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Introduction
to Ecclesiastes
This summary of the book of Ecclesiastes provides information
about the title, author(s), date of writing, chronology, theme, theology,
outline, a brief overview, and the chapters of the Book of Ecclesiastes.
No time period or writer's name is mentioned in the book, but
several passages suggest that King Solomon may be the author (1:1,12,16; 2:4-9; 7:26-29; 12:9; cf. 1Ki
2:9; 3:12; 4:29-34; 5:12; 10:1-8). On the other hand, the writer's title
("Teacher," Hebrew qoheleth; see note on 1:1), his unique style of
Hebrew and his attitude toward rulers (suggesting that of a subject rather than
a monarch -- see, e.g., 4:1-2; 5:8-9; 8:2-4; 10:20) may point to another person and a later
period (see note on 1:1).
The author of Ecclesiastes puts his powers of wisdom to work to
examine the human experience and assess the human situation. His perspective is
limited to what happens "under the sun" (as is that of all the wisdom
teachers). He considers life as he has experienced and observed it between the
horizons of birth and death -- life within the boundaries of this visible
world. His wisdom cannot penetrate beyond that last horizon; he can only
observe the phenomenon of death and perceive the limits it places on human
beings. Within the limits of human experience and observation, he is concerned
to spell out what is "good" for people to do. And he represents a
devout wisdom. Life in the world is under God -- for all its enigmas. Hence what
begins with "Meaningless! Meaningless!" (1:2) ends with "Remember your Creator"
(12:1) and "Fear God and keep his
commandments" (12:13).
With a wisdom matured by many years, he takes the measure of human
beings, examining their limits and their lot. He has attempted to see what
human wisdom can do (1:13,16-18; 7:24; 8:16), and he has discovered that human wisdom,
even when it has its beginning in "the fear of the Lord" (Pr 1:7), has limits to its powers when it attempts to go it
alone -- limits that circumscribe its perspectives and relativize its counsel.
Most significantly, it cannot find out the larger purposes of God or the
ultimate meaning of human existence. With respect to these it can only pose
questions.
Nevertheless, he does take a hard look at the human enterprise --
an enterprise in which he himself has fully participated. He sees a busy, busy
human ant hill in mad pursuit of many things, trying now this, now that,
laboring away as if by dint of effort humans could master the world, lay bare
its deepest secrets, change its fundamental structures, somehow burst through
the bounds of human limitations, build for themselves enduring monuments,
control their destiny, achieve a state of secure and lasting happiness --
people laboring at life with an overblown conception of human powers and
consequently pursuing unrealistic hopes and aspirations.
He takes a hard look and concludes that human life in this mode is
"meaningless," its efforts all futile.
What, then, does wisdom teach him?
Therefore wisdom counsels:
To sum up, Ecclesiastes provides instruction on how to live
meaningfully, purposefully and joyfully within the theocratic arrangement --
primarily by placing God at the center of one's life, work and activities, by
contentedly accepting one's divinely appointed lot in life, and by reverently
trusting in and obeying the Creator-King. Note particularly 2:24-26; 3:11-14,22; 5:18-20; 8:15; 9:7-10; 11:7 -- 12:1; 12:9-14 (see also any pertinent notes on these
passages).
The argument of Ecclesiastes does not flow smoothly. It meanders,
with jumps and starts, through the general messiness of human experience, to
which it is a response. There is also an intermingling of poetry and prose.
Nevertheless, the following outline seeks to reflect, at least in a general
way, the structure of the book and its main discourses. The announced theme of
"meaninglessness" (futility) provides a literary frame around the
whole (1:2;12:8). And the movement from the unrelieved
disillusionment of chs. 1 - 2 to the more serene tone and sober instructions
for life in chs. 11 - 12 marks a development in matured wisdom's
coming to terms with the human situation.
A striking feature of the book is its frequent use of key words
and phrases: e.g., "meaningless" (1:2;2:24-25), "work/labor/toil" (see note
on 2:10), "good/better" (2:1), "gift/give" (5:19), "under the sun" (1:3), "chasing after the wind" (1:14). Also to be noted is the presence of
passages interwoven throughout the book that serve as key indicators of the
author's theme and purpose: 1:2-3,14,17; 2:10-11,17,24-26; 3:12-13,22; 4:4,6,16; 5:18-20; 6:9,12; 7:14,24; 8:7,15,17; 9:7,12; 10:14; 11:2,5-6,8-9; 12:1,8,13-14 (see notes on these passages where
present). The enjoyment of life as God gives it is a key concept in the book
(see 2:24-25 and note, 26; 3:12-13 and note, 22; 5:18-20; 7:14; 8:15 and note; 9:7-9; 11:8-9).
