Ecclesiastes 8

Research

Talk about complexities of jumping in and preaching one passage. There is so much context needed from the entire book, it is difficult to parachute in and preach just this one chapter. Ask forgiviness if they get whiplash...

In the OT it is God who “causes his face to shine” on his people (Num. 6:25; Pss. 31:16 [17]; 67:1 [2]; 80:3, 7, 19 [4, 8, 20]; 119:135). This idiom refers to God’s being gracious to his people and granting them shalom. Wisdom in Proverbs is a gift of God, and v. 1b asserts that it makes those who possess it gracious and beneficent like God. Hardness of countenance thus symbolizes the opposite of graciousness, namely, harshness and meanness. Wisdom transforms this into a face open to God and one’s neighbor. --Bartholomew, Craig G.. Ecclesiastes (Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms), Baker Academic, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sbts-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3117021. Created from sbts-ebooks on 2022-04-06 10:44:46.

—Question: If this is a global exhortation towards wisdom, why does he talk about submission to the king? Why that one aspect of life...

—Word “Command” in v5 is not specifically referring to king. Purposelly ambiguous to mean king and God?

— Bartholomew talks a lot about comparing “traditional wisdom literature” (i.e. Proverbs) with the wisdom of Ecclesiastes.

—Speak towards the gap between what we know and what we see. This passage highlights that gap and doesn’t try to close it. In our scientific western minds, we think that every trail of evidence leads to a conclusion. That every question has an answer. This passage says the opposite. More like a lepraucan and the rainbow. No matter how close you get, it’s always a little further away...