The Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes is delightfully quotable. Like many people, I first encountered Ecclesiastes through the song “Turn, Turn, Turn,” written by Pete Seeger and popularized in the 1960’s by the band The Byrds. That song puts the words of Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 to music, ending with an extra plea for peace from Seeger. The meaning I took from that text, presented through the song’s calm and repetitive tune, was a reassurance that life comprises different seasons—ups and downs, positives and negatives. Those “down” periods are normal and inevitable, and in times of difficulty, we can be assured that eventually the season will change.
Ecclesiastes came to my attention again when my fiancé (now spouse) and I were choosing readings for our wedding. We selected Ecclesiastes 4:9-12:
Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fallThe Fall refers specifically to the disobedience of Adam and Eve when they listened to Satan rather than adhering to God's command not to eat the fruit from the tree. When people act contrary to God's will, they are said to fall from from grace..., one will lift up another; but woe to one who is alone and falls and does not have another to help. Again, if two lie together, they keep warm; but how can one keep warm alone? And though one might prevail against another, two will withstand one. A threefold cord is not quickly broken. (New Revised Standard Version)
That text appealed to us because of its poetic affirmation of companionship. It describes how important any kind of togetherness is, be it friendship or marriage, because we all need each other to make it through life’s challenges. Ecclesiastes continued to seem like a lovely little collection of proverbs.
It wasn’t until much later that I finally read Ecclesiastes from start to finish. It turns out that Ecclesiastes has a much more despondent tone than these two passages let on! Through much of the book, the narrator—called “Qoheleth,” Hebrew for “teacher” or “assembly leader”—confronts forthrightly, if also poetically, a quintessential question of human existence: is life meaningless? So much for a lovely little collection of proverbs!
Qoheleth frames his philosophical musings from a very specific vantage point: the experience of success. His persona is that of “king in Jerusalem” (Ecclesiastes 1:1), someone who has achieved wealth, wisdomWisdom encompasses the qualities of experience, knowledge, and good judgment. The Old Testament book of Proverbs, which sometimes invokes a Woman as the personification of Wisdom, is a collection of aphorisms and moral teachings. Along with other biblical passages, it teaches, "The fear of the..., fame, and power. In the face of death, though, suddenly all his striving seems to have been an act of futility, since all his wealth will go to someone else when he dies, and his wisdom will neither prevent his death nor insure he is remembered in the future. “All is vanity,” goes Qoheleth’s refrain, “and a chasing after wind.”
Notably, Qoheleth’s concern is not about dying itself. All living things die, and Qoheleth has no illusions that he might change that, nor does he harbor any fears about that inevitable end. Rather, he despairs about what the purposes of life could be in the face of death. Over and over again, Qoheleth centers his existential angst around “toil.” He muses, “What gain have the workers from their toil?” (Ecclesiastes 3:9) Life is full of hard work, but can fulfillment ever be achievable?
We do plenty of thinking in the Christian church about death, both Jesus’ and our own, but we seem to be less adept about thinking about work as a religious category. To be sure, the Reformation theologians Martin Luther and John Calvin championed the idea of vocation, or God’s “call,” as something available to and pressing upon all people in all kinds of work and from all walks of life, not just clergy. These days, though, church is often a place to go to get away from work, or another activity to slot in amongst our hobbies. Work is the thing we do during the week; thinking about God is one of the things we do evenings and weekends. Some of us may find meaning in our work, but many of us see a stark divide between the life of faith and the mundanities of our daily toil.
As quirky and angsty as it may seem, the ancient book of Ecclesiastes has a lotNephew of Abraham and Sarah. to say to our busy 21st-century lives. In a world where hard work is often equated with virtue and wealth is far too often equated with success, Qoheleth calls us back to reconsider where we find purpose and fulfillment. It reminds us that the big question marks of religion—death, meaning, or the presence of God, for example—are inextricable from the smaller question marks of how we spend our days, every day. If we make ourselves miserable striving in our jobs for more money and more power, neglecting our relationships along the way, Qoheleth would call this “vanity.” What should we do instead? “This is what I have seen to be good: it is fitting to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of the life God gives us; for this is our lot” (Ecclesiastes 5:18). We may or may not find meaning in our work per se, but Qoheleth is sure that work with only misery and no joy is meaningless indeed.
My initial impressions of Ecclesiastes’ quotability were not wrong. Qoheleth does emphasize the seasonal, cyclical nature of life, not only in Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, but also in several other places, such as this one: “In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider; God has made the one as well as the other, so that mortals may not find out anything that will come after them” (Ecclesiastes 7:14). As in our wedding text, Qoheleth also repeatedly affirms the importance of companionship as a way to make life bearable, even enjoyable: “Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that are given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 9:9).
But I have also learned not to reduce Ecclesiastes to clever aphorisms or tweet-sized bits of wisdom. For all his wonderfully quotable quotes, the questions Qoheleth wrestles with are the very stuff of life, and they cannot be answered in slogans. Qoheleth the teacher invites us to confront the mysteries of life’s meaning head-on, to put aside our striving, and to look for purpose in everyday joys under the guiding hand of God.