I.
Author (1:1)
.
Because people must leave the fruits of their labor to others (2:18-26)
B.
Since people cannot fully know what is best to do or what the
future holds for them, they should enjoy now the life and work God has given
them (6:10;11:6)
V.
Discourse, Part 2: Since old age and death will soon come, people
should enjoy life in their youth, remembering that God will judge (11:7;12:7)
VI.
Theme Repeated (12:8)
──《New
International Version》
Introduction to Ecclesiastes
The name of this book signifies "The
Preacher." The wisdom of God here preaches to us, speaking by Solomon, who
it is evident was the author. At the close of his life, being made sensible of
his sin and folly, he recorded here his experience for the benefit of others,
as the book of his repentance; and he pronounced all earthly good to be
"vanity and vexation of spirit." It convinces us of the vanity of the
world, and that it cannot make us happy; of the vileness of sin, and its
certain tendency to make us miserable. It shows that no created good can
satisfy the soul, and that happiness is to be found in God alone; and this
doctrine must, under the blessed Spirit's teaching, lead the heart to Christ
Jesus.
── Matthew Henry《Concise Commentary on Ecclesiastes》
00 Introduction
ECCLESIASTES
INTRODUCTION
The Title and Date of the Book
The title of this book is derived from the Greek Septuagint, where
it appears as the representative of the Hebrew “Koheleth,” which has been
variously rendered preacher or debater. “Koheleth” is used throughout the work
as s synonym of “the son of David, king in Jerusalem,” i.e. Solomon; but
there can be little doubt that Solomon was not the real author, and that his
name was only assumed by a well-known and legitimate device for a literary
purpose. The first to discern the truth was Luther, who assigned the work to
the time of the Maccabees (circa 150 b.c.)
. The late date rests mainly on the evidence of the language, which is not that
of the ancient Hebrew, but of a decadent time, when many Aramaic words crept
into the Jewish vocabulary. (A. M. Mackay, B. A.)
We may mention three grounds for questioning the belief that
Solomon was the author.
1. The language shows traces of Hebrew words and forms later than his
time, and occurring only in such Old Testament books as Malachi, Daniel, Ezra.
2. Certain expressions and utterances cannot be attributed to Solomon:
(1)
“I,
Koheleth, was king” (Ecclesiastes 1:12), as though he had now
ceased to be such;
3. The tone of the book and the character of its teaching not only
suggest the period when the Persian empire had been overthrown, and Alexander
the Great’s successors had established Greek culture throughout the civilized
world, but also bear distinct
traces of Stoic and Epicurean philosophy. For the former, see Ecclesiastes 1:5-7; Ecclesiastes 1:9-11; Ecclesiastes 1:17; Ecclesiastes 2:12; Ecclesiastes 3:14-15; Ecclesiastes 7:25; Ecclesiastes 8:8; Ecclesiastes 9:11; Ecclesiastes 10:18; and for the latter, Ecclesiastes 2:24; Ecclesiastes 3:22; Ecclesiastes 5:18; Ecclesiastes 7:7; Ecclesiastes 8:9; Ecclesiastes 8:14; Ecclesiastes 9:7; Ecclesiastes 9:16; Ecclesiastes 10:16-18. We may observe
that the claim, such as it is, to personate the great king, is more conspicuous
in the earlier part of the book. Like Solomon, Koheleth had made trial of
wisdom, of wealth, and of the pleasures of art. But, whatever may have been his
thoughts, with respect to the darker side of Solomon’s closing years, the great
king evidently fades gradually from his mental vision, and he proceeds in the
remainder of this treatise to give us undisguisedly his own attitude towards
life and its problems. Here we plainly have before us in no sense the Solomon
of Jewish history, but a philosophical Jew of the later centuries before
Christ. (A. W. Streane, D. D.)
There is general agreement among the abler modern critics that the
book was written somewhere between the later period of Persian rule (circa 840
b.c.)
and some date before the Macedonian supremacy came to an end (say circa 200
b.c.). Within these limits it is impossible to fix any date with certainty, but
there is much probability in the theory originated by Mr. Tyler that the author
was a wealthy Jew who lived at Alexandria, and there in luxury and
philosophical culture sought compensation for the loss of national and
religious hopes which had left his nature impoverished; and who in old age
recorded how vain his quest had been. (A. M. Mackay, B. A.)
