Book of Ecclesiastes

A volume in the Story of God Bible Commentary series (Zondervan). This work offers a new interpretation of both Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs, places them on the trajectory of theological development, and offers thoughts on reading these books as Christian scripture. Ecclesiastes is identified as (mainly) the work of a Davidic descendant in the Hellenistic Era, deploring the state of the Jewish nation under wicked and foolish leaders, and agonising over why God does not seem to do anything to fix the situation. Song of Songs is viewed as a ballad that tells the story of a young woman who has fallen in love with a shepherd boy, when her brothers promise her in marriage to King Solomon. The Song is also viewed as resistance literature, encouraging Jews to be faithful to their true shepherd, Yahweh, even to the point of death during the Antiochene persecution.

Three commentaries on Ecclesiastes represent renewed academic interest in theological interpretation of Scripture (TIS), as well as the evolving relationship between biblical and contemporary theologies. Despite the focus on Ecclesiastes, this article more broadly illustrates that TIS is not a narrow movement exclusively oriented toward evangelical aims despite its biblical focus. In reality, TIS is inclusive across denominations with varying degrees of comfort or discomfort with traditional systematic theology and pluralistic worldviews. Not surprisingly, integrating the Bible and theology will differ for various Christian traditions depending on one's view of systematic and biblical theology. This article examines how three commentaries on Ecclesiastes, representing theological and biblical scholars, highlight diverse traditions, while offering useful contemporary applications for Christians practicing across the spectrum who identify with common faith.

This study explores the timeliness of the book of Qohelet in Christian Apologetics. It follows a methodology of close reading in Qohelet conducted within the conceptual frame of Charles Taylor’s Secular Social Imaginary. This is an interdisciplinary study including biblical theology, rhetorical analysis, and Christian apologetics. These come together to show both how humanism provides an invalid construction for meaning and how Qohelet destroys all meaning-making undertaken apart from God. Subsequent apologetic cues from this comparison will be discussed. All this is done to chase readers to the present and eternal meaning found only in Christ.

Second Baruch is a Jewish apocalypse written in the wake of the Roman sacking of the Jerusalem temple. This essay examines how deliberately Second Baruch uses the biblical sapiential tradition and closely connects it with the apocalyptic tradition in Daniel. Particularly, Second Baruch eschatologizes the idea of elusive wisdom in Job 28 against the backdrop of the apocalyptic concept of two-group in Daniel 11-12. To deal with the theological crisis Judaism behind Second Baruch faced, Second Baruch integrates the sacred past that Scripture enshrined with the apocalyptic future that Second Baruch advocates.

This English rendering of the full text of Ecclesiastes is mainly an updating of the version published in 1917 by the Jewish Publication Society. My main purpose has been to modernize the English. Sometimes, however, I have preferred an alternative wording or an alternative meaning backed by reliable commentators.

The text is available for use under the broadest Creative Commons license. A docx file is also available.

Cruxes like “the notorious olam” (3:11), the king and the field (5:9), and “the wicked buried” (and what else goes on in 8:10) are left to the commentary.

I do not argue that this English rendering is superior to others. I have merely tried to provide a serviceable rendering, and without undue spin.

Because my own training lies in works from Sanskrit traditions, for questionable points in the text I have relied on the Hebrew expertise of others.

Comments and criticisms are warmly welcomed.

If wisdom is the skill of living well, it seems prudent to ask what the end results of a life lived well looks like. If one heeds the advice of the sages, when can one expect their life to look like in the end? This paper attempts to answer these questions by examining the Wisdom Literature of ancient Israel and Egypt and comparing the conclusions each culture's wise ones reach.

This paper has seeks to combine facts about the book of Ecclesiastes and its epilogue  to show that there are solid reasons for reading this book as an undivided whole written by a single author.  Likewise, because this author in the conclusion of his work has also given us his conclusion from a lifelong pursuit for lasting gain, we need to read Eccl 1:1-12:10 in light of 12:11-14. The author claims to be a king in Jerusalem so he must be a descendant of David.  The chief end of man is to fear God and keep His commandments. This passage is both the conclusion of the book as well as the method to pursue for lasting gain beyond the sun. Trusting and obeying God is the key to happiness.

