Ecclesiastes and the
Perpetual Paradoxes of Life
by:
Roland H. Worth, Jr.
© 2012
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If accompanied by additional, supplemental material—in agreement or disagreement—it must be clearly and visibly distinguishable from the original text.
All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are
taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Contents
Page
Preface . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Introduction . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . 5
The Claimed Personae of the Author
Anti-Solomonic Arguments
The Author as Teacher and Questioner
Internal Tensions: Contradictions or
Admitting Rival
and Equally True Realities
and Generalizations?
Outline and Interpretive Approach
Chapter One: The
Paradox of Intelligence and Knowledge:
We Idealize Them, but They are
Unable to Bring Full
Satisfaction in a World of Perpetual Change (1:1-1:18) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Chapter Two: The
Paradox of Excess in Relaxation and
Work: They Seem
“Fulfilling” Yet Inevitable Change
Frustrates Their Enjoyment (2:1-3:17) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . 44
Chapter Three:
The Paradox of Happiness:
We Seek It This Side of Death Yet
So Many Things
Can Destroy It (
Chapter Four: The
Paradox of Wealth:
It is Both Desirable Yet Potentially
Tormenting (
Chapter Five: The
Paradox of the Desired
Versus the Needed (
Chapter Six: The
Paradox of Restraint:
The Need for Moderation Versus
the Reality of Its Violation (
Chapter Seven: The
Paradox of Evil:
Even Though It May Triumph,
It Does Not Have to Crush Us (
Chapter Eight:
The Paradox of Wisdom in Rulers:
Ideal in Theory but Hard to Find
in Practice (
Chapter Nine:
The Paradox of Business Commitments:
Work Hard but Remember Your
Religious Duties As Well
(11:1-12:14) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
130
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
Internet Preface
Back in the late 1980s or so
my mother argued that I should write something “that will make money.” True
I was getting books published, but since they were targeted at a “scholarly”
market and, as is usually the case, the sales were only modest. (Odd:
back in the 1970s I was writing material only modestly lest
“sophisticated” for a “popular” audience in a religious journal.) It made me good to have my name in print and
it felt good to be of some intellectual stimulation to others, but as the
apostle wrote “the laborer is worthy of his hire.” So I had no disinclination to making a
more reasonable return on the many hours invested in research and writing.
But what? For some reason the best Biblical theme I
could come up with was the book of Ecclesiastes, hardly the book likely to come
to most people’s minds! Anyway, I wrote
my treatise and submitted it to two or three places and it went nowhere. Looking back at it, I now realize it “danced
with lead boots,” i.e., was probably the worst piece of extended prose I’ve
ever done.
Years later I was
giving more thought to Ecclesiastes and thought I could detect an arrangement
of themes that would make it more germane to everyday living. That resulted in the following manuscript. Alas, it found no publisher either even
though its analysis is a world better than that found in the original.
So that it might find a usefulness to others I am posting it on the internet with
the offer to others to freely reuse the material.
As to the outline of
contents I suggest: It may be wrong, but
Solomon, or the wisdom scholar, or the wisdom scholar who was working on
Solomon’s staff as an adviser was clearly a man of superior insight: He had at least a vague outline in his own
mind of the central points he was trying to develop; he was too intelligent to
do otherwise. To treat the text as a
kind of undigested “glob” is manifestly unfair to the man’s intelligence.
Unlike my four thick
“Torah Commentaries” on First Corinthians, I rarely made anything beyond minor
adjustments here and there in the text.
I think it serves its purpose reasonably well without further
expansion. If others should feel
differently, perhaps I will change my mind on that in the future and do a
thorough revision. Yet I have so many
books that need to be either completed or recast—this one seems very low on
that priority list.
Finally,
a personal note. This volume—in its
sermonic form—represented the last significant number of sermons I am likely to
ever do. (Since then there has only been
a short sermon or two when the preacher is out of town on vacation.) I have a serious heart problem. Quadruple bypass and a double by-pass. One-and-a-half blood vessels (i.e., one
vessel is grafted into another) is all that keeps my heart going. And I notice some of the medicine I take is
labeled for “congestive heart failure.”
One of the brethren
noticed I was rubbing my chest during one of the Ecclesiastes series of sermons
and I had to confess that it was getting harder and harder to deliver a
lesson. So these marked my last
“official” sermons, so to speak. Now I
speak for a modest twenty minutes or so, when I do at all, for my chest makes [Page
2] life extremely unpleasant for me if
I do more. And is not all that happy
with that modest effort either.
Still trying to figure
a way to get around those limitations, but haven’t figured one out yet. But one thing the heart doesn’t keep
me from doing is writing, though even there it can get distinctly unfriendly at
the amount of tension and anxiety that can be produced when laboring through
particularly difficult and troubling subjects.
But the work ultimately gets done anyway.
To be of service to the Lord in some modest
manner. That’s what the last half century has been
all about. As I tried
to get it through to my listeners on varied occasions: the Lord doesn’t demand that we succeed. He does demand that we try. And that is what I intend to continue.
Roland H. Worth, Jr.
