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Proverbs & Ecclesiastes (Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible)
Treier, Daniel J.
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Proverbs & Ecclesiastes (Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible)
Treier, Daniel J.
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Pastors and leaders of the classical church interpreted the Bible theologically, believing Scripture as a whole witnessed to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Modern interpreters of the Bible questioned this premise. But in recent decades, a critical mass of theologians and biblical scholars has begun to reassert the priority of a theological reading of Scripture. The Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible enlists leading theologians to read and interpret Scripture for the twenty-first century. In this addition to the well-received series, Daniel Treier offers theological exegesis of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes.
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Commentaire bibliqueINTRODUCTION
NOTHING IS REALLY NEW OR LASTING (UNDER THE SUN)
Ecclesiastes 1:1â11
The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction. Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, âDo it againâ; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, âDo it againâ to the sun; and every evening, âDo it againâ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.119
Whose words? âThe words of the Teacher,â 1:1 announces, raising several questions about how these words relate to the divine Word in scripture.
First, what about the indirectness that follows? There is no straightforward plunge into narrative (as in Genesis or Job) or divine blessing and worship (as in Psalms) or a sermon from Moses (as in Deuteronomy); these are not âthe proverbs of Solomon.â The most we can say is that, as in Jeremiah and Amos, âthe words of . . .â introduces collected sayings. The fact of their collection already hints at editorial presentation and, since this is now a scriptural text, canonical evaluation of the material.
Second, what is the identity of âthe Teacherâ? Is the Hebrew term qĆhelet a proper noun or a title? The construct form âwords ofâ followed by a noun has the above parallels and others, such as Neh. 1:1, where a specific person is narrated in Israelâs salvation history: âThe words of Nehemiah son of Hacaliah. In the month of Chislev, in the twentieth year, while I was in Susa the capital.â Yet the noun in Ecclesiastes is unknown as a proper noun, but is related to a verbâfor âcallingâ or âassembling.â Thus qĆhelet designates a function or occupation; since no other proper noun is provided, it is sometimes handy to refer to this speaker as âQoheleth.â He is not likely speaking in front of a gathered community as a contemporary preacher or professor would, so renaming Qoheleth âthe Preacherâ or âthe Teacherââthough frequently temptingâmisleads. The end of the book (12:9â10) clarifies the sense in which Qoheleth taught: whether or not he assembled an audience, as a wise man he assembled and arranged proverbs. The best name for the bookâs main voice is therefore âthe Sage,â a person of wise character whose skill in reflecting upon life gets preeminently put to use in writing, apparently behind the scenes.
Third, how do these words relate to Solomon? Are he and Qoheleth one and the same figure? In 1 Kgs. 8, Solomon assembles the leaders of Israel for the sake of dedicating the temple. Moreover, Ecclesiastes immediately identifies the Sage as a son of David and king in Jerusalem. Hence it was natural for ancient Jews and Christians to see King Solomon as the author. The Latin title âEcclesiastesâ is directly borrowed from the Greek ekklÄsia, which could designate nothing more than an assembly (stemming from qĆhelet). But of course ekklÄsia calls to mind the church as well. On this reading Solomon typifies Jesus Christ, drawing together people âfrom the ends of the earth to listen to . . . [his] wisdomâ (Matt. 12:42; Origen, Commentary on the Song of Songs, prologue, in Ancient Christian Writers 26.39â46, 51â52).
Origen influenced early Christians to see Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs in terms of a pattern for becoming wise unto salvation. For the beginning of the Christian pilgrimage, Proverbs is Solomonâs book of âthe most basic religious instruction,â regarding âgood conduct.â At the end, Song of Songs is Solomonâs book of âthe most sublime religious achievements,â regarding âthe mystical contemplation of divine things.â Ecclesiastes stands in the middle, pertaining âto those whose religious instruction is already significantly under way, but who have yet to attain the highest goals of that instruction. It is the next to last stop in the project of learning to love.â A parallel structure appears in Danteâs medieval Commedia with its threefold organization according to Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso (Christianson 2007: 38â39): first the conversion by which one begins the journey away from hell; then the purgation by which one ultimately becomes fit for paradise and the vision of God. Whatever one makes of the Song of Songs, the first two stages highlight real progression: the wisdom of Proverbs sets a person on the path of fearing the Lord; the Sage in Ecclesiastes purges us of naĂŻve and wrongful earthly attachments, advancing that holy fear.
