Fallen Into Knowledge

Some (rather unorganised) Thoughts on Ecclesiastes

Texts to consider:

“As Galling later discovered, Koheleth’s sayings arose in reaction to an assumed body of wisdom tradition. Therefore almost every topic within the traditional teachings of the sages is touched upon in Ecclesiastes: God rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked; an act and its consequence is inextricably linked; life is the highest gift of God and death is a threat; diligence brings its reward and slothfulness its toil. At times Kohoeleth flatly rejects the tradition, while at other times he modifies or even affirms it. That there are contradictions within the book arises from the shifting contexts to which he speaks and from his critical judgement against traditional wisdomwhich would lay claim to greater human understanding than Koheleth would grant. To attempt to eliminate the tension within the book either by a theory of different literary sources, or by suggesting different voices in a dialogue is to seek to circumvent the context established by the editors”
Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture p.587

“The canonical shaping of the body of the book and also the epilogue makes it clear that Koheleth is to be used as scripture along with other books in the collection. Its authoritative role lies in its function within a larger context.”
ibid. p.688

Thoughts while Reading:

3:9-13:

“He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I know there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in their toil.”

While God may be trusted to act consistently according to his character, for us to make ethical principles and follow too closely to them would stand in contradiction to the first 8 verses:  Those eight verses poetically make the point that the “right thing to do“ in one circumstance may be the wrong thing an another:  there is a time for every action.  

The leading question the reader has at the end of the eight verses is, “How do I know what action is right in any given time?“  Here we turn to the differences between how God experiences time and how we experience it.

God’s experience of time is different than ours:  while we may have a sense of pastness and futureness, we are nevertheless stuck in the present.  We may (and should) leverage our knowledge of the past as best we can for the purposes of Right Action, BUT, we do not have the forsight to act in a way that will guarantee a certain outcome.  On the other hand, our knowledge of the past is also limited; and because of this we cannot make hard and fast principles by which we might pursue Right Action.

(parenthesis):  The nature of “wisdom“ literature reflects this “good idea, but not absolute“ nature of out ethical knowledge.  

The author (call him, say, Solomon) sets up this ethical problem in 1-15 and complicates it even more in the last half of the chapter.  Solomon does not (as is his custom in this book) solve the problem for us in this passage:  That is left until the end.  “keep his commandments:“  While we might be shortsighted, we can trust that god’s commandments are good even when we don’t understand. 

Illustration?  perhaps Abraham’s faith:  “Go to a land you do not know.”  Or, Sacrifice oyur son, Isaac, whom you love. We are called to do what God commands; faith is doing it even when we don’t understand why.

The passages that say “enjoy your labor, etc“  seem to have the effect of constraining us to a human scale:  we are not God, and we must take care in searching out his ways.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 14th, 2007 at 8:19 pm and is filed under Lent, Theology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.