Ecclesiastes 12 - Make the most of life

12:1-7

This chapter begins by urging us to “Remember your Creator in the days of your youth”. A theme of Ecclesiastes is that we should make the most of the time we are in, for we do not know when it will come to end, but we do know that it will indeed come to an end. Of course each of us will one day come to an end. We might think that the writer of Ecclesiastes  is a bit of a misery guts, with his dwelling on death, but I think he actually wants us to live life to the full, and appreciating our finitude is a key to this. In the last year some of us will have lost people, in the coming some of us will lose people. When that happens we cannot actively love them anymore. Of course, we can still remember them fondly and be thankful for them, but we can no longer do anything for them. We must love people while we can, we must make the most of the times we are in.

But why does the writer begin this section by urging us to remember our creator? If we are to make the best of now, then we need to act in obedience to the Lord.

12:8

“Meaningless, meaningless!” says the teacher. Here is a place where Ortlund’s view that the NIV translation is wrong comes to the fore. The writer is not saying lif is meaningless, but life and the seasons of life are fleeting, here for a time, then they are gone. So we should make the most of them.

12:9-14

Here we have a statement of the Teacher’s purpose. The Teacher was wise, he was prepared to consider the harsh realities of life and death, to face up to them, so that he could “impart knowledge to the people. He wrote what was “upright and true”. “Fear God and keep His commandments”, is his key teaching,

Ecclesiastes 11 - Cast your bread upon the waters

11:1-6

The ESV has !cast your bread upon the waters”, encouraging us to be generous in giving, whereas NIV has “ship your grain across the sea,”, encouraging us to invest in many ventures. Verse 4, however, is clear. If we want to find an excuse for doing nothing we will always find one. In line with the rest of Ecclesiastes, a key truth is that we do not and cannot know all that will happen, so we should try many things. Accepting the limits of our knowledge is a key to true wisdom. We do not know which will succeed, this or that (11:6). So we should do something;

11:7-10

We should enjoy the days we are in, the phase of life we are in, for it will only last for a time, then it will be gone. We should also live, knowing that God will bring all things under judgement. So there is a balance between being truly responsible, and living for the moment.

Ecclesiastes Chapter 10 - Proverbs

10:1-4

.This chapter would not look out of place in Proverbs. Despite his cynicism, the Teachers prefers wisdom to folly, a little folly can easily outweigh wisdom and honour, it only takes one stupid mistake to undo the good done by wisdom and honour.

Verse 2 should not be interpreted in a political sense.Whether we have a wise or a foolish heart will inevitably affect our lives, there will be a tendency in our actions and in the course of our lives, depending on whether we are wise or foolish. If a superior person is angry with us the best course of action is usually to react with calmness, rather than being hot headed, this will often “lay even great offences to rest”, flying off the handle will often just make matters worse, even if we are “in the right”.

10:5-7

We see the reality of verse 6  often enough. Sometimes in the government, or in organisations we work for. It can seem that people in power are totally unfair for the office they hold. Conversely people who are eminently more suitable for such positions are overlooked.

10:8,9

Doing things lays us open to risk. So if we dig a pit we may fall into it.

10:10-14

Skill is useful and can overcome difficulties, or make things easier. Words from the wise are gracious, but words from fools only cause trouble. How we speak is a product of our heart.

10:14

We do not know the future, we are fools if we imagine that we can predict the future.

10:15-17

These verses are talking about wise leadership, setting things out in proper order.

10:18-20

Laziness can lead to disrepair. We should watch our words, and beware of cursing leaders, for our words may get back to them, and it will not end well.

Ecclesiastes Chapter 3 - A time for everything (short video)

Ecclesiates Chapter 3  A time for everything

Ecclesiastes 9:11-18 - Wisdom is better than folly

9:11,12

It is not always the swift who win the race or the wise who get the food, or the brilliant who gain wealth. “Time and chance happen to all”, so we should just get on and do stuff. Trying to work out exactly what will happen, or thinking something is bound to happen, is futile, and can lead to a wasted life.

9;13-18

The teacher reverts to his common sense approach. Wisdom is better than folly. A small city was saved from a siege by the wisdom of a poor man. We are not given details, but the people did not appreciate the wisdom of the man, even though it had saved them. We will not always be properly appreciated, even so “wisdom is better than strength”. So we should continue to prefer wisdom and to do the right thing, even if we are not rewarded in this life. And we should all appreciate the value of wisdom. As an example, in elections we should vote for the party that has the greater wisdom, rather than the party that claims to offer us more, be it in taxes or hand-outs.

Ecclesiastes 9:1-10 - Everything is in God's hands

9:1,2

.Everything is in God’s hands, and no one has a complete handle on life. We can live life trying to have full control of everything, but such a course is futile, for none of us can have complete control. It just causes us stress to try and gain full control. The alternative is to live to please God and to trust in Him. At one level the good and the bad receive the same. God sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous (Matt 5:45).