To me, it seems impossible to read verse after verse without
feeling that they have little or no meaning unless we look on them as the
outcome of a time of suffering and oppression. They seem to point steadily to
an age when national freedom was gone, national life extinguished for a time;
the spirit of freedom dead; the high memories of the past forgotten; the
Messianic hopes not yet rekindled; when the God of Hosts seemed far removed;
when all around was dark and gloomy; in days, it may be, when Persian, or
Syrian, or Egyptian kings ruled over the land of David as a province of their
kingdom, and the hopes of Israel seemed dead and gone--buried and out of sight.
Then, it might well come to pass that the spirit of some son of Israel was
stirred within him to try to reach his people’s heart, not by spoken word or
the stirring address of a Jewish prophet--the day of prophecy was over; not by
the music of a psalm--the psalmist’s harp was silent; not by a great poem like
the Book of Job--such poetry had died out of the nation’s heart; but by putting
forth in this half-articulate and ambiguous form a soliloquy or discourse, call
it which you will, breathing the very spirit of that later age--its sadness,
its languor, its passive and oriental aequiesecnce, almost lethargy, under
suffering. It bears the stamp, from first to last, of dejection, if not of
despair. Yet its still unrelinquished, pervading sense of the fear of God as
the end of life; its firm hold of the inherent distinction between right and
wrong; its refusal, in spite of all that seems to cloud the hope, to part with
the conviction of a judgment, a righteous judgment, yet to come; its counsels
of activity, patience, cheerfulness, prudence, calmness, sympathy with
suffering, stand out amidst the wreck and decay of all around. (Dean
Bradley.)
Ewald has advanced a twofold argument against assigning the
composition of this book to the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, and in favour of “the
last century of the Persian dominion.” The first is, that the writer complains,
“in an entirely new and unheard-of manner, of an excess of bookmaking and
reading.” It cannot, however, be shown that a difference in this respect
existed between the last century and the last but one of the Persian rule; and
to a time subsequent to this it is by no means allowable to look. The second
reason urged is, that “such harrowing pain and desperate cries of agony did not
characterize the earlier period of the Persian rule.” It must have become,
Ewald thinks, in its last years, more oppressive and violent. On this matter,
however, history furnishes no authentic information. (E. W. Hengstenberg, D.
D.)
Professor Cheyne, in agreement with Ewald and Delitzsch, assigns
the book to the Persian period, though rightly and fairly admitting that “the
evidence of the Hebrew favours a later date than that of Ewald,--favours, but
does not actually require it.” For he views with a well-founded scepticism the
attempts that have been made to trace in it the definite presence of Greek
philosophical ideas, and even to discover Graecisms in the language. The style
of Ecclesiastes is indeed almost that of the Mishnah (2nd cent. a.d.)
, and it must be a product of the time when that style was in process of
formation; but the alleged Graecisms do not appear to involve more than a
normal and intelligible extension of native Hebrew usage. (Professor S. R.
Driver.)
The Plan and Purpose of the Book
“Theologians,” says Herder, “have taken great pains to ascertain
the plan of the book; but the best course is to make as free a use of it as one
can, and for such a purpose the individual parts will serve.” A connected and
orderly argument, an elaborate arrangement of parts, is as little to be looked for
here as in the special portion of Proverbs which begins with chap. 10., or as
in the alphabetical psalms. It is a part of the peculiarity of the book to have
no such plan; and this characteristic greatly conduces to the breadth of its
views and the variety of its modes of representation. The thread which connects
all the parts together is simply the pervading reference to the circumstances and
moods, the necessities and grievances of the time. This it is that gives it
unity; and its author sets a good example to all those who are called to
address the men of our own generation, in that he never soars away into the clouds, nor wastes his
time in general reflections and commonplaces, but keeps constantly in view the
very Jews who were then groaning under Persian tyranny, to whose sick souls it
was his first duty to administer the wholesome medicine with which God had
entrusted him: by
ever fresh strokes and features he depicts their condition to them, little by
little he communicates the wisdom that is from above, and in the varying turns
of his discourse sets before them constantly the most important and essentially
saving truths. To further the fear of God and life in Him is the great purpose
of the writer in all that he advances; hence his assertion of the vanity of all
earthly things, for he alone can fully appreciate what a precious treasure man
has in God, who has learnt by living experience the truth, “vanity of vanities,
all is vanity.” (E. W. Hengstenberg, D. D.)
What, taken as a whole, are we to consider its moral? What was the
main lesson it was designed to teach?. Was the preacher whose experiences are
set forth meant to serve as a model to imitate or as a warning to avoid? For
such a variety of character as appears in the utterances of the writer is
almost without a precedent in so short a compass. Of course it is always more
or less a truth that by isolating the utterances of a writer, by extracting
single passages and detaching them from their context, we may make them appear
to teach very different truths, sometimes even contrary ones. But it is not
merely so here. In the Book of Ecclesiastes we pass rapidly through different
strata of thought and feeling. We pass from one temperature to another, from
something all but of the earth, earthy, to something almost heavenly in its
sense of beauty and goodness. At one moment we are listening to the confessions
of one who had tried pleasure and knew it was vanity, and at another we are at
the standpoint of the Stoic. Again, we seem very perilously near the scorn of
the cynic. At one moment we seem to be listening to the hopeless resignation of
the fatalist, and then again to the more hopeful resignation of the Christian.
