by Kent Leslie ✉️
We’re at chapter 6 of Ecclesiastes, in which Qohelet talks about people who are rich but not happy. He’s been rich himself, so he knows a lot about that, and no doubt he’s known rich people just like this.
1 There is an evil that I have seen under the sun, and it lies heavy upon humankind: 2 those to whom God gives wealth, possessions, and honor, so that they lack nothing of all that they desire, yet God does not enable them to enjoy these things, but a stranger enjoys them. This is vanity; it is a grievous ill.
This isn’t necessarily because they die and the stranger inherits them, as we’ll see in the rest of this passage. It’s because the stranger enjoys them regardless of not owning them. Let’s say you own a beach or garden or some natural wonder, but you’re bedridden and can’t go outside, and your neighbors enjoy these things but you can’t. Or you own a restaurant but can’t eat the food, or a zoo but you’re allergic to all the animals. Ironic things like that. The following verses indicate the people who don’t enjoy these things pretty much make the choice to not enjoy them. It’s not God cursing them with unhappiness; it’s them cursing themselves.
3 A man may father a hundred children and live many years, but however many are the days of his years, if he does not enjoy life’s good things or has no burial, I say that a stillborn child is better off than he. 4 For it comes in vanity and goes in darkness, and in darkness its name is covered; 5 moreover, it has not seen the sun or known anything, yet it finds rest rather than he. 6 Even though he should live a thousand years twice over yet enjoy no good—do not all go to one place?
This is all part of Qohelet’s theme that it’s good to find joy where we can. You can live to 1,000, or even 2,000, but if you don’t enjoy any of it, you’re not in paradise. You’re in the other place. You’re better off dead.
7 All human toil is for the mouth, yet the appetite is not satisfied. 8 For what advantage have the wise over fools? And what do the poor have who know how to conduct themselves before the living? 9 Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of desire; this also is vanity and a chasing after wind.
“Appetite” in verse 7 is actually the Hebrew word
10 Whatever has come to be has already been named, and it is known what humans are and that they are not able to dispute with those who are stronger. 11 The more words, the more vanity, so how is one the better? 12 For who knows what is good for mortals while they live the few days of their vain life, which they pass like a shadow? For who can tell them what will be after them under the sun?
Whenever people read “Whatever has come to be has already been named,” or the
And no, that’s not what Qohelet means. I translate the passage as, “What has become is already called by its name.” Everything already has a name. And who names things? Who named all the animals? [Ge 2.19-20] We humans do. Adam named them first, and of course every language has its own names for them. This isn’t a statement about what God has predetermined: It’s about what we determined. It’s about human knowledge.
We already know what humans are. We know our place in the universe already. Studying it even more, isn’t gonna change that.
More about determinism in another article.