“Ecclesiastes Week 9: Joy-Filled Living”

Dorsey Translation of Ecclesiastes 8:9-9:10:

Remember that God will right all wrongs
9 I observed all these things and thought about everything that happens in this world. Sometimes people gain power over others and bring them great harm. 10 I have seen the wicked buried and eulogized in the very city where they did their evil–but such praise has no ultimate significance. 11 People dare to do all kinds of evil because the punishment for such wrongdoing does not occur instantly. 12 Nevertheless, although a wicked man commits a hundred crimes and still lives a long time, I know that in the end it will go better for those who respect and obey God, who live obediently before him. 13 And the wicked person who does not live obediently before God, in the end it will not go well for him, and his days will not lengthen like a shadow. 14 The travesties of justice in this world are only temporary and ultimately inconsequential–for example, when righteous people get what the wicked deserve, and when wicked people get what the righteous deserve. But I say that such travesties are only temporary and ultimately inconsequential. 15 So I recommend the enjoyment of life. The best thing a person can do in this life is to eat and drink and be joyful. Let joy accompany him in his work all the days of life that God has given him to live in this world.
Death is certain; so enjoy your life while you are still alive
16 When I sought to become wise and to understand what goes on in this world, I realized that even if a person were to stay awake day and night, 17 he would never be able to know God’s plan. No human being can comprehend it. Despite all his best efforts, a person cannot discover it. A wise man may claim to know it, but he doesn’t. 9:1 I pondered and considered all of this. I concluded that even in the case of the righteous and the wise, what happens to them is in God’s hands. No one, including the wise, can know whether easy times or hard times await him. 2 All that can be known for certain is that the same fate awaits everyone–the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the clean and the unclean, those who offer sacrifices and those who do not. The same destiny awaits good people and sinners, those who take oaths and those who refuse to take them. 3 Whatever happens to people in this life, the same fate awaits them all. Whether a person’s heart is full of evil or praise while he lives, in the end he will join the dead. 4 Anyone who is still among the living can be sure of this one thing. But even a live dog is better off than a dead lion! 5 For the living know they will die, but the dead know nothing. They can derive no more benefit from this life; even the memory of them fades away. 6 Their love, their hate, and their zeal have already come to an end. They will never again take part in anything that happens in this life. 7 Therefore go, eat your food with joy, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for this is what God wants you to do now. 8 Always be clothed in white, and always anoint your head with fragrant oil. 9 Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this fleeting life that God has given you in this world– all your fleeting days. For this is what God wants you to do as you live and work in this life. 10 Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, because in the grave, where you are going, there will be no more working or planning or knowledge or wisdom.

Ecclesiastes 8:9-9:10

In case you haven’t noticed yet, the author of Ecclesiastes, QOHELETH in Hebrew, keeps coming back to the same answer, again and again: Find joy in the experiences of life. Even if there are aspects of life we find troubling, perplexing, or frustrating, we can and should still find joy in the moment.

One thing we are likely to find frustrating in this life is that the “good” people don’t always have “good” things happen to them, and the “bad” people don’t always have “bad” things happen to them. It would be satisfying if the world worked that way, but it does not. Sometimes the powerful oppress the powerless. Sometimes the wicked are praised. I was watching a documentary on television a few months ago about an Italian family in West Virginia whose children were apparently abducted. One of the prominent theories is that it was members of the Italian community in his town because this guy had a habit of bad-mouthing Mussolini. And this happened after Mussolini was overthrown and executed. Hard to imagine many people worse than Mussolini, but nonetheless, he was praised by many. QOHELETH says, this praise is only temporary and of no lasting significance. I guess it’s true. Not many people praise Mussolini today.

People do evil things because they are seldom punished for them. And that is absolutely true. Most evil goes unpunished in this life. Many people are never caught. Some who are caught are not convicted. In our system, you have to get twelve people to agree to convict, all while the lawyers try to find technicalities. Many who commit atrocities are never brought to account. There’s a movie called The Patriot, about the American Revolution in the south. The villain in the movie is based off a real historical figure, Banastre Tarleton, who was notorious for his brutality, killing soldiers trying to surrender, executing wounded and helpless men. In the movie, he is killed at the end, as we want. But in real life he went home to England, became a politician, and died a wealthy man at a ripe old age. Sometimes, that’s how it goes.

But QOHELETH says this, “I know that in the end, it will be better for those who respect and obey God.” God is not ignorant of evil nor apathetic about it. Travesties of justice are only temporary and not of ultimate significance. We don’t know what exactly QOHELETH thought of eternity, and really he doesn’t seem to think much about it, but he still trusts that God will not allow injustices to persist forever.