9:3-6

The teacher considers it evil that the same destiny overtakes us all. He also recognises that people’s hearts are full of evil. Having earlier said the dead are better off than the living, he now seems to reverse course saying “even a live dog is better off than a dead lion. Even complete cynicism/realism does not provide a satisfactory answer to life. He now argues that the living are better off than the dead.

9:7-10

So he reaches his usual conclusion.”Go, eat your food with gladness, drink your wine with a joyful heart, for God has already approved what you do”. We are to make the best of life. “Enjoy life with your wife. “ A wife is a good thing, a good gift from God, so we should enjoy being together. \if we seek to fully understand everything we will just give ourselves grief. We are all heading for death, when we can do nothing more, so we should do what we can while we live.

Ecclesiastes 8 - Accept the limits of our wisdom

8:1-8

Wisdom brightens the face. For all his, what we might call cynicism, the Teacher is convinced that wisdom is a good thing. He also advocates respect for the king. “Since a king’s word is supreme, who can say to him “What are you doing?” The same can be said about God. The attitude the teachers advocates that we have toward the king, is much the same as should have towards God. We should live life knowing that God has everything in hand. “Be still and know that I am God” (Ps 46:10).

8:9,10

These instructions are the result of the Teacher having applied his mind, having thought about things.”Everything under the sun” means everything in this life. It might seem as if it will never happen, but there comes a time when the wicked are called to account. “Meaningless” here seems to have the sense of fleeting. It can seem as if the wicked will rule forever, but this is not so.

8:11-13

Justice needs to be done quickly. “Justice delayed is justice denied”. When justice is slow people are tempted to take the Law into their own hands. They should not do this, but at least part of the blame lies with those responsible for an inadequate justice system. The Teacher is convinced that it is better  to fear God, than to not fear Him.

8:14,15

We are now back to his cynicism, or realism if you prefer. There are times when it seems that things are upside down, the righteous getting what the wicked deserve and vice versa. The Teacher’s advice is just to get on with life.

8:16,17

The Teachers thinks that no one can work out everything that God does. We should use wisdom, but do so accepting the limits of our wisdom.

Ecclesiastes 7:10-29 - Do not be over righteous

7:10-12

We can often think that the old days were better. The thing is that we forget the negative aspects of the past. Wisdom is good. Remember that despite all the negativity the Teachers never forgets what is truly good, Wisdom and knowledge are good, but not if we make an idol out of it. Likewise, money is good, but not if we worship it.

7:13,14

“Consider what God has done”. We cannot make sense of life if we discount God. \we cannot undo what He has done. So in a sense we need to accept the times we are in. If they are good we should be happy and enjoy them. But when times are difficult we need to accept that as well.

7:15-19

“In this meaningless life of mine”, Om Mr Cheerful!. He then explains his statement, He has seen the righteous die young, and the wicked live long. He then counsels us not to be over-righteous or over wise or overwicked. Instead we should avoid extremes. Why? Going to an extreme is a sign of making an idol of whatever extreme we are going to, it is also a sign that we think we can save ourselves. Indeed he says that avoiding extremes is a sign that we are fearing God.

7:20

The Teacher then extols the value of wisdom, wisdom can make us very powerful, wisdom is good. We then get a very true statement, “there is no one who is righteous. If only the Pharisees had grasped this they may have reacted differently to Jesus. Realising that we are not, and cannot be righteous is key to understanding the gospel.

7:21,22

Verse 20 is also valuable for treating others well. We are now advised not to listen to every word people say, for we may well hear something bad about ourselves, and if we are honest we know that we have either said, or at least thought, bad things about others.

7:23-25

The teacher then decided to test things by wisdom, and so to understand the stupidity of wickedness. The Teacher is then trying to understand

7:26-29

Proverbs warns about the folly of falling for immoral women, this is a snare. Part of the fruit of pleasing God is to avoid sexual sin. Sexual sin is a trap that can ensnare and ruin a man. The Teacher then sums up what he has learnt. There are very few upright men, but not one upright woman. Such a sentiment does not go down well in our age! God created us upright, but we have all gone astray.

Ecclesiates 7:1-9 Mourning is better than feasting!?

7:1 -6

“A good name is better than perfume”. The writer is brutally honest, but also does not discard wisdom entirely. Earlier he has said wisdom is better than folly, and here he stresses the value of a good reputation. But then some might think he spoils it by saying “the day of death is better than the day of birth”, and goes on to say several things in  the same vein. It is perhaps useful to remind ourselves of his general purpose. One is that life without God makes no sense, and he is not prepared to put up with any fairy tale nonsense. The book also proves the need for Christ. “It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting”. Christmas is near!  Why does he say this? The clue is in the end of v2, “death is the destiny of everyone, the living should take this to heart”. In a “house of feasting” we may for a while forget our state, and live in fantasy. It is better to have an honest and realistic view of life. To live properly, indeed to live well, we need to face up to our mortality. Also facing up to the reality of the problems we face is also important. This can even be god for the heart. The rebuke of a wise person is better for us than the flattery of fools.