Spring 2012
Original Preface
My earliest datable memories are from
elementary school in 1952 and I was drawing a car with the name of “Ike” on the
side. (For younger readers, he was the
Republican candidate in that year and broke the two decade Democratic hold on
the White House.) In 1956 there came the
Anglo-French-Israeli invasion of the Nasserite regime in
In following years
there came a variety of other works. Barry Goldwater’s Conscience of a Conservative (on the
virtues of a very different concept of government than the one now taken for
granted), Henry Hazlitt’s The Great Idea (on
the virtue and potential of the free market economy), and the fascinating The
New Class by the vice-president of Communist
It didn’t take very
many years for me to realize that, as an individual, I was never going to have
much of an impact on politics and how issues were decided. It was then that I vowed that the one thing I
could do, I would do: keep
up to date on evolving political issues, be alert to the arguments pro and
con. In other words, even if I couldn’t
change the course of events, I could at least protect myself against being
conned by the politicians. (At least too often!
Or too easily!)
I’ve lived by that rule during the decades since.
[Page 3] I’ve seen men of principle in both major
political parties and characters who would disgrace “most wanted” notices at
the Post Office. I’ve seen passionate
debates on major political issues in which genuine convictions were clearly on
display.
Yet I’ve seen passionate debates in which
the final legislative product (for example, obligatory extended family leave
time by corporations) was only of minor value to most workers while the
liberals bragged about how “much” they had done and the conservatives bragged
about how “much” they had averted. Both
sides went home smug and the typical worker had a “benefit” that most couldn’t
afford to take advantage of. In many
ways the “ideal” political issue: much
huffing and puffing and avowal of principle and human interest and ideological
commitment while the result changes little and for few people.
The author of
Ecclesiastes, in his cynicism, would have loved it. It so perfectly fits his clear concept of the
ironies and paradoxes of life.
Which
is, perhaps, one of the reasons I enjoy the book. When you get to a certain point in life, you
begin to see beneath the surface. Not
all the time and not always deeply enough.
But deep enough and you’ve lived a sufficient amount of time to realize
that there is an absurdity in life that can easily become the definition of
human existence itself.
The great triumvirate
of my life has been the study of the gospel, of history, and of politics. In regard to religion, I spent over two
decades in a combination of full time and part-time/occasional preaching. In regard to history, I’ve written several
books on the Pacific War of 1941-1945.
And I’ve had a fascination with how the
“religious” and the “secular” overlap and interlock. Hence I wrote a volume on Church,
Monarch, and Bible: The Political
Context of Biblical Translation, in which I attempted to show how
politics and religion interacted in the first great age of vernacular
translation, the sixteenth century. In
my two exhaustive volumes on the economic, religious, cultural, and historical context
of the book of Revelation (The Seven
Cities of the Apocalypse and Roman Culture and The Seven Cities of the Apocalypse & Greco-Asian Culture)
I weaved together into a mosaic these and other areas of ancient life as well.
In the book of
Ecclesiastes we come face to face with first-hand ancient political
reality. The writer presents himself not
as a mere secondary figure in the nation but as the king and he has clearly
“seen it all.” He has eaten deeply of
the glory of power. And it has left him
with indigestion—despair, frustration, and wonderment at the folly of the human
race. (And,
implicitly, of his own.)
Those who have reached
at least middle age and who love politics—and it deserves far more love and
respect than most people are willing to give it—will feel at home. They’ve seen what that ruler had seen. They’ve felt the frustration. And they, too, have wondered: “Is this the way it has to be?”
In presenting our
analysis, we have attempted to interpret the teachings of the books within a
political, religious, and psychological framework. A political one because a ruler
functions in such an environment and the author presents himself as a
king. In a psychological context
to better understand the human emotions and impact of his insights. Both on himself and how our
own contemporary age has had [Page 4] to
learn and relearn the validity of the perceptions that he records in his work. Sometimes we’ll blend these ancient and
modern elements together and in other cases distinguish them—whatever seems to
best fit the text and the flow of our discussion.
In elaborating on
these points we repeatedly make passing reference to events and books that I
have read through the decades. I
remember key ideas from many and when I know I have gained the thought from
some specific source I attempt to provide an indication of this. On the other hand, for many of them I do not
have the foggiest idea of the titles or authorship of the works where the
information came from.
Hence the necessity of referring to them
vaguely rather than with specificity. Learning comes not from the
ability to recite an unending list of names but from the ability to retain the facts,
ideas, and principles you’ve accumulated from a lifetime of reading. Many books are cited by name and these
are primarily the commentaries that have supplemented my own studies in the
preparation of this work. If this book
proves useful to the reader—and I would not have written it unless I hoped it
would do so—it will be because of the ability to tap deeply into both types of
data.
This volume makes no
pretense to examining all of the interpretive options that
are available nor the often vexed technical questions that face the
close student of this Old Testament book.
Rather we have focused on “spinning out” our proposed interpretative
scheme for the work and supplemented this, where appropriate, with varied types
of materials from these sources that are marginal to our primary interest.
The text we will use
is the New King James Version of the Bible.
There are several fine Bible translations available but this is the one
I personally feel most comfortable with.
(It has been an interesting lifetime odyssey: from the Revised Standard Version [before its
more recent mutilation in the “New” NRSV] and then to the New American Standard
Bible and, finally, to the NKJV.) The
thrust of the arguments will vary little if one uses other translations, of
course. The best way to approach our
study is by reading each section of the text first in your own preferred
translation and then the analysis as we present it. The wording may well vary a bit, but the
general thrust of our exegesis should remain essentially the same.