Coping with Change - Ecclesiastes

Walter C. Kaiser Jr.

• Publisher: Christian Focus Publication
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781781912232

1

ENJOYING LIFE AS A
GIFT FROM GOD

Ecclesiastes 1:1–2:26

Unlike the stories of the Old Testament, Ecclesiastes is not a narrative with a plot line running through it, exhibiting an easily identifiable beginning, a climactic high point somewhere in the middle, and an ending. Nevertheless, there is a strong progression of thought found within this book, despite strong declamations by a host of commentators to the contrary. What unifies this book is the assertion that there is a God-given joy that can be found in life even though a strong bass-pedal note of “breath,” “mist,” “transience” or “change” is played against the more central search for some kind of fixed point of reference and meaning in one’s work. This book points to learning and living, that yields enjoyment to life itself and joy in such basic functions of life such as eating, drinking and happiness in one’s work.

THE MEANING OF HEBREW HEBEL

This bass-pedal note, to speak metaphorically for the moment, is struck immediately in Ecclesiastes 1:2 with its fivefold repetition of the Hebrew word hebel: “hebel hebalim, says the Teacher, hebel hebalim, everything is hebel”—traditionally rendered, “Vanity of vanities,” says the Teacher, “vanity of vanities! All is vanity.”

But is that the correct meaning of hebel? What has traditionally been rendered as “vanity,” “emptiness” or “meaninglessness,” is literally “breath, vapor, mist, smoke.”¹ It would appear, argued layman Fobert in his excellent study, that the assumption for most commentators was that “vapor, breath” and similar renderings of hebel implied “emptiness, futility, vanity, or meaninglessness.” But was that a fair way to render hebel?

These negative translations seem to have begun with the improper rendering that the Septuagint (completed around 280 B.C.) gave to this key term. In that Greek translation of the Bible, hebel was rendered by the Greek word mataiotes (the Greek word used in Romans 8:20), which does mean “emptiness,” “futility” or “purposelessness.” Jerome (c. A.D. 345–c. 419) more or less sealed this tradition when he rendered hebel in the Latin Vulgate as “vanitas,” which the King James followed with its “vanity” and the NIV furthered with its adjectival rendering of the Hebrew noun hebel as “meaningless.”

But not all the early translations followed the lead of the Septuagint, for Aquila (A.D. 117-138), Theodotion (second-century A.D.) and Symmachus (late second-century A.D.) used a different Greek term, namely: atmos, or atmis, “breath” or “mist.” Moreover, a number of modern translations rendered hebel in a concrete (as opposed to an abstract or metaphorical) manner in other Old Testament books—“vapor, breath, fog.” On other occasions, the shortness, or the brevity, of life was found in the root idea of this word, as for example in Psalm 39:5, 6, 11 (“Each person’s life is but a breath…Each one is but a breath”, NIV). It could be said, of course, that “breath” is invisible; therefore, it too can be associated metaphorically with “nothingness” and “emptiness.” “Mist,” on the other hand, can be seen, like a “fog.” But so could “breath” be seen on a cold day.

In a strikingly similar manner, the book of James in the New Testament (4:13-15) likens a person’s life to “the morning fog—it’s here for a while and then it’s gone.” The Greek word that James used here is related to the Greek form preferred by Aquila, Theodotion and Symmachus: atmis. Therefore, James used the concrete form of this word to signify that the mist or fog was “temporary” and “transient.” Could it be that James had Ecclesiastes in mind when he used this term? Surely, James was not cynical about life, or one who had despaired of living, as some accuse Qoheleth of being. James, then, appears to have rejected mataiotes, with its meaning of “emptiness” or the like, in preference for atmis, “mist” or “fog,” which emphasized the “transience” and “changes” that come in life instead. There is also another aspect of “mist” or “fog,” and that is that in addition to being temporary, it makes things difficult to discern and therefore probably carries the idea of being “puzzling” as well. So with this as a fresh starting point, let us see the difference this new rendering of the introduction to this book makes to the commentary on the whole book.

VIEWING THE CALL FOR US TO ENJOY LIFE
FROM THE CONCLUSION OF THE SECTION:
Ecclesiastes 2:24-26

The writer of Ecclesiastes believed that his book was an argument that came to a grand conclusion in 12:13-14. Therefore, we can fairly propose, as was argued in the introductory chapter, that each of his four sections added something to the progress and development of that argument. Consequently, the best way to begin to analyze the book is to look at each of the four conclusions to the four sections of the book, which in the first section comes in Ecclesiastes 2:24-26. By this means, we should be able to determine where the writer, Solomon, believed the first section of his argument led him in its argumentation. If we can accurately understand that sub-conclusion, we might then be able to follow with greater certainty the approach he took in leading up to that first step toward the grand conclusion to his whole book.

The first section of Ecclesiastes ends by saying:

²⁴There is nothing [inherently] good in a person [to enable one] to eat, drink and cause one’s soul to see good in one’s labor. Even this, I myself realized, was from the hand of God.

²⁵For apart from him [God], who can eat and who can find enjoyment?