There is what the artists call a want of keeping about the confessions and
conclusions of this writer. It is difficult to imagine a man passing so rapidly
from one to another, or, stranger still, being in all these moods at once,
combining so many different men in one single personality. But this should not
surprise us if we thought more, still less be a stumbling-block to us in
implying inconsistency in the character represented. It may be that the very
inconsistency of the teaching is meant to read us most salutary lessons. The
phrase used by an eminent teacher, “the criticism of life,” is very applicable
to this Book of Ecclesiastes. It is from end to end a criticism of life,
conducted by a critic who, having watched life’s experiences, sums up and
pronounces a verdict on it from the end of the life or from a period
approaching the end. As to the verdict itself there is no difference between
this critic and all those other critics of life whose writings constitute Holy
Scripture. He holds his place among those companions by virtue of having
arrived at the same conclusion as they, though by different paths of
experience. That of course makes the value, the incalculable value, of such a
book. It represents the testimony of those who have discovered the truth of the
greatest acts of life, though they have arrived at it through failures and humiliations,
and not through success and triumph. It is one of the many eternal blessings
that we owe to the Bible that it records in so many different ways and affirms
the testimony (if the world to the things that are not of the world. We should
thank God for having taught us once more that there is no rest or satisfaction
for man in the things of sense. But it is quite another question whether the
process by which this truth is arrived at is either safe or sound for the
spirit of man to go through. The criticism of life is a wholly different thing
from the true use of life. It is no justification of a man’s existence when at
the end, when a balance has to be struck and a conclusion arrived at, that
conclusion is that most of the life has been a mistake and therefore a failure.
To have learned the facts about life, however true and however important,
cannot make the life a beautiful, a sound, or a profitable thing. There is no
retrospective virtue in being able to draw a sound moral. The Preacher’s final
conclusion of the whole matter is a beacon light for other men if they are wise
enough to profit by it. (Canon Ainger.)
The Contents of the Book
The absence of a clear literary plan makes it difficult to arrange
the contents of the book systematically. Facts are looked at from different
sides and in various relations; the same subject recurs at different points;
and the conclusions drawn are not always formally consistent with one another.
Hence some have regarded the book as the work of a sceptic, or the expression
of varying moods and fancies. Yet a closer examination shows that this is not
the ease: the
conclusions the writer comes to at various stages are virtually the same, and when he
returns to his subject, it is to consider it on a different plane, or from
another side. He begins by stating his theme: All is vanity, there is nothing new under
the sun (Ecclesiastes 1:1-11)
, i.e. human life has no substantial result. He then gives proof from
practical experience. He had tried, and found that vain is the quest for
knowledge (Ecclesiastes 1:12-18), vain the pursuit
of pleasure (Ecclesiastes 2:1-10), vain the profit of
labour and activity (Ecclesiastes 2:11-23). The conclusion is
that there is nothing better for a man than to eat and drink and enjoy the
fruit of his labour (Ecclesiastes 2:24); for all depends upon
God, and man can only submit (Ecclesiastes 2:24-26; Ecclesiastes 3:1-22). He then takes a
wider survey of human life and society (4-6.), interspersing various maxims of conduct
to be followed in the prevailing “vanity”: and the question, “Who knoweth what is good for man in his
life?” suggests the praise of true wisdom, and calls forth maxims on the way to
attain it (Ecclesiastes 7:8.), leading on to a
consideration of political wisdom (Ecclesiastes 9:10.). The dark background
is always the vanity or unprofitableness of life; yet the Preacher’s position is
not a pessimism nor a creed of despair. Life is good, though neither the best
nor the last good; benevolence is to be practised (Ecclesiastes 11:1-8); and the young
especially are exhorted to live joyfully, yet with a regard to a coming
judgment (Ecclesiastes 11:9-10; Ecclesiastes 12:1-8). (James
Robertson, D. D.)
The Canonicity of the Book
The collection of sacred writings which was held in reverence by
the Jews of Palestine in the days of our Lord and His apostles, consisted of
twenty-two books, and these included the Book of Ecclesiastes. The first
preachers of Christianity appear to have been in complete agreement with their
unconverted brethren as to the authority of their sacred books; and in point of
fact, all the books of the Jewish canon have always enjoyed unquestioned authority
in the Christian Church. It is no disparagement to the authority of the Book of
Ecclesiastes that no direct quotation from it is to be found in the New
Testament. A few coincidences of thought or expression have been pointed out (e.g.