Despite these insights, the classic âJesus is the Ecclesiastâ approach works against the tendency to see these words as those of an aging, repentant Solomon. If part of the point of Solomonic authorship is his autobiographyâEcclesiastes offering the reflections of a king for whom wisdom had to become more than worldly skill, via the school of self-imposed spiritual hard knocksâthen it is hard to press the parallels to Christ very far. Indeed, the text itself works against directly Solomonic authorship. For one reason, Ecclesiastes lacks the proper noun âSolomonâ provided directly in Proverbs. For another reason, the text presents Qoheleth in the third person, not only at the beginning and the end but also in the middleâat 7:27. For a third reason, there are apparently hints of criticism regarding Solomonâs successors (e.g., 2:19).120
It is not necessary to settle authorship as a historical question. Rather, discerning the textâs self-presentation has implications for how its message works with the Solomonic persona. Solomonic authorship, though not necessarily impossible, threatens to obscure the indirectness and the canonical filter through which we gain access to and evaluation of the Sageâs words. This filter also grants perspective on Solomon himself as the paragon of human wisdom. If Solomon wrote the book, then he certainly did so with a great deal of self-critical awareness and not always as a positive christological figure. The vocation of the Sage vis-Ă -vis the Messiah, in some cases, is to depict the fall from which we are redeemed, not just the paragon of redemption. The proof of the pudding on this score becomes clearer as the bookâs quest advances, particularly in Eccl. 7.
Fourth, then, how do these words relate to Jesus? Little in Ecclesiastes points explicitly to Christ, as if these words and the Sageâs persona were typical of the Son of God or his most direct address to the church. Yet not all divine speech in scripture occurs via prophetic oracle in which we hear, âThus says the Lord.â The Bible also takes up human wordsâin this case, with all their traces of our experience and struggleâfor us to weigh them and be prodded by them as we pursue the fear of the Lord (12:9â14). These words can teach wisdom precisely because of their earthyâeven edgyâcharacter. In other words, the best way to read this Old Testament book christologically is to take seriously the full depth of its portrayal of human experienceâwarts and all. We can see more clearly what it means for Jesus Christ to be our wisdom only when wisdomâs worldly paragonâno less than the biblical Solomonâgets taken down a notch or two: âJews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of Godâ (1 Cor. 1:22â24).
All is hebel. Ecclesiastes 1:2 continues the verbal indirectness, with âsays the Teacher,â while announcing the bookâs most prominent term: hebel. Its virtual restatement in 12:8 forms an inclusio, sandwiching the body of the book inside. In English its most frequent translation, or cultural association anyway, is âvanityâ (e.g., RSV, NRSV, NASB). But possibilities abound: âmeaninglessâ (NIV, TNIV); â[absolute] futilityâ (Holman Christian Standard Bible); âutterly absurdâ;121 â[utterly] enigmaticâ (Bartholomew 2009: 104â7); and so forth. Such translations present to readers the fruit of skilled interpretersâ labor. Yet they threaten to obscure a basic metaphor and a key question, as well as a long history of interpretation.
The basic metaphor is vapor. We can see its importance by noting the connection with âchasing after windâ (1:14; 2:11, 17, 26; 4:4, 16; 6:9). The metaphorical concreteness is further evident with hebel applying âunder the sun.â Ironically, then, the âbreathâ most fundamentally associated with the word vanishes quickly in a haze of abstract translations, all with negative connotations. The key question likewise vanishes: whether the meaning of hebel is the same in every case throughout or instead involves nuances that sometimes call for different terms.
To be fair to translators, they face a virtually impossible task. Nevertheless, readers need to become familiar with a complex history of interpretation in order to situate the word properly within a context of linguistic and churchly actions and reactions. Christianson 2007: 140 summarizes this history in five stages. First, the contemptus mundi (âcontempt for the worldâ) readingâpopularized by Jeromeâsuggested that since everything earthly is vanity, the book points toward the love of God and our future heavenly home. Second, from Martin Luther and other Protestant (especially Puritan) commentators, is the opposite approach, which rejects the use of Ecclesiastes to call for asceticism and instead highlights the bookâs calls to earthly joy. Navigating the tensions between these two stages frames the chief challenge of theological commentary. The third through fifth stages, from the Renaissance through early modernity to the present, manifest more fragmentary appeals to particular expressions from the book, chiefly oriented around its preoccupation with death. Reflection on death resonates with the focus on human experience that characterized these ages, of concern to all people, not just Jews and orthodox Christians. But the challenge remains to move beyond resonating with the poetry and memorable proseâto understand how the affirmations of joy in Ecclesiastes relate to its hebel motif and thereby to discern what theological message emerges from all this material on facing death.
