the more you rob yourself of what pleasures this world has to offer.” — Ecclesiastes: Annotated & Explained, Rabbi Rami Shapiro
2:18- “Why exhaust yourself and labor for more than you need? To leave an inheritance for your children? They may squander everything you’ve amassed and be no less foolish for your efforts. Don’t worry about the future. Simply do what brings you meaning, purpose, and joy right now.” — Ecclesiastes: Annotated & Explained, Rabbi Rami Shapiro
Bible Project offers wisdom for parents here. Don’t carry the burden that your family’s destiny is in your control. You might impact them more than anyone else, but you cannot control them. You’re not supposed to. If you’re frustrated with your family, it might be because you are trying to make them into your image of what they should be instead of what they are. You cannot change other people or control their future. Attempting to do so is anxiety-inducing futility, hevel.
2:19- “Wisdom doesn’t offer you an escape from impermanence, but rather reveals a way to navigate it. Koheleth takes pains to make it clear that the wise and the foolish meet the same fate, that is, they all die. Wisdom doesn’t guarantee you political power or financial success, and there are numerous cases where the wise suffer unjustly while the foolish seem to prosper.
Yet wisdom is preferable to folly when used as a navigation tool. When you are wise, you know the nature of hevel. When you understand the nature of hevel, you cease to toil against it. When you cease all effort in opposition to impermanence, you are free to live wisely with impermanence.
Wisdom, then, isn’t a body of fixed knowledge, but a way of investigating reality and how best to live with it….
Koheleth wants you to find wisdom and live wisely. His concern isn’t with your children or grandchildren, but with you. You cannot eat or drink for the future, and you cannot survive on the eating and drinking of the past. You have to eat when hungry, and drink when thirsty, and the pleasure of doing so is yours alone.
To live in opposition to hevel, to seek to impose permanence and security in a world empty of both, is to set yourself up for great disappointment.” — Ecclesiastes: Annotated & Explained, Rabbi Rami Shapiro
2:20- This can be translated literally as, “So I went in a circle to despair.” The hardships of life sent Qoheleth into a downward emotional spiral. Considering his adopted Solomonic persona, this is a good reminder that everyone has their own personal struggles that you may not see or understand. We might dream of the opportunity to live like he did, but he was no happier than we are in our more meager situations. Rich and poor, old and young, everyone alike can struggle. Money and power do not alter that reality.
2:21- Equity here means skill. Whether you are street smart, book smart, or skilled with your hands, one day, your knowledge and skills will fade and no longer be of use to you.
Some sources, like The NET Bible, think רָעָה (ra’ah, evil) should be translated “misfortune” or “injustice” here.
2:23- Our bodies may rest but what about our minds?
“’All his days are pain, and his work is vexation.’ The noun ‘his work’ (עִנְיָנוֹ) is the subject of both nouns, ‘pain and vexation’ (וָכַעַס מַכְאֹבִים, makh’ovim vakha’as), which are predicate nominatives, while the phrase ‘all his days’ (כָל־יָמָיו) is an adverbial accusative functioning temporally: ‘All day long, his work is pain and vexation.’ The latter option is supported by the parallelism between ‘even at night’ and ‘all day long.’ This verse draws out an ironic contrast/comparison between his physical toil/labor during the day and his emotional anxiety at night. Even at night, he has no break!” — The NET Bible Notes
Bible Project summarizes this by noting that wealth, career, status, and pleasure don’t actually bring lasting happiness. Think of all the stress you endure every day just to wake up one day too old to enjoy the fruit of all that work. Or what if you live for the weekend pleasures now? Well, Monday always comes. This is hevel.
2:24- Literally, “There is nothing good for a human. He should eat, drink, and see his soul happy in his trouble(d life).”
“So what isn’t absurd? To eat simply, and drink moderately, and do work that satisfies the soul. This is what reality offers us.”- Ecclesiastes: Annotated & Explained, Rabbi Rami Shapiro
“At first blush, the Hebrew verb her’ah might seem to mean ‘to show,’ deriving from the root r-’-h, which indicates sight, but in Qohelet it is not infrequently a variant form of the root r-w-h, meaning ‘to slake’ or ‘to sate oneself.’ Similarly, the verb re’eh at the end of verse 1 probably does not mean ‘see’ but ‘sate oneself,’ or ‘enjoy.’” — Translation and Commentary, Robert Alter
“In this the wisdom of Ecclesiastes is similar to that of the tenth-century Chinese Ch’an (Zen) master Ta-sui Fa-chen:
When asked, ‘When life-and-death has come to you what do you do?’ he answered promptly, ‘When served tea, I take tea; when served a meal, I take a meal.’
As you will learn in the third chapter of Ecclesiastes, life is a series of moments each with its own truth and rationale. The only thing to do is to live them as they arise. When it is a moment to cry — cry. When the moment calls for laughter — laugh. Do not anticipate what’s next or cling to what was; just engage in what is for the moment it is.” — Ecclesiastes: Annotated & Explained, Rabbi Rami Shapiro
Bible Project asks, How do you live life in the midst of hevel? You accept it. Accept that life is out of your control and enjoy the little things in life. Joy doesn’t come if you work for it. Joy comes from little moments you didn’t expect. This is why if you work hard to do something fun or to force joy, it rarely happens, and then you just get more frustrated because happiness didn’t happen. Accepting that reality frees me to experience life as it is, not worry over why it’s not what I think it should be.