²⁶For to the person who is pleasing before him, he [God] gives wisdom, knowledge and joy; but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and amassing [things or wealth?], [only] to give to one who is pleasing in God’s sight. This too is a puzzle/transitory and a vexation of spirit.

Two principles are quickly established from these verses:

• The possession of the blessings and “goods” of life are a gift from God. All good things must be received and understood as coming from the hand of God if they are to be used properly and joyfully.
• Men and women definitely do not have it within themselves or in their own innate abilities to extract enjoyment from life or from any of life’s most mundane functions, such as eating, drinking, or enjoying the purchasing power of a paycheck. Only God can give that ability to those who come to Him in belief, even for such basic functions of life, not to mention even higher values.

This translation of 2:24-26, and the two principles derived from it, must, of course, be substantiated by the passage itself. Especially noticeable is the fact that we did not translate verse 24 to say, “There is nothing better than…,” or “A man can do nothing better than...”; however, a somewhat similar phrase indicating such a comparison does appear later on, for example, in 3:12 and 8:15. Scholars uniformly assume that a Hebrew word indicating “than” (Hebrew min, “from”) has dropped out of the Hebrew text of 2:24, because it does appear in the other two passages. But no textual evidence supports that assumption, even though the translators of most English versions have adopted it. They reasoned, apparently, that the point of Qoheleth is that nothing is left for mankind but to try to calmly enjoy the present. The present is all that is left to man. The best that man can do is to get some physical pleasure out of life while he can. But as Leupold argues,² the only translation of verse 24 that is in harmony with verses 25-26 and that properly leads into chapter 3 is: “There is not a good [that is inherent] in man.” There is simply not a comparative statement being made in verse 24, but a statement about what is, or is not, a residual entity within mortals themselves. Neither is the preposition (Hebrew be; unique in this formula) in the phrase “There is not a good [inherent] in man” (emphasis added) to be equated with a different preposition (Hebrew le, “for”) in 6:12 and 8:15.

Thus we must conclude that even the most mundane and earthly things of life do not lie within a man’s grasp to achieve for himself by his own endeavors. The source of all good, contrary to the expectations of most systems of humanism and idealism, cannot be located in man. “One doesn’t have it” in one’s self, as the saying goes. It is all beyond all of us. Rather, it must come from God. Mortals must get accustomed to realizing that if one is to receive satisfaction from one’s food and drink, that satisfaction, like all joyous gifts, will have to come from the hand of God.

Verse 25 reaffirms the principle that “apart from me/him,” no one is able to eat or enjoy anything. Some versions read “apart from me,” (i.e., many Hebrew texts do in fact have mimmenni, “apart from me”), that is, as if it spoke of the laborer in the first person: “Who but I should be first to enjoy my labors?” But eight Hebrew manuscripts, the early Greek translation (Septuagint), the Coptic version, the Syriac, and Jerome’s Vulgate all read “apart from him,” that is, God. This meaning also fits the context best and is not as awkward as is the first-person rendering. Thus, the situation is as Delitzsch concluded:

In enjoyment man is not free; it depends not on his own will: labor and enjoyment of it do not stand in a necessary connection; but enjoyment is a gift which God imparts.³

What, then, is the basis on which God distributes His goods and His gift of enjoyment to men? Verse 26 presents that ground. So unexpected is the message of the verse in the eyes of some interpreters that they attribute this verse to a pious writer who added it on his own. How, they ask, can a verse that argues that the good things of life come to those who please God be fitted into the general argument of the rest of the book? This view, they complain, is too cheerful about the state of affairs of life to sit easily with the book’s general argument.

But verse 26 merely substantiates the second statement found in verse 24; namely, that the gift of eating and drinking and getting satisfaction from one’s work is from the hand of God. The basis of this award is “pleasing God.” The opposite of being a God-pleaser is being “one who continues to live in sin.” The same contrast between being pleasing to God and being a “sinner” is found in 7:26 and 8:12-13. Those two characteristics are also carefully defined: a sinner is “one who does not fear God,” and thus he is “an evil doer,” whereas the man pleasing God will fear Him and do good.

Now to this God-pleaser are granted wisdom, knowledge, and joy as divine gifts. All three are gifts, and joy is last in the order, for it is the real turning point and perhaps the most emphasized point of this section. Previously the writer had viewed wisdom, knowledge, and joy separately and by themselves as possible keys to satisfaction and meaning in life (1:16-17; 2:1). But since they were not received as gifts from God and in the context of “pleasing” Him, that is, fearing and serving Him, he had judged them at that time to be “a vexation of spirit” (1:17) and “transitory” (2:1) in their abiding value.

Was this [the gift from God] also ... “transitory and a weariness of spirit”? Hardly. In verse 26, the reference is to the frustrating activity of the sinner, who is also divinely given a task. But in his case the task was a troublesome business of gathering and amassing, only to lose it to those who pleased God. All too often some wealthy men have accumulated such huge estates that their heirs were not even able to pay the taxes on the massive numbers of buildings and grounds, so that they were sold or donated to charitable organizations as a tax write-off, or were given outright to Christian institutions or charity. Commentators incorrectly say the referent of “this also is hebel” is precisely the three gifts of “wisdom, knowledge, and joy,” but how in anybody’s view can God’s gifts to mortals be classified as so much “vapor,” or as being as transitory as “mist, and as elusive as blowing of the wind”?