Ecclesiastes 11:5 with John 3:8; Ecclesiastes 9:10 with John 9:4)
; but none of them is decisive enough to warrant our asserting with any
confidence that the Old
Testament passage was present to the mind of the New Testament writer. But
there is no reason to imagine that any of the apostles would have hesitated to
appeal to the authority of any book of the Jewish canon, if his subject had
required such a reference. In the Jewish schools there was controversy, about
the end of the first century of our era, whether the Book of Ecclesiastes was
one of those which “defile the hands”: that is to say, whether it was affected by
certain ceremonial ordinances, devised in order to guard the sacred books from
irreverent usage. We need not inquire what exact amount of authority might be
conceded to the book by those who then placed it on a lower level than the
rest; for the view which ultimately prevailed recognized it as entitled to all
the prerogatives of canonical Scripture. (G. Salmon, D. D.)
The Inspiration of the Book
The inspiration of Ecclesiastes is of an indirect kind. We are not
to read it as we should a prophet or a gospel. The conclusions at which the
writer arrives are often not Christian truths; the sentiments he expresses are
not Christian sentiments--indeed, they are frequently the very opposite. Not,
indeed, that his book is quite without value on the positive side. “His
aphorisms,” says Driver, “are often pregnant and just; they are prompted by a
keen sense of right; and in his satire upon society he lays his finger upon
many a real blot,” and to this extent his teaching may have direct religious
value. Then, further, he has permanently voiced a mood of constant recurrence
in human history; his work, as Dean Plumptre says, “meets the necessity of a
state of mind from which, perhaps, no period of the world’s history has been
quite exempt, and to which periods, like our own, of increasing luxury and
advancing knowledge are especially liable,” and there is positive advantage in
that. But, after all, to teach direct religious truth was not in the commission
which the Holy Ghost gave to “Koheleth.” His work was written to state all the
difficulties of life rather than to solve them. It is ‘inspired, not merely in
spite of, but because of, the fact that it often rouses our whole nature to
protest against the conclusion at which it arrives. The value of Ecclesiastes
consists in this:
that it shows how
little the world can satisfy the soul of man apart from God; that one can drink
deep of every earthly pleasure and yet be left hungering and thirsting; that
the highest culture and the most varied experience can do nothing to solve the
problem of existence by their own unaided efforts; in a word, its mission is to
render us dissatisfied with the merely sensuous pleasures of earth, to sharpen
our longing for the unseen things of the spiritual life, and to teach the soul
there is no rest for it but in God. It is the thoroughness with which it
performs this function which proves it a divinely inspired book--a book without
which the Bible would be incomplete, lacking one of its most essential
elements. (A. M. Mackay, B. A.).
ECCLESIASTES
INTRODUCTION
The Title and Date of the Book
The title of this book is derived from the Greek Septuagint, where
it appears as the representative of the Hebrew “Koheleth,” which has been
variously rendered preacher or debater. “Koheleth” is used throughout the work
as s synonym of “the son of David, king in Jerusalem,” i.e. Solomon; but
there can be little doubt that Solomon was not the real author, and that his
name was only assumed by a well-known and legitimate device for a literary
purpose. The first to discern the truth was Luther, who assigned the work to
the time of the Maccabees (circa 150 b.c.)
. The late date rests mainly on the evidence of the language, which is not that
of the ancient Hebrew, but of a decadent time, when many Aramaic words crept
into the Jewish vocabulary. (A. M. Mackay, B. A.)
We may mention three grounds for questioning the belief that
Solomon was the author.
1. The language shows traces of Hebrew words and forms later than his
time, and occurring only in such Old Testament books as Malachi, Daniel, Ezra.
