In
this passage, Qoholeth,
the "Teacher" of Ecclesiastes (1:1), ruminates on the fate
of human beings. The teacher does not believe in life after
death. The teacher does not share the voice of Isaiah, that
those who die in the Lord "shall live, their corpses shall rise"
(Isa 26:19), nor the hope of Daniel that "many of those who
sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life,
and some to everlasting shame and contempt" (Dan 12:2). Far
from these rare affirmations of resurrection in the prophetic and
apocalyptic literature of the Old Testament, the wisdom of
Ecclesiastes is that human beings "are but animals" (3:18).
Humans and animals share the same "fate"; they are
one in spirit (or breath) and flesh ("dust") (3:19).
Perhaps in rebuttal of a more optimistic view of human destiny,
the teacher sees little reason to hope that "the human spirit
goes upward and the spirit of animals goes downward" (3:21).
His summary is that "all go to one place" (3:20).
If
the teacher's conclusion on the fate of humans and animals was that
they die to "one" and the same "place", it was
his vexation that "in the place of judgment, wickedness was
there, and in the place of righteousness, wickedness was there"
(3:16) that led him to that conclusion. The troubling
proposition of the one and same place of
judgment (or "justice", Hebrew mishpat)
and wickedness, of good and evil, of saints and sinners, leads him to
"the one place" of humans and animals. Because
wickedness flourishes in the place of righteous judgment, in
death humans go to the same place as animals. In the teacher's
mind, the reality of the one place of wickedness and righteousness is
somehow related to the one place of humans and animals.
What
is the relation? In the teacher's mind, the one place of death
follows from the same place of justice and wickedness because "God
will judge the righteous and the wicked" (3:17). The
teacher, far from having abandoned hope, clings to faith in the
judgment of God. The wicked's standing, not falling, in the
place of judgment, would seem to be evidence of the injustice and
impotence of the world's Creator--if but for one equally conspicuous
phenomenon. For, just as the teacher has observed that it is
common for the wicked to sit in the judgment seat, lording it over
the just, he has observed that all human beings--righteous
and wicked--die
with the animals. Just as surely as, in death, "humans
have no advantage over the animals", so the wicked, by fact of
their humanity, have no advantage over the righteous. Because
of the animals, the place of judgment is not in the end overrun by
wickedness; the witness of the animals suggests that a righteous God
will yet pull the wicked from their thrones.
Consequently,
while the perspective of the teacher is not exactly resurrection
hope, it is nonetheless biblical faith. If the teacher could not
affirm as much as Isaiah and Daniel, Paul and, of course, Jesus (“I
am the Resurrection”) (Jn 11:25), he does, like them, “entrust
himself to the one who judges justly” (1 Pet 2:23). Such trust,
moreover, commends a distinctive course of living. For Jesus,
trusting God for judgment sealed his own perseverance in love that
refuses to return violence for violence. Paul, confident in God's
vindication of the righteous through the resurrection of Jesus,
counseled the Corinthians to “be steadfast, immovable, always
excelling in the work of the Lord” (1 Cor 15:58). The teacher
wrote that “there is nothing better than that all should enjoy
their work, for that is their lot” (3:22). Unless we view
enjoyment of the work that God has given us to do as evidence of
selfishness (as though working for God should not bring us
happiness), the teacher's course of action is a welcome contribution
to the biblical canon. Joy in our living is not the sign of
self-satisfaction but of our justification by faith in God.
-Joe
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