The Fate of All the Living
Ecclesiastes 9:1-12

 

Rosencrantz: Do you ever think of yourself as actually dead, lying in a box with a lid on it?

Guildenstern: No.

Ros: Nor do I, really…. It's silly to be depressed by it. I mean one thinks of it like being alive in a box, one keeps forgetting to take into account the fact that one is dead … which should make all the difference … shouldn't it? I mean, you'd never know you were in a box, would you? It would be just like being asleep in a box. Not that I'd like to sleep in a box, mind you, not without any air - you'd wake up dead, for a start, and then where would you be? Apart from inside a box. That's the bit I don't like, frankly. That's why I don't think of it….

Guil stirs restlessly, pulling his cloak round him.

Because you'd be helpless, wouldn't you? Stuffed in a box like that, I mean you'd be in there for ever. Even taking into account the fact that you're dead, it isn't a pleasant thought. Especially if you're dead, really … ask yourself, if I asked you straight off - I'm going to stuff you in this box now, would you rather be alive or dead? Naturally, you'd prefer to be alive. Life in a box is better than no life at all. I expect. You'd have a chance at least. You could lie there thinking - well, at least I'm not dead! In a minute someone's going to bang on the lid and tell me to come out. (Banging the floor with his fists.) "Hey you, whatsyername! Come out of there!"

Guil (jumps up savagely): You don't have to flog it to death!

Pause.

Ros: I wouldn't think about it , if I were you. You'd only get depressed. (Pause.) Eternity is a terrible thought. I mean, where's it going to end?

from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard

But whoever is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion. The living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no more reward, and even the memory of them is lost. Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished; never again will they have any share in all that happens under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 9:4-6