Attending to ongoing debates about the "meaning of life" in Ecclesiastes, this article determines how Qoheleth addressed meaningfulness by drawing on a threefold scheme of definitions for life's meaning. These definitions are derived from psychological research and used to argue that all three conceptions appear within the book of Ecclesiastes. Qoheleth was primarily concerned with life's "coherence," which depends on predictable and reliable patterns in life that render it sensible, yet he also addressed life's "purpose" and "significance." While primarily determining how these three forms of meaning, along with their attendant ideas, are handled within Ecclesiastes itself, this article also demonstrates how resources from psychological research help to resolve debates among biblical interpreters, who agree far more than it at first appears once clearer definitions of "meaning" are employed.

One’s approach to the book of Ecclesiastes often reveals more about the interpreter than it does this Bible book.  Furthermore, this book, as any other section of Scripture, must be approached from the platform of faith (faith seeking understanding).

The negative approach is the most popular view. The positive view has many strengths that should be considered, but only a minority of scholars hold this view. A modified positive view that holds the opposites in the book in tension may be the best approach to the book, which is actually a third option.

The ultimate purpose of this article is to show the value of Ecclesiastes by using the book's message to restate the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism in Christian terminology. To some degree, Christians relatively agree with Buddhists on the first and second Truths, that all of existence is suffering and that this suffering is caused by an unhealthy attachment to desire of the worldly. However, while Buddhists, in their primarily atheistic worldview, teach that man must eliminate desire, Christians, in their theistic worldview, can restate the Four Noble Truths to teach that man must simply reorient his desire toward someone non-worldly. The article begins with an overview of both the diagnosis-cure model for understanding religions and an overview of the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism. Then, I provide a few of the most pertinent similarities and differences between the two religions. After showing the relevance of Ecclesiastes to Buddhists, I employ the book to present the "Four Noble Truths of Christianity," as a contextualized message for missionaries to present in their attempts to make the gospel known to Buddhists.

While a more recent method for biblical study, Trauma Hermeneutics has helped provide greater context for our understanding of Scripture as a whole. Qoheleth, the author of Ecclesiastes, takes traditional wisdom literature and rewrites a new version in order to make sense and meaning from an experienced traumatic event in the process of rebuilding shattered personal and collective myths. The anti-wisdom of the Teacher can readily be explained through this new method, although it also calls for caution to not westernize or colonize how the Israelites may be processing through disasters they endured.

This paper has argued that the words of 12:8 are the repetition of a tensive symbol hebel which frames the end Qohelet’s first person speech. As the closing frame it encapsulates not just the key themes of his speech, but the entire book. Thus the book’s message and the meaning of 12:8 is “Vapour, vapour,” says the Teacher. “Everything is vapour.” With intended layers of meaning behind vapour (hebel) Qohelet means that every experience in life is insubstantial, transient or evil. As a conclusion it calls the reader to piece this literary puzzle together in reflection of all that has been said before. And it prepares the reader to take to heart the key application of the book, in true wisdom fashion: namely fearing God and living faithfully under his commandments.

Noting the debates around whether ‘wisdom’ constitutes a genre, this chapter instead studies the multiple smaller genres of which wisdom literature consists. Texts use (and sometimes intentionally misuse) genres to communicate with readers, providing them with conventions for interpretation and expectations about content. Surveying Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job, Ben Sira, and Wisdom of Solomon, the paper discerns four clusters of genres, grouped according to their communicative purpose. Some genres intend to instruct their users (sayings, instructions, diatribe, protreptic, and didactic narratives); others engage in reasoning (reflections and wisdom dialogues). These genres are not unexpected in wisdom literature, but the next are more familiar from other biblical corpora: some genres offer praise (either to wisdom, people of God), and others enunciate complaints (laments and legal complaints). These multiple genres combine and interact in complex ways within the wisdom book.