Mortals in general, for all their so-called puzzling and vexatious toil in accumulating as much as they can in as brief a time as possible, often see their wealth afterward converted to other uses than what they had envisioned it to be in its final state. If only the sinner would come to know God, and if only that one would then receive from God the ability to enjoy the possession of all things, then that person too could experience God’s joy and see the good God was doing in this world. In his or her hopes of finding joy in the security of owning what each has carefully stored up around themselves, the final stroke of irony is, and always will be, that the sinner will be forever cut off from that one possession dearer than all others—that is from joy itself.

Solomon’s experience is conclusive on this point; few persons have exceeded the bounds of such massive possessions as he had; yet they, too, lacked happiness, wisdom, and knowledge as Solomon did when he began “living in sin”—so argued the conclusion to the first section of Ecclesiastes.

In coming to this conclusion, Solomon sets forth five arguments that are contained in the five subdivisions in chapters one and two that precede the concluding verses:

A. 1:3-11—The Stability of Nature and the Transience of We Who Are Mortals

B. 1:12-18—The Search for Wisdom as Our Answer

C. 2:1-11—The Search for the Joy in Our Work

D. 2:12-16—The Examination of the Advantage of Wisdom Over Folly for Us

E. 2:17-23—A Provisional Summary to Our Search Thus Far

F. 2:24-26—Conclusion

A. 1:3-11—The Stability of Nature and the Transience of We Who Are Mortals

³What does a person gain for all one’s labor at which one toils under the sun?

⁴A generation comes and a generation goes, yet the earth remains forever.

⁵The sun rises and the sun sets, then hurries to the place where it arises [again].

⁶The wind blows to the south and turns to the north, round and round the wind keeps going, yet the wind always returns to its course.

⁷All the rivers flow into the sea, yet the sea does not overflow. To the place from which the streams flow, there they return again.

⁸All words are wearisome; more than one can express; the eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing.

⁹What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be again; there is nothing new under the sun.

¹⁰Is there anything of which it may be said, “Look! this is new?” Already it was here, long ago; it was here before our time!

¹¹There is no lasting remembrance of former [persons], and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those coming after them.

The Teacher’s rhetorical question (so typical of wisdom literature) opens this section and sets the tone for the whole book: “What does a person gain for all one’s labors at which one toils under the sun?” The word “profit” or “gain” appears in this book only fourteen times. The Greek Septuagint translation rendered perisseia, “surplus.” Some think this verse asks the question, “What advantage does one get from all their toil under the sun?”

Most commentators on Ecclesiastes see this question as the key problem that the whole book seeks to address. Unfortunately, that same majority of commentators incorrectly answer that the “gains, advantages,” or “profits” were simply: “Nothing!” They think that hebel (1:2) means that everything is so “empty,” so “absurd,” and so “meaningless” that the only proper response to this rhetorical question is a completely negative answer. What a conclusion for a divine revelation from God! If this were so, perhaps the book should have stopped right at this point, don’t you think?

That is why Mr. Fobert has so succinctly concluded, “…why did he [Solomon] bother to continue writing the book, if everything is empty and meaningless[?] For if all of life is that ’absurd,’ -- end of discussion; end of book!” ⁴ However, contrary to such a negative conclusion, the writer went on to give a much more positive outlook in the chapters that followed.

But notice again what happens if in 1:2 the translation of hebel is changed from “vanity, emptiness,” or “meaninglessness” to the more accurate sense of “mist, change, transience,” or “puzzling.” Now the question can take on a different tone, for now what is in mind is this: “If everything in life is so temporary, so changing, and so un-lasting, what does anyone get for all their hard work?”

Solomon does not answer that question here; he merely poses the question at this point. Later, he will return to this question on four separate occasions, in 3:9; 5:11; 5:16; and 6:8. There he will begin to answer this key question.

One final note about this central question of the book: even though it appears from 1:3 that our Teacher will limit his search to “under the sun,” (used twenty-nine times in Ecclesiastes and nowhere else in the Old Testament) it must be remembered that he has the unusual help of divine inspiration and answers from “above the sun!” An alternative expression appears three times: “under the heavens,” (1:13; 2:3; 3:1; also in Gen 6:17; Exod. 17:14; Deut 7:24; 9:14). To claim that this meant that our Teacher deliberately restricted himself only to what could be observed “under the sun” would ...

Table of contents

• Testimonials
• Title
• Indicia
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. Enjoying Life as a Gift from God
• 2. Understanding the All-encompassing Plan of God
• 3. Explaining and Applying the Plan of God
• 4. Removing Discouragements to the Plan of God
• Select Bibliography
• Other books from Christian Focus
• Christian Focus