Ecclesiastes Chapter 2

Ecclesiastes Chapter 2

Summary

Chapter 2 is divided into three sections: the pursuit of pleasure as a way to find meaning or purpose in life; the reality of death; and a reflective conclusion. This being a layman’s commentary, there may be more technical divisions applied by scholars, but these three foci are the logical groupings I see.

In the first section, the Preacher testifies that he freed himself to pursue whatever his heart desired. In doing so, and partly thanks to his position of privilege, he was able to experience the primary earthly pleasures to their utmost. He put energy into his work and he enjoyed it, he played the agrarian, growing food, and the environmentalist, growing trees, and he found pleasure in these things as well. He built grand houses in which to live, grew grapes, drank wine and partied, had numerous people serving him, partook of sex when he wished (assuming the acquisition of “maidens” served this purpose), experienced the arts and music, and accumulated great wealth. After all these pursuits, he stops to ponder their significance and concludes that “all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there is no profit under the sun.”

In the second section, the Preacher laments that both he, a wise man, and a fool suffer the same end: death. He also connects the idea of death to his central theme: since we all die, what we do in life is vanity. And to make things even worse, when the next generation inherits the fruits of our labor, there’s no guarantee that they will continue to build on the things we have constructed. Our life’s labour could be wasted by a fool as easily as it could be enhanced by a wise man. In this section, the Preacher begins to use variations on the phrase “This too is vanity,” suggesting that not only is labour vanity but also the lamenting that results from this realization.

In his conclusion, the Preacher acknowledges that God gives what is good, and thus the Preacher’s experiences are things he should enjoy. He closes the chapter by setting up a contrast between a man who is good in God’s sight versus a sinner. And in a final statement that leaves a little ambiguity to this contrast, he says that “This also is vanity and vexation of spirit.”

Reflection and analysis

2:11, 18-19 “Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought and on the labour that I had laboured to do, and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun [. . .] Therefore I hated life; because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me, for all is vanity and vexation of spirit. Yea, I hated all my labour which I had taken under the sun, because I should leave it unto the man that shall be after me.”

I want to comment on these verses because when I read them I immediately identified a contrast to the Creation narrative in Genesis. Each day, after God’s labour, comes the pronouncement “and God saw that it was good.” The wise Preacher, on the other hand, confesses, “Yea, I hated all my labour.” What this means I don’t know, but it is perhaps a poignant illustration of the difference between God and man, and I think once again of my thoughts about Chapter 1, the idea that God exists “outside the circle” of our cyclical world, and perhaps this transcendence allows for a perspective that is not readily available to us. To continue the comparison to Genesis, it’s also interesting that the Preacher laments that his work, his “creation” in a way, will be left for someone else to manage after his death. God, on the other hand, readily gave the creation over to the management of woman and man. There is something about this approach to freely giving that foreshadows the ways in which God will demonstrate his love to humankind, finally and ultimately breaking into and through the cycle of our world to give Himself. But in the meantime (and the past-time) God has in essence “let go” and entrusted us with freedom and responsibility. In lacking this perspective, the Preacher in this instance lacks the basic wisdom of our present day humanists, who see the purpose and primary motivation of our lives to be working faithfully and considering deeply what our labours will leave for the next generation.

“This also is vanity and vexation of spirit.”

Variations of this phrase are repeated as a conclusion after each small section, and the most interesting thing about this phrase to me is the murkiness of the antecedents for “This.” In some of these occurrences, “this” could be referring back to two different scenarios, and the antecedent the reader chooses determines the direction in which vanity’s finger points. For example, in verse 26, the last verse of the chapter, “This also is vanity” could refer to three different concepts: 1) receiving the gifts of wisdom, knowledge, and joy from God; 2) the “travail” that “heap[s] up” on the sinner; 3) or the fact that he who “is good before God” benefits from the work of the sinner.

I assume my uncertainty regarding the intended antecedent is simply a semantic disconnect, a lack of knowledge on my part regarding the way the original language structured its phrases and sentences, or perhaps simply my lack of knowledge regarding English usage in 1611, when the King James version was translated. On some level, I’m tempted to say this lack of clarity is significant for readers of the text; but I can also imagine that if the writer were asked which of these scenarios “this” refers to, he might simply answer, “Yes.” In other words, it might as well apply to all of them. I’d be a little surprised if this were the actual intention, but given the repeated theme that “all is vanity,” it doesn’t seem to be particularly critical to know which of these scenarios he intends to identify with the pronoun “this.” That said, it would be more intriguing if a particular scenario were singled out. For example, the fact that a sinner does his work, then sees the fruit of his labor go to someone else who is “good before God” is an interesting illustration of vanity, partly because a lack of clarity remains. Put under a microscope, there are two possible interpretations: it could be vanity for the good man to receive these fruits, or it could be vanity for the sinner to do the work in the first place. Once again, the truth is quite simply that, given the thesis of the book, both of these things qualify as vanity. (I may have taken some liberties with the text by interpreting that the sinner does any useful work. The truth is, I don't know how to interpret "travails that heap up" on the sinner, but it does seem clear that the good man somehow benefits from the life and sufferings of the sinner.)

As I worked on my summary and reflections for this chapter, I noted a few other things I’d like to explore in more depth, but this has already been a fairly lengthy (and unsatisfying) bit of labour, so I will save further analysis for another day (or not).