7:7

“Extortion turns a wise person into a fool and a bribe corrupts the heart” This is the sort of statement that would be at home in Proverbs. Financial sin has a deep effect on us, diminishing the person. 

7:8,9

More proverb-like statements. Anger is not good for us, and to act out of anger is usually a foolish way to go. Patience is far better, and we should not let pride rule our lives.

Ecclesiastes 6 - Wealth is not the answer

6:1-6 

Wealth can be good, it can do good,and can make life better. It is the love of money that is the problem. Yet some people have lots of possessions, but it does not bring them joy. Children and material goods are meant to be enjoyed.Otherwise life is meaningless, and the teacher adjudges that it is better not to have been born at all.

6:7-12

So what is the point of the teacher saying all this, what lesson is he trying to teach us? It is that nothing can take the place of God. Even good things are no substitute. In particular wealth does not mean we don’t need God, or that we can do without Him. We need to recognise the limitations of our humanity (6:11). We need God. 

We sometimes imagine that the patterns of life do not apply to us, or that we can overcome them, but no one can avoid death, we cannot do away with “boom and bust”. There is someone who is stronger than us, God. Though man often imagines that He is God, that we can control everything, we cannot. We need to trust the Lord, There is no other way to live life properly.

Ecclesiastes 5 - Having a realistic view of life.

5:1-7

The writer urges us to go to the house of God in order to listen. Likewise we should read the Bible in order to learn from God, rather than to tell God what He should think. There is a call for humility here. We need to learn from God, not the other way around. “Many words mark the speech of a fool”, how true! We need to recognise our position relative to the Lord.

We should also be careful about making vows, and if we do make a vow, we should be quick to fulfil it. An empty vow does not endear us to God. We should fear the Lord.

5:8-12

Injustice should not surprise us. There is a tendency for all officials to look after their own well-being. This is why revolutions usually make things worse. The new rulers are just another bunch of sinners and soon use their new found power for their own ends. In the words of the Who song, "meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” health can be a snare, and the fear of losing it and “permit no sleep”, true peace comes from trusting in the Lord.. “as goods increase, so do those who consume them”. This is a rather pessimistic view of economics, but we see it playing out. Health can increase without an increase in happiness.

5:13-17

Hoarding wealth does not always benefit you, for it can easily be lost. We come into the world with nothing, and leave it with nothing. We need to have a proper view of wealth. Wealth is not eternal.

5:18-20

We should enjoy life knowing that it is for a season only. If we can enjoy our possession, we should accept that as a gift from God.

Ecclesiastes chapter 4 - Better this than that

4:1-3

The world can look a very grim and unjust place, and this is what the writer draws our attention to now. The oppressed are in a very bad place and power seems to be on the side of the oppressor. The TEacher’s conclusion is that the dead are better off than the living, for  they will see no more suffering, better still are those not born, for they will experience no suffering. This is as bleak a view as you can get, but is where life without God leads to.

4:4-6

What about the things we do achieve, much of this is the product of envy. It is said that the financial markets are run by greed and fear. Booms are fuelled by greed, and busts by fear. However, idleness (folding of the hands) is no answer, it leads only to ruin. “Better one handful with tranquility than two handfuls with toil.” It is good to work hard, but we should be careful. To chase after something at all costs is foolishness.

4:7-12

It is better to be in partnership than to be alone. Work can be used as a substitute, but never brings contentment. We need to be with others. Life alone is meaningless. Two are better than one” Our rewards are then more satisfying and we can help each other and defend one another. We need each other. As it says in Genesis 2 It is not good for man to be alone.

4:13-16

The old may be wiser  than the young, but not always. Despite his cynicism, the teacher is consistent in believing that wisdom is better than folly. 

Ecclesiastes 3:15-22 - Make the best of life

3:15-21

In a sense there is nothing new under the sun, it can also seem that there is no justice in the world. Without God there is no ultimate justice, but one day He will judge all. In one sense we are like the animals, we are made of the same stuff and we all die, but there is a fundamental difference, we were made in the image of God. Life shows that we are different. But we cannot make sense of that difference without God. We cannot properly understand who we are without bringing God into the picture.

