Ecc 6
Jesus told his disciples, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!… It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” When the disciples wondered, “Then who can be saved?” Jesus responded, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible” (Mark 10:23, 25–27). It takes no one less than almighty God to save the rich.
Jesus also warned his followers, “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you” (John 6:27). Therefore Jesus urged the crowd, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?” (Mark 8:34–38).
In addition, Jesus taught his followers that they need not worry about food and drink. He pointed out that “it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things.” Instead of striving for food and drink, Jesus assured his followers: “Indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matt 6:32–33). The implication is that instead of worrying about food and drink, we should rely on God and enjoy his good gifts every day. In fact, Jesus taught that even when we suffer persecution we can “rejoice and be glad” (Matt 5:12). Paul similarly instructed the church, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice” (Phil 4:4).
And Proverbs 28:22 states,
The miser is in a hurry to get rich
and does not know that loss is sure to come.
The New Testament continues this theme. Many times Jesus warned against the pursuit of wealth (see “Analogy” above). Paul prescribed that “a bishop must be above reproach, … and not a lover of money” (1 Tim 3:3). In 1 Timothy 6 Paul echoes many of the Teacher’s thoughts in our text. Paul calls his own words, “the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Tim 6:3): “Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment; for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it; but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.… As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment” (1 Tim 6:6–10, 17).
New Testament Refere
It is no easy task to walk this earth and find peace. Inside of us, it would seem, something is at odds with the very rhythm of things and we are forever restless, dissatisfied, frustrated, and aching. We are so overcharged with desire that it is hard to come to simple rest. Desire is always stronger than satisfaction.” Thus writes Ronald Rolheiser in his book The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality. As we walk this restless earth, full of desire, we are never fully satisfied.
Jonathan Clements reached a similar conclusion in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. “We may have life and liberty,” he wrote. “But the pursuit of happiness isn’t going so well.… We constantly hanker after fancier cars and fatter paychecks—and, initially, such things boost our happiness. But the glow of satisfaction quickly fades and soon we’re yearning for something else.”
It happens every year after we open our Christmas presents. We get what we thought we wanted, and we enjoy it for a little while. But soon there is something else that we wish we had instead, or in addition. Our longings never go away for long; they always return.
SATISFACTION NOT GUARANTEED
The disappointment of unsatisfied desire is as old as Ecclesiastes. Qoheleth said, “He who loves money will not be satisfied with money” (Ecclesiastes 5:10). After considering the vanity of prosperity, the Preacher-King concluded that the only way to find any true satisfaction in life is to trust in the God of joy (see Ecclesiastes 5:18–20). But he did not stay satisfied for long. Soon he was lamenting more of the many problems he saw with life under the sun.
Ecclesiastes 6 is one of the Bible’s darkest chapters. As we hear what the Preacher has to say, we are reading what the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin called “reason’s icy intimations, and records of a heart in pain.” The writer lists a series of disappointments that left him deeply dissatisfied, followed by several questions that are hard for anyone except God to answer. Many people think about life the same way: a long list of disappointments has left them with serious questions about God.
The Preacher’s first disappointment related to people’s possessions. Satisfaction, he saw, is not guaranteed: “There is an evil that I have seen under the sun, and it lies heavy on mankind: a man to whom God gives wealth, possessions, and honor, so that he lacks nothing of all that he desires, yet God does not give him power to enjoy them, but a stranger enjoys them. This is vanity; it is a grievous evil” (Ecclesiastes 6:1–2).
The man in these verses seemed to have it all. Not only was he worth a fortune, but he was also famous, which many people value even more highly than money. Yet for some unspecified reason he was unable to enjoy what he had. Martin Luther called these verses “a description of a rich man who lacks nothing for a good and happy life and yet does not have one.”
Unlike the man described at the end of Ecclesiastes 5, the man in chapter 6 had the acquisition without the satisfaction. In the end he lost everything, and thus he never had the chance to enjoy what he worked a lifetime to gain. Perhaps he lost his property in wartime or through theft or threw it away in some risky investment (see Ecclesiastes 5:13–14). Maybe he was too sick to make good use of his money or died before he reached retirement (see Ecclesiastes 2:18), as many people do. But for some providential reason, someone who seemed to have everything that he could want never had the chance to enjoy it. It was here today but gone tomorrow, and when it left, it went to someone else entirely—somebody the man didn’t even know.
The Preacher called this “a grievous evil.” He also described it as something that “lies heavy on mankind” (Ecclesiastes 6:1). While this expression may refer to the severity of the situation, more likely it refers to its frequency. It happens all the time: one person loses everything he has worked so hard to gain, and then someone else comes along to enjoy it. As David wrote in one of his psalms, “man heaps up wealth and does not know who will gather!” (Psalm 39:6).