  1. There is no practical difference between the wicked and the righteous (1-3)
    1. This is why man can't understand the work of God (8:17)
    2. The righteous and the wise and their works are in the hand of God (1-2a)
      1. But don't be so fast to take comfort from that thought.
      2. This is a recap of 3:1-8 where the sovereignty of God afforded us no comfort because we could not tell whether God is for us or against us. The same point is made here.
      3. "Man does not know love or hatred by anything that is before him" = You cannot guess from present events how God views your work.
      4. Or "Man doesn't know whether [God] loves or hates him because everything is futility"
        1. This is the Septuagint translation; it requires the changing of a letter in the Hebrew.
        2. This would give us 38 uses of the word "futility" in Ecclesiastes.
          1. Remember that the Hebrew word for futility, hebel, is in Hebrew numbering 5+2+30, i.e. 37
          2. So it's much more fun to have 37.
        3. Furthermore, the Septuagint has a bad habit of regularizing out the "abnormalities" of the Hebrew text, emphasizing repetition at the expense of variation. (E.g. the translators stick an "And God saw that it was good" at the end of Creation Day 2 where the Hebrew text lacks such a phrase. It is more fruitful to inquire why the phrase is lacking than to insert it for reasons of parallelism and regularity.)
        4. But the thought has a certain charm. We don't know how God feels toward us because everyone has been subjected to futility.
      5. In any event, this is the lesson of Job. You can't discern God's feelings toward a person by the blessings or troubles he receives under the sun.
    3. There is one fate for everyone, i.e. death (2,3)
      1. The righteous and the wicked alike die.
      2. The Preacher grows bold - because the facts are on his side - and introduces explicitly religious categories.
        1. The good and the clean just as the unclean.
        2. There is no sacrifice that will prevent death.
        3. The swearer vs. the one who hasn't sworn
          1. The swearer is the good one in this context.
            1. Neh. 10:28-30 - The rest of the people, the priests, the Levites, the gatekeepers, the singers, the temple servants, and all who have separated themselves from the peoples of the lands to adhere to the law of God, their wives, their sons, their daughters, all who have knowledge and understanding, 29join with their kin, their nobles, and enter into a curse and an oath to walk in God's law, which was given by Moses the servant of God, and to observe and do all the commandments of the LORD our Lord and his ordinances and his statutes. 30We will not give our daughters to the peoples of the land or take their daughters for our sons….
            2. Ecc. 8:2 - I say keep the command of the king. Do not be terrified because of your oath before God.
          2. But note the admonition of Ecc 5:4,5
      3. In other words, being God's "chosen people" "in covenant" with him gets you zip. He cuts you no slack and gives you no breaks. You die like everyone else.
      4. This is an evil fact about life (3)
        1. But it's an appropriate evil because everyone is evil and crazy.
        2. Robert Gordis defines this "madness" as "a word [The Preacher] uses to describe unbridled and unprincipled conduct, which results from the conviction that life is meaningless and there is no moral law operating in the world."
        3. This madness, then, arises from the dilemma of 8:11 - Because the sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.
        4. Death, therefore, awaits all.
  2. Therefore, life is better than death (4-6)
    1. The Living Have Hope and Knowledge
      1. With the living there is hope
        1. This is not the sense of Christian hope of the resurrection
        2. It is a hope connected to life under the sun. (Like Rosencrantz saying that even a man buried alive has hope that someone will bang on his coffin and let him out.)
        3. Life, however wretched, affords more pleasure than the grave.
      2. A live dog is better off than a dead lion.
        1. The dog was the vilest of creatures in Israelite thought and the lion was the most powerful
          1. 2 Kings 8:13 - What is your servant, who is a mere dog, that he should do this great thing? versus
          2. 2 Samuel 17:10 - Then even the valiant warrior, whose heart is like the heart of a lion, will utterly melt with fear; for all Israel knows that your father is a warrior, and that those who are with him are valiant warriors.
          3. Today, we might say a live cockroach is better than a dead lion
        2. The lion, as well, is associated with the exaltation of God's people
          1. Genesis 49:9 - Judah is a lion's whelp; from the prey, my son, you have gone up. He crouches down, he stretches out like a lion, like a lioness-who dares rouse him up? 10 The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet, until tribute comes to him; and the obedience of the peoples is his.
          2. And this has particular significance for a book that looks back to the reign of Solomon.
          3. Solomon was considered in his time to be that lion of the tribe of Judah, establishing a permanent earthly reign in the name of God.
        3. By the time Ecclesiastes is written, there may also be the association of the name "dog" with the Gentiles.
        4. So The Preacher may also be saying it's better to be a live Gentile than a dead Jew.
          1. This is in keeping with the setup in which he has deliberately invoked the ceremonial aspects of Jewish religion
          2. He is repeating that there is no point in being "God's chosen" if you're dead. Better not to be his chosen and at least be alive.
        5. In any event, he is repeating this assessment: a living wicked man is better off than a dead righteous man.
          1. Remember, these are provisional judgments.
          2. Within the scope of life under the sun, this statement is true
      3. At least the living know that they will die.
        1. The Preacher is being ironic.
        2. This is not a genuine advantage, but it's better than nothing and it's all you get.
    2. The Dead Have Nothing
      1. The dead don't know anything.
      2. The dead have no reward or remembrance
      3. And Ecclesiastes is about the search for remembrance
