A Layman's Commentary on Books of the Bible

This chapter contains a number of aphorisms that provoke interesting reflections or remind me of similar statements of wisdom, so I'll focus on the ones I found most compelling. 8:3b  "stand not in an evil thing; for he doeth whatsoever pleaseth him." Eight chapters in, I'm beginning to understand the grammatical connections in the KJV a bit better, I think. "He" in these cases appears to be a substitute for "whoever does this." It's interesting that the mindset of doing whatever pleases us is strongly shown as a perspective to avoid. Sure, we can recognize the potential selfishness behind this perspective, but contemporary psychology teaches that it is important to find a balance between prioritizing one's own needs or desires and being co-dependent or overly self-sacrificial. Yet the wisdom of Ecclesiastes clearly states that simply following our own whims is probably a sign that we already have misplaced priorities or an inactive con...

Verses 1 - 8 appear to be subverting our traditional understandings of what is good; put another way, it is like the author is saying, You probably think this is good or what brings pleasure, but you should probably think about reversing your perspective. An idiom that expresses this might be "flip the script," or in Jesus's words: "You have heard it said . . . but I say . . ." Some examples of this include, "It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting," "Sorrow is better than laughter," "It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise, than for a man to hear the song of fools," and "Better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof." The author explains the reasoning behind some of these claims, for example "Sorrow is better than laughter" because "by the sadness of the countenance is the heart made better." I guess a good question to ask is what general wisd...

Summarized It is a shame to have things and be unable to enjoy them. If one cannot recognize good, one's life is wasted. It doesn't matter how long we live, we will seek satisfaction and not find it, we won't ever really know what we're here for, and we'll all end up in the same boat: The End of Life . As we drift into the sunset, who knows what the next day will bring? Commentary on my embellishment This is a short chapter, and the summary above captures the main points accurately, I think, but I did stretch the meaning of the last verse to make it more interesting. A more literal interpretation simply observes that once we're dead, we won't have any knowledge of how the world continues and progresses, which is yet another example of the ultimate vanity of life; once it's gone what did it really mean and what was it really worth? But I think it is interesting to take the boat metaphor and consider that we likewise have no concrete knowledge of the...

Let's see what I can remember after just reading this in the KJV. The opening theme is to be humble before God: be more ready to hear than to speak. Of course the theme of vanity is repeated. What we gain in our lives is lost once we're gone. Despite our motivation to gather things, food, money, etc., increase does not lead to satisfaction. Don't be greedy (I hear David Sedaris's voice when I type this, as it's a line from his story "Us and Them.") Nonetheless, it is good to enjoy what we have. The key to sleeping well, though, is to labor. If we're lazy, we won't sleep well no matter how much we have. A spot of analysis Having really stalled out on my commentary/journaling through Ecclesiastes, I'm not compelled to go into much depth here, as I still have seven chapters to go. But I'll consider a couple phrases of interest, "Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God" and "he shall not much remember the days of hi...