2. Certain expressions and utterances cannot be attributed to Solomon:
(1)
“I,
Koheleth, was king” (Ecclesiastes 1:12), as though he had now
ceased to be such;
3. The tone of the book and the character of its teaching not only
suggest the period when the Persian empire had been overthrown, and Alexander
the Great’s successors had established Greek culture throughout the civilized
world, but also bear distinct
traces of Stoic and Epicurean philosophy. For the former, see Ecclesiastes 1:5-7; Ecclesiastes 1:9-11; Ecclesiastes 1:17; Ecclesiastes 2:12; Ecclesiastes 3:14-15; Ecclesiastes 7:25; Ecclesiastes 8:8; Ecclesiastes 9:11; Ecclesiastes 10:18; and for the latter, Ecclesiastes 2:24; Ecclesiastes 3:22; Ecclesiastes 5:18; Ecclesiastes 7:7; Ecclesiastes 8:9; Ecclesiastes 8:14; Ecclesiastes 9:7; Ecclesiastes 9:16; Ecclesiastes 10:16-18. We may observe
that the claim, such as it is, to personate the great king, is more conspicuous
in the earlier part of the book. Like Solomon, Koheleth had made trial of
wisdom, of wealth, and of the pleasures of art. But, whatever may have been his
thoughts, with respect to the darker side of Solomon’s closing years, the great
king evidently fades gradually from his mental vision, and he proceeds in the
remainder of this treatise to give us undisguisedly his own attitude towards
life and its problems. Here we plainly have before us in no sense the Solomon
of Jewish history, but a philosophical Jew of the later centuries before
Christ. (A. W. Streane, D. D.)
There is general agreement among the abler modern critics that the
book was written somewhere between the later period of Persian rule (circa 840
b.c.)
and some date before the Macedonian supremacy came to an end (say circa 200
b.c.). Within these limits it is impossible to fix any date with certainty, but
there is much probability in the theory originated by Mr. Tyler that the author
was a wealthy Jew who lived at Alexandria, and there in luxury and
philosophical culture sought compensation for the loss of national and
religious hopes which had left his nature impoverished; and who in old age
recorded how vain his quest had been. (A. M. Mackay, B. A.)
To me, it seems impossible to read verse after verse without
feeling that they have little or no meaning unless we look on them as the
outcome of a time of suffering and oppression. They seem to point steadily to
an age when national freedom was gone, national life extinguished for a time;
the spirit of freedom dead; the high memories of the past forgotten; the
Messianic hopes not yet rekindled; when the God of Hosts seemed far removed;
when all around was dark and gloomy; in days, it may be, when Persian, or
Syrian, or Egyptian kings ruled over the land of David as a province of their
kingdom, and the hopes of Israel seemed dead and gone--buried and out of sight.
Then, it might well come to pass that the spirit of some son of Israel was
stirred within him to try to reach his people’s heart, not by spoken word or
the stirring address of a Jewish prophet--the day of prophecy was over; not by
the music of a psalm--the psalmist’s harp was silent; not by a great poem like
the Book of Job--such poetry had died out of the nation’s heart; but by putting
forth in this half-articulate and ambiguous form a soliloquy or discourse, call
it which you will, breathing the very spirit of that later age--its sadness,
its languor, its passive and oriental aequiesecnce, almost lethargy, under
suffering. It bears the stamp, from first to last, of dejection, if not of
despair. Yet its still unrelinquished, pervading sense of the fear of God as
the end of life; its firm hold of the inherent distinction between right and
wrong; its refusal, in spite of all that seems to cloud the hope, to part with
the conviction of a judgment, a righteous judgment, yet to come; its counsels
of activity, patience, cheerfulness, prudence, calmness, sympathy with
suffering, stand out amidst the wreck and decay of all around. (Dean
Bradley.)
Ewald has advanced a twofold argument against assigning the
composition of this book to the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, and in favour of
“the last century of the Persian dominion.” The first is, that the writer
complains, “in an entirely new and unheard-of manner, of an excess of
bookmaking and reading.” It cannot, however, be shown that a difference in this
respect existed between the last century and the last but one of the Persian
rule; and to a time subsequent to this it is by no means allowable to look. The
second reason urged is, that “such harrowing pain and desperate cries of agony
did not characterize the earlier period of the Persian rule.” It must have
become, Ewald thinks, in its last years, more oppressive and violent. On this
matter, however, history furnishes no authentic information. (E. W.
Hengstenberg, D. D.)
Professor Cheyne, in agreement with Ewald and Delitzsch, assigns
the book to the Persian period, though rightly and fairly admitting that “the
evidence of the Hebrew favours a later date than that of Ewald,--favours, but
does not actually require it.” For he views with a well-founded scepticism the
attempts that have been made to trace in it the definite presence of Greek
philosophical ideas, and even to discover Graecisms in the language. The style
of Ecclesiastes is indeed almost that of the Mishnah (2nd cent. a.d.)
, and it must be a product of the time when that style was in process of
formation; but the alleged Graecisms do not appear to involve more than a
normal and intelligible extension of native Hebrew usage. (Professor S. R.
Driver.)