Table des matières

A) Première partie : « Que vaut la vie humaine ? »
1. L’heure de la recherche
1.1) Remarque générale sur la notion de « vanité »
1.2) L’inconstance de la sagesse humaine
1.3) Le sage et le fou
1.4) L’inconsistance du travail
1.5) L’inconsistance des plaisirs humains
2) Premier moment de conclusion : la peine
3) Deuxième moment de conclusion : tout est vapeur

B) Deuxième partie : interprétation à partir de l’Ecclésiaste sur la question « que vaut la vie humaine ? »
1) Sur les notions d’ « en-soi » et de « pour-soi »
2) De la question sans réponse
3) La temporalité
4) Retour de la sagesse
5) Relations à autrui
6) Elément fondateur de l’être humain

The Days of Old Age and Death: Rabbinic and Patristic Interpretations
of Qohelet 12:1 – 7.
A careful study of Jerome’s Commentary on Ecclesiastes reveals that
the text both contains specifically Christian exegesis and also quotes what
seems to represent existing Jewish interpretations that must have been
current in Hebrew. It stands to reason that Jerome got acquainted with the
latter while studying Hebrew language under the guidance of his Jewish
teacher, which in turn makes it possible to suggest that Jerome drew upon
Hebrew interpretations in oral form. However, it is also possible, that these
interpretations existed in written form and would be eventually preserved in
some extant rabbinic sources. The present study focuses on Midrash Qohelet
Rabba – the largest collection of interpretations on Ecclesiastes. Qohelet
Rabba is roughly dated to the period of 5th- 8th centuries CE; it is, however,
an anthology and was in all probability compiled out of earlier sources.
Discussing the Jerome’s commentary on Ecclesiastes in comparison to
Qohelet Rabba, this article aims at unearthing the rabbinical commentaries
on Qoh 12:1–7 that can witness to Jerome’s explicit or implicit use and
borrowing of Jewish allegorical interpretations. The analysis also emphasizes
the variety of interpretations of the passage in question attested in Christian
and rabbinic traditions. It demonstrates that the comparative study of early
biblical exegesis – Jewish and Christian – is crucial for understanding the
development of biblical exegesis in general and that of the Book of Qohelet in particular.

The consensus that Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job are the primary members of a 'Wisdom' collection is nearly universal, though the category's origin is unknown and its definition debated. This article identifies that origin and argues that it has caused that continuing debate. Wisdom was not born in early Jewish and Christian interpretation, as some suggest, but in nineteenth-century Germany to make the Old Testament palatable to its 'cultured despisers'. The uncritical acceptance of the category perpetuates the presuppositions that inspired it, which continue to plague its interpretation. Now, as the category's vital weaknesses are increasingly recognized, the time has come to declare Wisdom Literature dead and replace it with a new approach to genre that reads texts, not in exclusive categories, but in multiple overlapping groupings. This will offer a more nuanced understanding of the so-called Wisdom texts' place in the intricate intertextual network of the canon and beyond. It will free Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job, as well as the Israelite concept of wisdom to be interpreted more independently, beyond their connections with one another, and thus more fully and accurately.

Commentators frequently compare Eccl 10:5-7 to examples of the "topsy-turvy" motif in extrabiblical wisdom texts, especially Egyptian exemplars. The topos is found elsewhere, however, and a Neo-Assyrian letter from an unemployed exorcist named Urad-Gula to the Assyrian king provides a close parallel to Qoheleth's sentiments. Beyond matters of specific content, the Neo-Assyrian letter is also nearer Qoheleth's time period than most of the other Egyptian parallels typically adduced. Still further, Urad-Gula's real-life (mis)fortunes suggest that the topsy-turvy motif may (at least in some instances) be much more than only or merely a literary device: it may also describe situations that were actually experienced by sages and other persons like Urad-Gula-people like Qoheleth himself.

Is the book of Ecclesiastes the introspections of a confused, pessimistic, cynical, aged man teetering on the brink of madness, or is this discourse the rational, sage advice of a realist akin to the preacher previously mentioned? Should it be read, taught, and preached or should it be relegated to the scrapheap of literature that an educated, evolved, and post-modern society deems no longer relevant or useful for them today? Is the book even relevant for a modern, civilized humanity and does it share with mankind today any lasting benefit, especially for the Christian? Does Ecclesiastes press the reader to ensure that “their feet have landed in the real world?”