Christ in Ecclesiastes

Ecclesiastes opens with a word the New Testament will pick up and turn toward hope. The Preacher pronounces everything vanity - Hebrew hevel , a breath, a vapor (v. 2) - and he measures it all from one vantage he names again and again: under the sun (vv. 3, 9, 14). From there nothing is new ( there is no new thing under the sun , v. 9), nothing fills ( the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing , v. 8), and nothing is remembered (v. 11). This is…

Ecclesiastes 2 is the most thorough experiment in human satisfaction ever recorded, and it is honest enough to report its own failure. The Preacher denies himself nothing - mirth, wine, great works, houses, vineyards, gardens, servants, herds, silver, gold, singers, the delights of the sons of men (vv. 1-8) - and reaches the same verdict every time: all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun (v. 11). The book’s recurring phrase, under the…

Ecclesiastes 3 opens with the most famous poem in the book - To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die (vv. 1-2) - fourteen matched pairs that hand the whole of a life, its making and its unmaking, over to appointed times the Preacher does not set. Behind them stands a quiet confession of faith: He hath made every thing beautiful in his time (v. 11). Then comes the line the chapter turns on, and the…

Ecclesiastes 4 is written from the vantage the Preacher keeps naming - life seen under the sun , by daylight reasoning alone - and from there the loneliness of the world looks total. He sees the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter (v. 1), and says it twice, as though searching the horizon and finding no one. That ache is the chapter’s deepest note, and the New Testament answers it by name: the Son comes to comfort all that mourn (Isa. 61:2-3, claimed…

Ecclesiastes 5 takes up the two places a person most easily fools himself - before God and before money - and the Gospel speaks to both. To the careless worshipper the Preacher says, Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God… let thy words be few (vv. 1-2), and warns that a vow once made is binding: When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it… better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay (vv. 4-5). The On…

Ecclesiastes 6 lays bare an ache that no amount of having can cure. A man is given riches, wealth, and honour , lacks nothing he desires, and yet God giveth him not power to eat thereof (v. 2) - the goods are all present, the enjoyment withheld. Beneath that single case the Preacher finds the universal wound: All the labour of man is for his mouth, and yet the appetite is not filled (v. 7). The Hebrew behind “appetite” is nephesh , the soul itself, and the line confesses t…

Ecclesiastes 7 weighs life with the word better , and what it weighs out points beyond itself. Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better (v. 3); it is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting (v. 2). The Preacher will not flee grief, because grief teaches what feasting cannot - and the One the New Testament names is a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief (Isa. 53:3), who wept at a g…

Ecclesiastes 8 takes up the oldest ache of faith - that the wicked seem to escape and the righteous to suffer - and refuses to look away. Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil (v. 11); there be just men, unto whom it happeneth according to the work of the wicked; again, there be wicked men, to whom it happeneth according to the work of the righteous (v. 14). The Preacher names…

Ecclesiastes 9 is the Preacher’s most unflinching look at death and his most energetic call to live - and both halves point beyond the chapter’s own horizon. He sees that there is one event to the righteous, and to the wicked (v. 2), that the grave levels every distinction, and that from where the living stand the dead are cut off from every labour and reward under the sun (vv. 5-6). His counsel is not despair but vigor: Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy mi…

Ecclesiastes 10 watches how a very little folly spoils a great deal of good - Dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savour: so doth a little folly him that is in reputation for wisdom and honour (v. 1) - and it sets, all through, the wise way of speaking and working over against the fool’s. Two of its lines reach toward the One the New Testament names the wisdom of God. The first is its picture of speech: The words of a wise man’s mouth a…

Ecclesiastes 11 turns a whole book’s worth of uncertainty into a summons to bold, glad, generous action, and the Gospel takes up its images directly. Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days (v. 1) - an apparent loss that returns after long delay - reads like the seed the Lord describes: Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit (John 12:24). The generosity the Preacher c…

Ecclesiastes 12 is where the whole long search comes to rest, and it rests on a Person. After eleven chapters of weighing everything under the sun and finding it vanity - a breath that rises and is gone - the Preacher turns the gaze upward and gives the first imperative of the book’s ending: Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth (v. 1). The New Testament names the Creator who is to be remembered: All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing ma…