Jerome, whose Latin translation of the scriptures dominated Western culture for centuries, did not follow early Greek translators who understood hebel as vapor. Instead he went with the Septuagintâs Greek rendering (mataiotÄs) and thus introduced the abstract vanitas to render hebel. While the Latin vanitas could include less negative meanings such as âunsubstantialâ or âlacking in permanenceâ within its semantic range, the meanings âuseless,â âfutile,â or âillusoryâ came to dominate.122 The early Christians struggled with this reading: âIf everything that God made is very good, then how can everything be vanityâand not only vanity, but even vanity of vanities?â (Jerome, Commentary on Ecclesiastes 1.2, in Corpus Christianorum: Series Latina 72.252 and Wright 2005: 194). Augustine and others answered this with respect to humanityâs fall into sin and Godâs resulting curse on creation. Yet, though acknowledging the beauty of Godâs creation as such, Augustine asserted that âcorporeal beauty is the lowest beautyâ (Of True Religion 21.41, in Library of Christian Classics 6.244â45), quite apart from the fall that also factors into vanity. This sort of thinking appears strikingly in Origen, who equates vanity with the material body (On First Principles 1.7.5, in ANF 4.264). The appropriate response to this situation would be asking God to âturn my eyes from looking at vanitiesâ (Ps. 119:37). The true message of Ecclesiastes tells these readers, âSet your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earthâ (Col. 3:2).
Luther, however, believed that such classic readers taught âcontempt of things that have been created and established by God. Among these is St. Jerome, who by writing a commentary on this book urged Blesilla to accept the monastic life. From this source there arose and spread over the entire church, like a flood, that theology of the religious orders or monasteries.â123 The affirmation of ordinary life became a badge of Protestant identity and tremendously influenced the development of the modern West. Amid all these options and opinions regarding hebel, what should we make of the contemptus mundi tradition in a commentary that takes seriously the churchâs classic heritage? About hebel, as with so much else, seeking too much clarity is like chasing after wind. However, what can we say with some confidence, especially in relation to the rest of scripture?
First, hebel is probably one among the many allusions in Ecclesiastes to Genesis: in this case, to Abel. The fleetingness of his godly young life seems absurd, like much that the Sage ponders. Cain too may be present in Ecclesiastes, with an echo in the verb for buying (qÄnĂą) in 2:7. So is Adam, whose name names our species.
The names of the two brothers are heavy with portent: Permanence and Impermanence, Possession and Ephemerality. Koheleth sees that in a profound way the history of adam, humankind, mirrors the history of the younger brother Hevel/Abel, who enters the biblical narrative only to die. His death is nonsensical, as is every murder. But is his life then meaningless, entirely absurd? The one thing we know about Hevel/Abel is that he offered the best of his flock as a sacrifice that brought God pleasure (Gen. 4:4). And is not just that the point of human life, to give some pleasure to God, to make our work in this world holy by offering something of it to God?124
Second, strongly negative translations of hebel generate inconsistencies. Farmer notes: âOnly one verse (the last verse in the book of Proverbs) separates Prov. 31:30 from Ecclesiastes in Christian Bibles. But ironically, some modern English versions (such as the NIV and New American Bible), which recognize that hebel means âfleetingâ in Prov. 31:30 (âbeauty is fleetingâ), translate the same word two verses later (in Eccl. 1:2) as âmeaninglessâ and âvain.ââ125 Of course there is no need to adopt a monolithic translation policy of always using the same word. However flexible hebel in Ecclesiastes may be, though, value remains in having some translations signal the wordâs presence with the same English gloss, especially given nearly constant repetition throughout the book. Mere vapor hovers somewhere in the background, even if presenting causes or manifestations vary in particular contexts.
Third, there are New Testament echoes to consider. Paul speaks in Rom. 8:20â21 of Godâs subjecting creation to âvanityâ (mataiotÄs) with a view to its redemption. James 4:14 refers to our lives being like âmistâ (atmis) that vanishes quickly. Making this connection clear, among others, is the Codex Vaticanus translation of Eccl. 9:9 with atmos. âMeaninglessnessâ would be too strong in Rom. 8, while fleetingness is clearly the key concern of Jas. 4. So far, we have reasons for taking hebel in a less negative sense than many usually do.
Fourth, however, almost half of the thirty-two hebel occurrences outside Ecclesiastes deal with idols, so in some cases the transitory nature of life is not the key issue. Despite the despairing tone in a number of passages, whatever this condition is, ââvanityâ does not mark a world without God; it marks a world subjected by God.â126 In the words of Ellul 1990: 53, âSmoke or mist diffuses; it has no result: it is not nothingness!â This emphasis on divinely ordained (lack of) results is especially important in light of another major theme in Ecclesiastes, profit, which is announced by way of a question in 1:3. What causes the lack of results to render everything hebel is human preoccupation with turning life toward oneâs permanent advantage: in short, idolatry. Thus Rom. 1:21 becomes relevant, describing idolatrous pagans: âFor though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, ...