Still, it would be easy to lose heart when we see evil in this world, easy to get frustrated and angry. But QOHELETH implores us to enjoy life and find joy in the daily experiences of “eating, drinking, and working.” Injustice in this world is a fact of life. We can and should try

to correct it, so far as we are able. But we should not allow its existence to keep us from having joy in life.

Next QOHELETH returns to another familiar topic of his, the limitations of human understanding. Even if we were to stay awake for the rest of our lives, we would not be able to gain all understanding. Only God can understand all things.

And we can’t know what the future holds. We don’t know if it will easy times or hard times that come our way.

But ultimately, we do know what the future holds for us. The righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the reverent and the irreverent, the same fate awaits us all. We all die.

“A live dog is better than a dead lion. The dead know nothing.”

What does QOHELETH know or understand about the afterlife? Not much, it seems. Now, certainly, there are hints of the afterlife to be found in the Old Testament. Ezekiel speaks of God’s power to resurrect the dead. Job was confident he would see God after he died, and that in the end God would right all wrongs. Some of the prophets and Psalms have hints of a resurrection and eternal life theology. But the afterlife was not really the center of people’s religious aspirations in the Old Testament. By the time of the New Testament, almost all Hebrew people believed in a future resurrection, a new creation, and a righting of all wrongs. But this is 900 years before Jesus. So, I don’t think QOHELETH really gave much thought to the afterlife. And we shouldn’t expect that he would. God’s revelation is progressive. We learn more from reading the whole Bible than we do from just reading the Old Testament, for example.

His focus is on this life. Life is a precious gift from God. Life is better than death. We should enjoy our lives as a gift from God.

“So eat your food with joy. Drink your wine with a joyful heart.” Wine was not something that the typical ancient Hebrew would drink on a daily basis. Maybe the wealthy would, but the average person couldn’t afford wine every day. It was something people drank at special occasions, mostly, like weddings, religious feasts, and other times of celebration.

He goes on, “Be dressed in white all the time.” We usually associate white with purity, but it was also a color of joy and celebration. “Always anoint your head with oil.” Again, anointing with oil was not something most people did on a daily basis. It was something you would do for special occasions.

It seems that QOHELETH is advising us to find as many occasions for joyful celebration as we can. After all, we are alive. Life is precious. Don’t put off celebrating.

“Enjoy life with your wife.” We can and should treasure relationships. But I think we should also remember here that he is writing from a very different culture. In our culture, you marry someone you’re attracted to, someone you enjoy spending time with. In his culture, most marriages were arranged. You might end up married to someone you never met, maybe someone you didn’t particularly enjoy spending time with, just because your parents thought it would be a good arrangement. QOHELETH says, “Enjoy it regardless.” Wouldn’t it be a shame to be married to someone your whole life and not find any joy in that relationship? I think we can apply the same logic to many relationships. Wouldn’t be a shame to know someone your whole life and not find any joy in that relationship?

“Enjoy it all your fleeting life.” There is that word he loves again: HEBEL. It was used to describe things like the morning mist that burns off when the sun rises. Life is fleeting. You blink your eyes and wonder where it went. But God wants you to find joy in that fleeting life.

“Whatever you do, do it with all your might.” Find joy and satisfaction in your work. It would be sad to spend your whole life working at something and never find any joy or satisfaction in it.

So whether it’s work or relationships or food and drink, find joy in everything.

I find this challenging. One of the reasons I do, I think, is because I was raised with a middle class mindset. The mantra of the middle mindset class is delayed gratification. Put off enjoying things now so you can enjoy them more later. Scrimp and save now so you can retire early. Then you can enjoy life, right?

That’s not bad. But it’s also not entirely good. Good things taken to an extreme are almost always bad things. As someone once said, “All things in moderation, even moderation itself.” I think what QOHELETH is saying is not to put off all our enjoyment. Take your spouse and go to that restaurant you’ve always wanted to try. After all, you might not get the chance later. Take that weekend trip to that place you’ve always wanted to see. Who knows if you’ll have the chance later? Throw that party for the happy occasion in your life. Invite your friends to celebrate with you. Yeah, it will mean some work and clean up and all that. But why should a happy occasion pass by the wayside without celebratipn. Why risk coming to the end of your life and find you never did the things you wanted to, the things that brought you joy?

In some ways, I find this more challenging than Jesus saying, “Deny yourself, take up your cross.” But the same Jesus who said deny yourself was also criticized by the self-righteous Pharisees for eating and drinking too much. So maybe QOHELETH has a point.