The Plan and Purpose of the Book
“Theologians,” says Herder, “have taken great pains to ascertain
the plan of the book; but the best course is to make as free a use of it as one
can, and for such a purpose the individual parts will serve.” A connected and
orderly argument, an elaborate arrangement of parts, is as little to be looked
for here as in the special portion of Proverbs which begins with chap. 10., or
as in the alphabetical psalms. It is a part of the peculiarity of the book to
have no such plan; and this characteristic greatly conduces to the breadth of
its views and the variety of its modes of representation. The thread which
connects all the parts together is simply the pervading reference to the circumstances and
moods, the necessities and grievances of the time. This it is that gives it
unity; and its author sets a good example to all those who are called to
address the men of our own generation, in that he never soars away into the clouds, nor wastes his
time in general reflections and commonplaces, but keeps constantly in view the
very Jews who were then groaning under Persian tyranny, to whose sick souls it
was his first duty to administer the wholesome medicine with which God had
entrusted him: by
ever fresh strokes and features he depicts their condition to them, little by
little he communicates the wisdom that is from above, and in the varying turns
of his discourse sets before them constantly the most important and essentially
saving truths. To further the fear of God and life in Him is the great purpose
of the writer in all that he advances; hence his assertion of the vanity of all
earthly things, for he alone can fully appreciate what a precious treasure man
has in God, who has learnt by living experience the truth, “vanity of vanities,
all is vanity.” (E. W. Hengstenberg, D. D.)
What, taken as a whole, are we to consider its moral? What was the
main lesson it was designed to teach?. Was the preacher whose experiences are
set forth meant to serve as a model to imitate or as a warning to avoid? For
such a variety of character as appears in the utterances of the writer is
almost without a precedent in so short a compass. Of course it is always more
or less a truth that by isolating the utterances of a writer, by extracting
single passages and detaching them from their context, we may make them appear
to teach very different truths, sometimes even contrary ones. But it is not
merely so here. In the Book of Ecclesiastes we pass rapidly through different
strata of thought and feeling. We pass from one temperature to another, from something
all but of the earth, earthy, to something almost heavenly in its sense of
beauty and goodness. At one moment we are listening to the confessions of one
who had tried pleasure and knew it was vanity, and at another we are at the
standpoint of the Stoic. Again, we seem very perilously near the scorn of the
cynic. At one moment we seem to be listening to the hopeless resignation of the
fatalist, and then again to the more hopeful resignation of the Christian.
There is what the artists call a want of keeping about the confessions and
conclusions of this writer. It is difficult to imagine a man passing so rapidly
from one to another, or, stranger still, being in all these moods at once,
combining so many different men in one single personality. But this should not
surprise us if we thought more, still less be a stumbling-block to us in
implying inconsistency in the character represented. It may be that the very
inconsistency of the teaching is meant to read us most salutary lessons. The
phrase used by an eminent teacher, “the criticism of life,” is very applicable
to this Book of Ecclesiastes. It is from end to end a criticism of life,
conducted by a critic who, having watched life’s experiences, sums up and
pronounces a verdict on it from the end of the life or from a period
approaching the end. As to the verdict itself there is no difference between
this critic and all those other critics of life whose writings constitute Holy
Scripture. He holds his place among those companions by virtue of having arrived
at the same conclusion as they, though by different paths of experience. That
of course makes the value, the incalculable value, of such a book. It
represents the testimony of those who have discovered the truth of the greatest
acts of life, though they have arrived at it through failures and humiliations,
and not through success and triumph. It is one of the many eternal blessings
that we owe to the Bible that it records in so many different ways and affirms
the testimony (if the world to the things that are not of the world. We should
thank God for having taught us once more that there is no rest or satisfaction
for man in the things of sense. But it is quite another question whether the
process by which this truth is arrived at is either safe or sound for the
spirit of man to go through. The criticism of life is a wholly different thing
from the true use of life. It is no justification of a man’s existence when at
the end, when a balance has to be struck and a conclusion arrived at, that
conclusion is that most of the life has been a mistake and therefore a failure.
To have learned the facts about life, however true and however important,
cannot make the life a beautiful, a sound, or a profitable thing. There is no
retrospective virtue in being able to draw a sound moral. The Preacher’s final
conclusion of the whole matter is a beacon light for other men if they are wise
enough to profit by it. (Canon Ainger.)
The Contents of the Book
The absence of a clear literary plan makes it difficult to arrange
the contents of the book systematically. Facts are looked at from different
sides and in various relations; the same subject recurs at different points;
and the conclusions drawn are not always formally consistent with one another.