If anything good can come from this unfortunate situation, it is the recognition that our possessions can never bring us lasting joy. The gifts that God gives us and the power to enjoy those gifts come separately. This is why having more money can never guarantee that we will find any enjoyment. Without God, we will still be discontent. It is only when we keep him at the center of our existence that we experience real joy in the gifts that God may give. The fear of the Lord is not just the beginning of knowledge; it is also the source of satisfaction.
BETTER OFF DEAD
If satisfaction is not guaranteed, then maybe we would be better off dead. This is the dark possibility that the Preacher considers next:
If a man fathers a hundred children and lives many years, so that the days of his years are many, but his soul is not satisfied with life’s good things, and he also has no burial, I say that a stillborn child is better off than he. For it comes in vanity and goes in darkness, and in darkness its name is covered. Moreover, it has not seen the sun or known anything, yet it finds rest rather than he. Even though he should live a thousand years twice over, yet enjoy no good—do not all go to the one place? (Ecclesiastes 6:3–6)
This is another one of the Preacher’s “better than” statements, in which he compares one thing to another. In this case, he compares a man whose life is full of blessing to a child who never sees the light of day. Given the vanity of life in this fallen world, Qoheleth bitterly concludes that the stillborn child gets the better end of the bargain.
The man described in these verses had the best life that anyone in Old Testament times could imagine. Ecclesiastes does not tell us how wealthy he was, but in a culture that rightly considered children to be a blessing from the Lord, he had fathered a hundred sons and daughters. He also lived for many years—two thousand, to be exact, which made him more than twice as old as Methuselah (see Genesis 5:27). Yet the man still wasn’t satisfied, presumably because he did not have God in his life. Notice that it was his soul, specifically, that was dissatisfied. Something was missing in his life spiritually. There was a hole in his heart.
Sadly, when the man died, he did not even receive the honor of a decent burial. The Bible does not tell us why his body was left unburied. Maybe he died in battle, or perhaps he was despised by his family. But whatever the reason, the fact that he went unburied would have led many people to conclude that he was under the curse of God. It all goes to show that a person can “have the things men dream of—which in Old Testament terms meant children by the score, and years of life by the thousand—and still depart unnoticed, unlamented and unfulfilled.”
As he thinks about this hypothetical situation, the Preacher entertains the thought of non-existence. A person can have everything that life has to offer and still be miserable. But if we are so unhappy with life, then maybe we would be better off never having lived at all.
So the Preacher considers the strange blessedness of a stillborn child. The child “comes in vanity” because its delivery is fruitless (Ecclesiastes 6:4). It “goes in darkness” because it dies before ever seeing the light of day (cf. Job 3:16). Even its name is covered in darkness—not because the child is never named by his or her parents, but because death shrouds his or her identity and personality. No one ever gets to know the child’s character or abilities. Nor does the child ever get to know this world: “it has not seen the sun or known anything” (Ecclesiastes 6:5).
Maybe it is better that way. “Better to miscarry at birth,” says one commentator, “than to miscarry throughout life.” The stillborn child never has to endure pain, or see suffering, or struggle with the guilt of conscious sin. Best of all, the child is the first to die and therefore the first to find its eternal rest.
This thought has given at least some consolation to many parents who have suffered the all but unbearably painful loss of an infant. As the Preacher considers that thought here, he is almost tempted to envy: “If this life is all, and offers to some people frustration rather than fulfillment, leaving them nothing to pass on to those who depend on them; if, further, all alike are waiting their turn to be deleted, then some indeed can envy the stillborn, whose turn comes first.”
Even someone who lived for two millennia would come to exactly the same end as a stillborn child. Death is the great leveler. No matter how long we live, we all die eventually. The famous neoorthodox theologian Karl Barth took that stark reality very personally. He said, “Some day a company of men will process out to a churchyard and lower a coffin and everyone will go home; but one will not come back, and that will be me.” But if in the end we all die anyway, then what is the advantage in going on living, especially when life does not happen to be especially enjoyable?
Remember that when the Preacher says all of this, he is leaving God out of it for the moment. He is thinking mainly in terms of life under the sun, but not in terms of life after death and all the promises God has made about the coming of his kingdom. This life is not all there is. Jesus proved that when he died and rose again, bringing the light of the resurrection out of the darkness of the grave. When believers are buried—and when they bury their little children—it is always in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection of the dead.
But the Preacher-King is not yet ready to give us that gospel. Instead he is writing to show us our need for God. He does this by telling us that no matter how long we live or how much money we have, it is all meaningless unless we can enjoy it, which we will never be able to do without the power of God.
