When reading through Ecclesiastes, one of the first things you'll notice is how nothing bothers the Preacher more than death. It’s the foundation for all his other complaints.
Death Stings
First, the Preacher laments how death negates wisdom. While he affirms it's better to be wise than foolish, he also recognizes that while wisdom may allow him to live longer than a fool, he and the fool will both end up dead someday. Even worse, he knows from experience that as time passes he will be forgotten in death just like the fool.1
Second, he laments how death spoils the fruit of his labor by forcing him to leave everything he’s accomplished and acquired in the hands of someone else, who may turn out to be a fool. The Preacher can't stand the injustice of a lazy fool benefitting from his wisdom, skill, and hard work.2
Third, the Preacher laments how death undermines the hope of justice. On one hand the Preacher hopes for God’s judgment.3 But on the other he sees how the righteous ultimately join the wicked—as well as animals— in death. He takes no comfort in the hope of a post-mortem judgment. He’s agnostic about the afterlife. He doesn’t presume to know what he has not or cannot observe for himself.4
That everyone dies, no matter who they are or what they do in life, is the ultimate evil under the sun, says the Preacher.5 He then connects the evil of universal, indiscriminate, equalizing death with evil in the human heart.6
Several hundred years later, while describing the saving work of Christ, the writer of Hebrews also describes how the fear of death enslaves humanity to evil.
“Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.” (Hebrews 2:14–15, NIV)
The Preacher does not occupy a privileged place in history from which he can see the the life, death, and resurrection of Christ as the solution to the problem of death. Nevertheless, he offers a ray of hope for the living.
Death Teaches
The hope of the living is found in knowing we will die.7 It’s this awareness of death (memento mori) that motivates us to enjoy our blessings while we can (carpe diem).8
It's at this point our Christian impulse is to move on from the Preacher's advice and emphasize instead how the resurrection of Christ sets us free from our slavery to death. And we will get there, eventually. Easter is coming. But for now let’s sit with the Preacher in the school of death a bit longer.
“It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of everyone; the living should take this to heart.” (Ecclesiastes 7:2, NIV)
Why are funerals more valuable than parties? Because they remind us, in the words of Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption, to either get busy living or get busy dying.
The Preacher emphasizes this point in what is arguably the most moving passage in the book. Please don’t skim or skip it. (Many scholars read the details in this passage as an allegory for old age.)
Remember your Creator in the days of your youth,
before the days of trouble come
and the years approach when you will say,
“I find no pleasure in them”—
before the sun and the light
and the moon and the stars grow dark,
and the clouds return after the rain;
when the keepers of the house tremble,
and the strong men stoop,
when the grinders cease because they are few,
and those looking through the windows grow dim;
when the doors to the street are closed
and the sound of grinding fades;
when people rise up at the sound of birds,
but all their songs grow faint;
when people are afraid of heights
and of dangers in the streets;
when the almond tree blossoms
and the grasshopper drags itself along
and desire no longer is stirred.
Then people go to their eternal home
and mourners go about the streets.
Remember him—before the silver cord is severed,
and the golden bowl is broken;
before the pitcher is shattered at the spring,
and the wheel broken at the well,
and the dust returns to the ground it came from,
and the spirit returns to God who gave it.
Ecclesiastes 12:1-7
That’s good Bible.
Remember your Creator and enjoy whatever good you find in life while you are young.
Enjoy being twenty, before you get old and turn forty.
Enjoy being forty, for there are things you can do at forty that you can't at sixty.
When you're sixty years young, make the most of it, because when you're eighty, you’ll look back longingly at what you could do when you were sixty
There is a time to be born, a time to live, and a time to die.
And because of Jesus, a time to be resurrected.
But it is not yet time for the resurrection.
It's time to live and savor whatever good comes in this present moment as a gift from God.
Once upon a time a monk was pursued by a ferocious tiger. He raced to the edge of a cliff and found a dangling rope, which he grabbed and used to repel down the face of the cliff. As he descended, he looked down and saw an angry black bear waiting for him at the bottom of the cliff. He looked up and saw the tiger peering at him over the edge. Then he noticed two mice gnawing on the old, frayed rope several feet above him. While contemplating his predicament, he saw growing within arm’s reach a dark red strawberry. The monk picked it, ate it, and with juice running down his chin, said to himself, “That is the best strawberry I have ever tasted in my entire life.”—A Zen Parable
“I saw that wisdom is better than folly, just as light is better than darkness. The wise have eyes in their heads, while the fool walks in the darkness; but I came to realize that the same fate overtakes them both. Then I said to myself, “The fate of the fool will overtake me also. What then do I gain by being wise?” I said to myself, “This too is meaningless.” For the wise, like the fool, will not be long remembered; the days have already come when both have been forgotten. Like the fool, the wise too must die!” (Ecclesiastes 2:13–16, NIV)
“I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who comes after me. And who knows whether that person will be wise or foolish? Yet they will have control over all the fruit of my toil into which I have poured my effort and skill under the sun. This too is meaningless. So my heart began to despair over all my toilsome labor under the sun. For a person may labor with wisdom, knowledge and skill, and then they must leave all they own to another who has not toiled for it. This too is meaningless and a great misfortune.” (Ecclesiastes 2:18–21, NIV)
“And I saw something else under the sun: In the place of judgment—wickedness was there, in the place of justice—wickedness was there. I said to myself, “God will bring into judgment both the righteous and the wicked, for there will be a time for every activity, a time to judge every deed.”” (Ecclesiastes 3:16–17, NIV)
“I also said to myself, “As for humans, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals. Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; humans have no advantage over animals. Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return. Who knows if the human spirit rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?”” (Ecclesiastes 3:18–21, NIV)
“All share a common destiny—the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the clean and the unclean, those who offer sacrifices and those who do not. As it is with the good, so with the sinful; as it is with those who take oaths, so with those who are afraid to take them. This is the evil in everything that happens under the sun: The same destiny overtakes all…(Ecclesiastes 9:2–3a, NIV)
The hearts of people, moreover, are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live, and afterward they join the dead.” (Ecclesiastes 9:3b, NIV)
“Anyone who is among the living has hope—even a live dog is better off than a dead lion! For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward, and even their name is forgotten. Their love, their hate and their jealousy have long since vanished; never again will they have a part in anything that happens under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 9:4–6, NIV)
“Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for God has already approved what you do….Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.” (Ecclesiastes 9:7–10, NIV)