        1. 1:11 - The people of long ago are not remembered, nor will there be any remembrance of people yet to come by those who come after them.
        2. 2:16 - For there is no enduring remembrance of the wise or of fools, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. How can the wise die just like fools?
        3. 8:10 - Then I saw the wicked buried; and they had gone in and out of the place of holiness. Meanwhile those who did right were forgotten in the city.
      4. Because remembrance means salvation
        1. Gen 8:1 - But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and all the domestic animals that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided.
        2. Ex 2:24,5 - God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 25 God looked upon the Israelites, and God took notice of them.
        3. Num 10:9 - When you go to war in your land against the adversary who oppresses you, you shall sound an alarm with the trumpets, so that you may be remembered before the LORD your God and be saved from your enemies.
        4. Ps 105:8 - He remembers His covenant forever, The word which He commanded, for a thousand generations.
        5. Luke 23:42,3 - Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." 43 He replied, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise."
      5. The rest of the Old Testament distinguishes between the righteous and the wicked in this respect. The wicked have no remembrance, but the righteous do.
        1. Ps 34:16 - The face of the LORD is against evildoers, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth.
        2. Isaiah 26:14 - The dead do not live; shades do not rise-because you have punished and destroyed them, and wiped out all memory of them.
        3. Deut 25:19 - Therefore when the LORD your God has given you rest from all your enemies on every hand, in the land that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, you shall blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; do not forget.
        4. Prov 10:7 - The memory of the righteous is a blessing, but the name of the wicked will rot.
        5. Ps 112:6 - For the righteous will never be moved; they will be remembered forever.
        6. Job 18:17 - Their [I.e. the wicked's] memory perishes from the earth, and they have no name in the street. (Because they are no longer under the sun (Ecc 9:6).)
      6. Ecclesiastes makes a distinction not between the righteous and the wicked but between the living and the dead. If life under the sun is all there is, then all those promises were cruel mockeries.
      7. But don't forget Jesus's interpretation of Exodus 3:15.
        1. Matt 22:31,31 - And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God, 32 'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? He is God not of the dead, but of the living."
        2. So even from ancient times there was an indication that life was more than what could be seen under the sun.
  3. We respond to this by getting what enjoyment we can under the sun (7-10)
    1. For God has approved such works
      1. This can mean one of two things
        1. It is now that God approves your works
          1. This is the way KJV and NIV translate it.
          2. I.e. there is no joy or merrymaking in the grave to which you are going
        2. Or God has already (or long ago) approved your works
          1. This is the way NASB, NKJV, NRSV all translate it.
          2. I.e. at some point in the past God approved (all?) your works, so go at them with a clear conscience.
      2. "Already" is a much more common meaning of this word.
        1. But does it make sense here?
        2. Is The Preacher really saying that God has approved all our earthly pleasure-seeking ahead of time, so we need not fear to seek such pleasure?
      3. It would seem, by default, that "now" must be the correct interpretation, since then we face no interpretive difficulty. Verse 10 even offers somewhat of a confirmation of this view.
      4. On the other hand, I'm uncomfortable dismissing "already" simply because it's a difficult reading. After all, this is a difficult book.
      5. So here's my case for it:
        1. This is, as noted, what the word normally means.
        2. In this context, it probably refers back to the covenant made with Adam in the garden. And that makes sense because that covenant is never far from The Preacher's mind, but runs as an undercurrent throughout the book. (E.g. 7:29 or 9:18)
        3. So The Preacher is telling us that already, at the beginning, God approved such works of eating and drinking and being married, so go ahead and pursue them still.
        4. But, he will remind us in vv. 10ff., the attempt to pursue such things is marred by the curse and by death.
        5. All this fits in with the book's theme.
      6. In any event, he does tell us to pursue those things that are good in themselves without fear.
      7. Eating bread and drinking wine are good things and to be received as from God - Ps 104:14ff. - You cause the grass to grow for the cattle, and plants for people to use, to bring forth food from the earth, 15 and wine to gladden the human heart, oil to make the face shine, and bread to strengthen the human heart.
      8. White clothes symbolize happiness. (Note the redemptive aspect they take on in Matt 17:2; Rev 3:5,18; 4:4; 7:9; 19:8). So does oil (Ps 23:5)
      9. And marriage is still worth pursuing, even after the curse.
    2. But even in the midst of life, you know that this life is futility (9)
      1. And this life is full of toil from which there is at best a partial respite in marriage and conviviality.
      2. Nevertheless, you may as well act now. It doesn't get any better (10)
      3. This is the last time of 5 that the Preacher commends pleasure. His final word on the subject is that it is a best a partial answer to the futility of life under the sun. But, under the sun, it's the best answer you can find.
      4. And it's nice to know there's nothing wrong or sinful about such things.
    3. And chance and death will frustrate all our endeavors (11,12)
      1. Ability and wisdom are not uniformly rewarded under the sun.
      2. It's not that the swift never win races, the strong never win battles. You just can't tell (11)
      3. And right in the middle of it all, and very much against your will, death overtakes you.

Go on to Week 11 (9:13 - 10:15)

Go back to Week 9 (8:2-17)

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