INSATIABLE IN APPETITE
The Preacher’s dissatisfaction returns again in the verses that follow. In verses 1–2 he talked about a man who had everything he wanted in life, except the chance to enjoy it. In verses 3–6 he used a comparison to argue that if we cannot enjoy life, we might be better off dead. Now he wonders if we will ever be satisfied: “All the toil of man is for his mouth, yet his appetite is not satisfied. For what advantage has the wise man over the fool? And what does the poor man have who knows how to conduct himself before the living? Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of the appetite: this also is vanity and a striving after wind” (Ecclesiastes 6:7–9).
If people have trouble enjoying life—if satisfaction is not guaranteed, no matter how long we live—then maybe we could avoid disappointment by wanting less out of life. The trouble is that we always have an appetite for more. In verse 7 the Preacher tells us what happens when we feed that appetite: we get hungry all over again; the same cravings return day after day. We eat food to give us strength to work to earn our daily bread, which we eat to give us strength to work again tomorrow, and so it goes, day after day.
Nor does it matter how wise we are or how much money we have—we all have unfulfilled longings. It is better to be wise than foolish, of course, but even wise people have desires that life does not fully satisfy. Nor can noble poverty deliver us from desire. The poor man described in verse 8 is wise enough to know the right way to live. So maybe he can avoid all of the disappointments that rich people have when they expect money to give them meaning and purpose in life. Yet when it comes to satisfying desire, the poor man will be as disappointed as anyone. Neither wisdom nor poverty proves to be an advantage.
Usually we think we can find satisfaction in everything that life has to offer—food and drink, music and beauty, family and friends. Yet desire is a tramp. Never content to stay at home, it always wants to go out wandering. This is the Preacher’s vivid image in verse 9, where he talks about “the wandering of the appetite.” Our desires are always traveling, but never arriving. This is the wanderlust of the human soul.
A striking example of perpetual dissatisfaction comes from the excavations at the city of Pompeii. When Vesuvius erupted and Pompeii was buried, many people perished, with their body shapes, postures, and in some instances their facial expressions preserved in volcanic ash. One woman’s feet were pointed in the direction of the city gate, headed for safety. Yet her face was turned back to look at something just beyond the reach of her outstretched hands. She was grasping for a prize—a bag of beautiful pearls. Whether suddenly she remembered that she had left the pearls behind or else saw that someone else had dropped them as she was running for her life, the woman was frozen in a pose of unattainable desire.
This is a temptation for all of us: to turn from life to death by reaching for something we think will satisfy us—a string of pearls perhaps or some other kind of jewelry. Some people reach for food and drink or some other substance they can put into their bodies. Others are allured by sexual pleasure. Still others turn to their toys and games or to some other hobby. Or maybe they just spend more time watching television or playing on the computer. But whatever it is, our wandering appetites are always reaching for something we hope will satisfy us.
The truth is that only God can fully satisfy—through his word, through his worship, and through the help that comes from the Holy Spirit when we turn to him in prayer. This is important to remember whenever we feel unhappy about anything in life. We need to ask ourselves what we truly need and remind ourselves what God wants to give us. Before we buy something or eat something or turn something on, it is better for us to talk things over with our Father in Heaven, saying something like, “Lord, you know how empty I feel right now. Help me not to run away from my problems but to turn them over to you. Teach me that you are enough for me. And by your grace, give me the peace and the joy that you have for me in Jesus.”
SAME OLD, SAME OLD
Unfortunately, the writer of Ecclesiastes was not yet ready to pray through his disappointments with life. Rather than turning to the Lord, he kept adding to his list of complaints. He has said that satisfaction is not guaranteed. He has wondered if he would be better off dead. He has admitted the wanderlust of his insatiable appetite. Now he says that life is just the same old, same old until you die, and who knows what happens after that?
Here is how Qoheleth said it:
Whatever has come to be has already been named, and it is known what man is, and that he is not able to dispute with one stronger than he. The more words, the more vanity, and what is the advantage to man? For who knows what is good for man while he lives the few days of his vain life, which he passes like a shadow? For who can tell man what will be after him under the sun? (Ecclesiastes 6:10–12)
These verses fall virtually at the midpoint of Ecclesiastes, but the Preacher is still saying some of the same things he said at the beginning of his book. If he has said it once, he has said it a dozen times: there is nothing new under the sun. The names have already been assigned; everything is labeled and categorized. Furthermore, the human condition is what it always has been ever since the fall of Adam and Eve: vanity and a striving after wind. This lament reminded Martin Luther of an old German proverb: “As things have been, so they still are; and as things are, so they will be.”
If we are unhappy with the way things are, there is no sense arguing with God about it. This seems to be what the Preacher means when he talks about disputing with someone stronger than we are. The “one stronger” is Almighty God. Sometimes people do try to argue with God—like Job, for example—but usually they come to regret it. After God answered him out of the whirlwind, Job had to confess, “I have uttered what I did not understand … therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:3, 6).