3:22

This verse gives the Teacher’s latest conclusion, we should enjoy our work, we should make the best of things.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-14 : A time for this

3:1-8

We now come to perhaps the most famous passage in Ecclesiastes, “There is a time for everything ...”. Ecclesiastes can be viewed as being very pessimistic, but I think it is better to view it as being realistic, life without God, a worldview without God is futile. We need to recognise the time we are in. “There is a time for war and a time for peace”. There are some who will never support going to war, but sometimes it is necessary in order to prevent a greater evil. Conversely there are some who seem to delight in war, but war is terrible causing much suffering and destruction, and there is a time for peace.

3:9-14 

“He has set eternity in the human heart”. Man longs for something eternal, something that truly lasts. At heart we all recognise that there is something wrong with the world, that things could be so much better. At the same time there is something beautiful about the world and life,  things are not all bad. Yet without God we cannot make sense of the world. We should appreciate the good things that God gives us, and appreciate them as a gift from God. God has ordered the world so that men will seek Him (Acts 17:27).

Ecclesiastes Chapter 2

2:1-15

“Let us eat and drink,” you say, “for tomorrow we die!” (Is 22:13; 1 Cor 15:32) is presented as a resigned response of a person without faith, the teacher now looks at the approach to life of enjoying it as much as possible, but this too he found to be “meaningless”, or futile. He made a determined effort to cheer himself with wine and embraced folly. I.e. temporal enjoyment was all he concerned himself with.

Having decided that this approach was useless, he went to the opposite extreme, embarking on great projects. (This does sound like Solomon) building houses and gardens for himself. He also got many slaves. So humanly speaking his life was very important, and he did significant things, he acquired many riches, and he even delighted in his work. But at the end of it what had he actually achieved? Wisdom is indeed better than folly, but in the end death meets us all, both the wise and the foolish. For all his hard and wise work will be passed on to another, and that person may take good care of it, or may prove to be a complete fool, and ruin everything, not appreciating the great work.

This section comes to a conclusion,that “a person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil. This too is from the hand of God, for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment?”. So we should make the best of life, but not making an idol out of it.

Ecclesiastes Chapter 1(video) - Everything is meaningless

Ecclesiastes Chapter 1 https://youtu.be/RW8nV0LYTiQ

Ecclesiastes - Introdution (video)

https://youtu.be/1mwIx6Z8iw8`

Ecclesiastes 1:4-18 - Meaningless, life just goes on

1:4-11

 His first observation is that things go on regardless, “Generations come and go”, "the sun rises and the sun sets”, nothing we do affects any of this. The wind keeps blowing, and the rivers flow into the sea, but the sea never fills up ( this is the hydrological cycle). The eye keeps seeing, but never has enough of seeing. Likewise          the ear never has enough of hearing., “there is nothing new under the sun”, “under the sun”, a phrase that recurs, essentially means “this life”. There is never anything genuinely new (except that God does a new thing). People live and die and are then forgotten.

1:12-18

`The Teacher applied his mind to wisdom to see if this could provide an answer, but this proved to be fruitless, yet we have this inbuilt urge to seek to understand.Solomon, or the teachers was a clever and wise man, but his wisdom got him nowhere, it only wore him out.

Ecclesiastes 1:1-3 - The teacher

1:1

Verse 1 is the internal evidence for the book having been written by Solomon, for he was the son of David and was a king. Ortlund is not forgotten. Reasons include that the style of Hebrew indicates a later date, also Solomon is never actually named. However he is not overly dogmatic about the issue.

1:2,3

Verse 2 gives us the famous statement “Meaningless!, Meaningless!” or “vanity of vanities; all is vanity.”. See comments in the Introduction. Verse 3 gives us the issue that the writer grapples with, the apparent pointlessness of it all. Indeed part of his purpose seems to be to prove that making this life the be all and end all of life is not a sensible way to go.

Ecclesiastes - Introduction

Ecclesiastes is an odd book, indeed we may sometimes even wonder why it is in the Bible. For it seems rather negative at times. One approach is to try and treat it as  entirely positive, another is the opposite of this, i.e. to treat it as entirely negative. Neither of these seems right. Perhaps it is better to treat it as how to live in a fallen world, or a warning against finding perfect contentment purely within this world. This world is fallen and things will never be perfect here. The book is sometimes attributed to Solomon,  and there are verses that suggest this is the case, however, we have the character of “the teacher2, Qoheleth in Hebrew who is introduced in the text as the writer. A couple of phrases that recur in the text are “under the sun” and “meaningless” or “vanity”. Perhaps the book warns against making an idol out of things that are good, but become pointless or even dangerous if we make them the ultimate things, e.g. wisdom, pleasure etc. The NIV translates the Hebrew word Hebel as “meaningless”, older translations translate it as “vanity”, the commentary I am using (see below) reckons that the NIV has got it wrong here. The word elsewhere in the OT means “fleeting” or “breath”, implying a fleeting nature.

I am greatly indebted to the following commentary:

The Hodder Bible Commentary: Ecclesiastes - Eric Ortlund (2024).