Hence some have regarded the book as the work of a sceptic, or the expression
of varying moods and fancies. Yet a closer examination shows that this is not
the ease: the
conclusions the writer comes to at various stages are virtually the same, and when he
returns to his subject, it is to consider it on a different plane, or from
another side. He begins by stating his theme: All is vanity, there is nothing new under
the sun (Ecclesiastes 1:1-11)
, i.e. human life has no substantial result. He then gives proof from
practical experience. He had tried, and found that vain is the quest for
knowledge (Ecclesiastes 1:12-18), vain the pursuit
of pleasure (Ecclesiastes 2:1-10), vain the profit of
labour and activity (Ecclesiastes 2:11-23). The conclusion is
that there is nothing better for a man than to eat and drink and enjoy the
fruit of his labour (Ecclesiastes 2:24); for all depends upon
God, and man can only submit (Ecclesiastes 2:24-26; Ecclesiastes 3:1-22). He then takes a
wider survey of human life and society (4-6.), interspersing various maxims of conduct
to be followed in the prevailing “vanity”: and the question, “Who knoweth what is good for man in his
life?” suggests the praise of true wisdom, and calls forth maxims on the way to
attain it (Ecclesiastes 7:8.), leading on to a
consideration of political wisdom (Ecclesiastes 9:10.). The dark background
is always the vanity or unprofitableness of life; yet the Preacher’s position
is not a pessimism nor a creed of despair. Life is good, though neither the
best nor the last good; benevolence is to be practised (Ecclesiastes 11:1-8); and the young
especially are exhorted to live joyfully, yet with a regard to a coming
judgment (Ecclesiastes 11:9-10; Ecclesiastes 12:1-8). (James
Robertson, D. D.)
The Canonicity of the Book
The collection of sacred writings which was held in reverence by
the Jews of Palestine in the days of our Lord and His apostles, consisted of
twenty-two books, and these included the Book of Ecclesiastes. The first
preachers of Christianity appear to have been in complete agreement with their
unconverted brethren as to the authority of their sacred books; and in point of
fact, all the books of the Jewish canon have always enjoyed unquestioned
authority in the Christian Church. It is no disparagement to the authority of
the Book of Ecclesiastes that no direct quotation from it is to be found in the
New Testament. A few coincidences of thought or expression have been pointed
out (e.g. Ecclesiastes 11:5 with John 3:8; Ecclesiastes 9:10 with John 9:4)
; but none of them is decisive enough to warrant our asserting with any
confidence that the Old
Testament passage was present to the mind of the New Testament writer. But
there is no reason to imagine that any of the apostles would have hesitated to
appeal to the authority of any book of the Jewish canon, if his subject had
required such a reference. In the Jewish schools there was controversy, about
the end of the first century of our era, whether the Book of Ecclesiastes was
one of those which “defile the hands”: that is to say, whether it was affected by
certain ceremonial ordinances, devised in order to guard the sacred books from
irreverent usage. We need not inquire what exact amount of authority might be
conceded to the book by those who then placed it on a lower level than the
rest; for the view which ultimately prevailed recognized it as entitled to all
the prerogatives of canonical Scripture. (G. Salmon, D. D.)
The Inspiration of the Book
The inspiration of Ecclesiastes is of an indirect kind. We are not
to read it as we should a prophet or a gospel. The conclusions at which the
writer arrives are often not Christian truths; the sentiments he expresses are
not Christian sentiments--indeed, they are frequently the very opposite. Not,
indeed, that his book is quite without value on the positive side. “His
aphorisms,” says Driver, “are often pregnant and just; they are prompted by a keen
sense of right; and in his satire upon society he lays his finger upon many a
real blot,” and to this extent his teaching may have direct religious value.
Then, further, he has permanently voiced a mood of constant recurrence in human
history; his work, as Dean Plumptre says, “meets the necessity of a state of
mind from which, perhaps, no period of the world’s history has been quite
exempt, and to which periods, like our own, of increasing luxury and advancing
knowledge are especially liable,” and there is positive advantage in that. But,
after all, to teach direct religious truth was not in the commission which the
Holy Ghost gave to “Koheleth.” His work was written to state all the
difficulties of life rather than to solve them. It is ‘inspired, not merely in
spite of, but because of, the fact that it often rouses our whole nature to
protest against the conclusion at which it arrives. The value of Ecclesiastes
consists in this:
that it shows how
little the world can satisfy the soul of man apart from God; that one can drink
deep of every earthly pleasure and yet be left hungering and thirsting; that
the highest culture and the most varied experience can do nothing to solve the
problem of existence by their own unaided efforts; in a word, its mission is to
render us dissatisfied with the merely sensuous pleasures of earth, to sharpen
our longing for the unseen things of the spiritual life, and to teach the soul
there is no rest for it but in God. It is the thoroughness with which it
performs this function which proves it a divinely inspired book--a book without
which the Bible would be incomplete, lacking one of its most essential
elements. (A. M. Mackay, B. A.).
──《The Biblical Illustrator》