We need to know our limits, and one of our limits is that we do not have the wisdom to out-talk God. No matter what we say, telling God that he ought to do this or shouldn’t do that, our words will never change his wise plan for ruling the universe. In the words of Derek Kidner, “Whatever brave words we may multiply about man, or against his Maker, verses 10 and 11 remind us that we shall not alter the way in which we and our world were made.” In fact, the more we talk, the emptier our words will sound. To help keep us in our place, the Apostle Paul asked, “Who are you, O man, to answer back to God?” (Romans 9:20).
Rather than ending this part of his book with an argument, therefore, the Preacher closes with a couple of rhetorical questions: “For who knows what is good for man while he lives the few days of his vain life, which he passes like a shadow? For who can tell man what will be after him under the sun?” (Ecclesiastes 6:12).
These are basic questions about the meaning of life and death. The first question is about our present existence. The Preacher knows that life is short, like the shadow of a cloud scudding across the sky. He also knows that life is vanity, especially without God. He has been saying this repeatedly since the beginning of Ecclesiastes. But he still wants to know how to live a good life. He also wants to know what happens next. So his second question is about the life to come. Who knows what will happen afterward, whether on earth or in Heaven?
THE LIFE TO COME
With these words, we seem to have come all the way back to where Ecclesiastes began, with impossible questions about the meaning of life. The Preacher still does not have all the answers, which is why some people find this chapter very pessimistic.
In knowing how to respond to this perspective, it will help us to remember where we are in Ecclesiastes, and where we are in the Bible as a whole. The Preacher began this chapter by talking about the evil that he had seen “under the sun.” Although he has mentioned God from time to time, he has mainly been looking at life from a human perspective, which is true as far as it goes. We do suffer a good deal of disappointment in life. We also have questions that have never been answered to our satisfaction. But understand the Preacher’s purpose: by talking openly about our disappointment with life, he is trying to awaken our longing for God. Some of our questions will get answered by the end of his book. Others will be left unanswered for the time being, but they do get answered in the gospel.
This is especially true of Qoheleth’s final question: Is there a life to come? Some people deny it, although of course their case can never be proven. According to the British Humanist Association, “Life leads to nothing, and every pretense that it does not is a deceit.” But how can we possibly know that Heaven is a deception, that eternal life is a lie? Some skeptics are more careful. They may not believe in kingdom come, but they know they cannot deny the possibility. Thus they die in uncertainty, like Rabelais who said, “I am off in search of a great Perhaps,” or Thomas Hobbes who famously described his death as the “last voyage, a great leap in the dark.”13
People who believe the Bible know differently. If we leave God out of it, only looking at things “under the sun,” we will never be certain what will happen when we die. But when we take God at his word and believe the promises he has made in the Bible, then we know there is a life to come. After he died for our sins and rose again, Jesus ascended into Heaven. He is there to prepare a place for us with him in the presence of God. The way to that blessed place is simply to trust in Jesus.
If there is no Heaven, then there is no way to escape the vanity of our existence. Nothing matters. Our longings will never be satisfied. Our appetites will keep wandering forever. As a result, sometimes we will be tempted to think that we would be better off dead, and no amount of complaining or arguing will change any of it. But if this life is a short preparation for a long eternity, then everything matters and there will be joy for us at the right hand of God.
I was reminded of this joy when our family visited the Narnia show at Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute. The exhibition was dedicated to Prince Caspian and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe—two films based on the famous children’s stories by C. S. Lewis. The last gallery portrayed the throne room at Cair Paravel, Narnia’s beautiful castle. I watched from behind as the three littlest Rykens passed through an honor guard of centaurs and approached the royal throne. There before us were four golden crowns—movie props for the kings and the queens of Narnia, inscribed with the names of Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy.
Then we heard a voice from the throne. It was the voice of Aslan, the great lion who rules the land of Narnia, saying, “Once a king or a queen in Narnia, always a king or a queen in Narnia.” As we gazed at the crowns in childlike wonder, dreaming of an eternal kingdom, I whispered to the children, “Would you ever like to wear a crown?”
Of course they would! And so they shall by faith in Christ, for as we stood in the courts of Cair Paravel, behold, I could see us standing in the throne room of God, ready to receive the eternal crowns promised to us in Christ (see 2 Timothy 4:8; 1 Peter 5:4; Revelation 2:10). I could read the names inscribed for us: Kathryn the Pure, James the Just, Karoline the Brave, and Philip the Less (I think it said). There was a king on the throne—the Lion of the tribe of Judah—and with a loud voice he was saying, “Behold, I am making all things new!” (Revelation 21:5). So it shall be, by the grace of God, on the last of all days. We are here today, but we shall be crowned tomorrow!