Bible Project also points out that feasting is one of the most common biblical images used to describe our purpose as humans. We’re engaging in a mystery each time we open our mouths to eat. We’re announcing our dependency on others. I’m often not the one who makes my own food, and even when I do, I certainly didn’t grow it. Eating reminds us that we are dependent on people other than ourselves. Jesus even used feasting to announce the kingdom of God’s appearance, and our story ends with a feast in Revelation.
2:25- Hasten here means to enjoy something. “The Vulgate renders this term as ‘to enjoy.’ The Greek versions (LXX, Theodotion) and the Syriac Peshitta, however, did not understand this hapax; they rendered it as ‘to drink,’ making some sense of the line by filling out the parallelism ‘to eat [and drink]’ (e.g., Ecclesiastes 8:15). The MT reads מִמֶּנִּי (mimmenni, ‘more than I’). However, an alternate textual tradition of מִמֶּנּוּ (mimmennu,’apart from him [= God]’) is preserved in several medieval Hebrew MSS, and is reflected in most of the versions (LXX, Syriac, Syro-Hexapla, and Jerome). The textual deviation is a case of simple orthographic confusion between י (yod) and ו (vav) as frequently happened, e.g., MT צו לצו צו לצו (tsv ltsv tsv ltsv) versus 1QIsaa 28:10 צי לצי צי לצי (tsy ltsy ts ltsy); see P. K. McCarter, Jr., Textual Criticism, 47. It is difficult to determine which reading is original here. The MT forms a parenthetical clause, where Qoheleth refers to himself: no one had more of an opportunity to experience more enjoyment in life than he (e.g., 2:1–11). The alternate textual tradition is a causal clause, explaining why the ability to enjoy life is a gift from God: no one can experience enjoyment in life ‘apart from him,’ that is, apart from ‘the hand of God’ in 2:24. It is possible that internal evidence supports the alternate textual tradition.” — The NET Bible Notes
2:26- “If people please God, God will give them wisdom, knowledge, and joy. But sinners will get only the work of gathering and storing wealth that they will have to give to the ones who please God. So all their work is useless, like chasing the wind.” — New Century Version
As tempting as it is to read ourselves into the role of those who please God and cast everyone outside our group as sinners, we must note that Qoheleth seems to put himself in the sinners category. Though he was an Israelite who believed in God, he concluded that God had given him an unfulfilling life. Sometimes we mope about God’s favoring other people with blessing while we remain stuck in an unpleasant situation. But Qoheleth would likely lump all humans into the category of sinners who can’t quite make it to the top of life’s Sisyphean grind. Thus, a sinner to Qoheleth is not a moral wrongdoer as much as someone who just ended up on the bad side of an unpredictable God.
“The best you can do with your life is have a good time and get by the best you can. The way I see it, that’s it — divine fate. Whether we feast or fast, it’s up to God. God may give wisdom and knowledge and joy to his favorites, but sinners are assigned a life of hard labor, and end up turning their wages over to God’s favorites. Nothing but smoke — and spitting into the wind.” — The Message Bible
“The freedom Koheleth offers us is freedom from ignorance and foolishness; freedom from the illusion of surety, security, and permanence; freedom from the mad drive to protect ourselves from the vicissitudes of life through the pursuit of money and possessions. He teaches us how to navigate the chaos of life without hiding behind a false sense of order, imposed either by ourselves, by nature, or by God. Koheleth’s God isn’t the regulator of chaos but the creator of it. The way of The God (HaElohim), as Koheleth calls reality, does not lead us out of chaos, but into it. The way of The God doesn’t promise us happiness, wealth, or health in this world and doesn’t even imagine a world to come. The way of The God, the way of Koheleth, is learning how to find joy in food, drink, work, partnership, friendship, and love. This is not a teaching you can afford to neglect.” — Ecclesiastes: Annotated & Explained, Rabbi Rami Shapiro
Bible Project posits the beauty of life as the very fact you cannot control it. You get to experience it as it comes to you even if that’s not how you think it should be. Your ability to enjoy your life is tied to your understanding that you do not control your life. If you start with the understanding that you can’t control this thing, maybe you’ll have some fun in the mean time. Living by Proverbs will help, but it doesn’t solve all the problems. The right thing to do doesn’t guarantee success. It is just a better way of life. In the meantime, enjoy the conversation with a friend or a good meal. This is the good life.
Tim Mackie ended a sermon on Ecclesiastes years ago with the following quote from Blaise Pascal’s Pensees. It’s a fitting end to our discussion here today.
“We are never satisfied with the present.
We anticipate the future as too slow in coming, as if we can hasten its course; or we recall the past, to stop its too rapid flight.
We are so unwise that we wander about in times which are not ours, and do not think of the only one which belongs to us; and we are so idle that we dream of those times which are no more, and thoughtlessly overlook the only one that exists.
It’s because the present is generally painful to us. We conceal it from our sight, because it troubles us; and if it is delightful to us, we regret to see it pass away.
We try to sustain it by the future, and think of controlling matters which are not in our power, preparing for a time which we have no certainty of reaching. Let each one examine his thoughts, and he will find them all occupied with the past and the future.
We scarcely ever think of the present; and if we think of it, it is only to take light from it to arrange the future.
The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means; the future alone is our end.
So we never live, but hope to live; and, as we are always preparing to be happy, it is inevitable we should never be so.”