Ecclesiastes Chapter Two, Mounting Frustration

Ecclesiastes 2:17 Therefore I hated life because the work that was done under the sun was distressing to me, for all is vanity and grasping for the wind. [18] Then I hated all my labor in which I had toiled under the sun, because I must leave it to the man who will come after me. [19] And who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will rule over all my labor in which I have toiled and in which I have shown myself wise under the sun. This also is vanity.

Verse 17 begins with the grapes souring on the vine. The payoff in this verse can be traced back to verse 14, where the preacher commends the wisdom of the wise man, because he walks with his eyes in front of his head. The fool, however, stumbles in darkness, but despite this difference a singular, glaring similarity makes praise die on the preacher’s tongue.

This must have been especially galling, since he considered himself among the wise, perhaps the preeminent wise man, not only of his era, but of all time, save for the Lord Jesus Christ. In verse 14 he remarks about the infamous “same event,” that happens to fool and wise. This realization provokes wonderment in verse 15 as to why he would be wise and deprive himself of the carnality of folly. His accomplishments vexed him, because they testified of a man filled with wisdom, whose legacy would long outlast him, be forgotten by the next generation, and ultimately potentially abused by his successor.

While wisdom itself is immortal, given as a gift to men by the hand of God, its students are not. Solomon personifies wisdom as a godly attribute in the book of Proverbs, chapter 8. Wisdom, as a woman calls for disciples. She makes the simple understand prudence and gives even fools an understanding heart, Proverbs 8:4, 5. It says of wisdom that gaining her is better than material acquisition, which the preacher has thus readily explored in our present chapter, Proverbs 8:11. Moreover the Holy Spirit inspired Solomon to declare that God made the creation through wisdom, like a carpenter’s tool, Proverbs 8:30. In fact, the intangible nature of wisdom predates material existence, brought forth as it were before the foundations of the world or the “primal dust,” of the earth, Proverbs 8:26. Most importantly this chapter relates two things: “Whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord; but he who sins against me wrongs his own soul; all those who hate me love death,” Proverbs 8:35, 36.

Under the sun wisdom bestows life to the user, and its absence reflects a hatred of wisdom revealing that mankind loves death rather than life. Wisdom is a tool to benefit mankind, but in the wrong hands it can become something else: a weapon for men to utilize against one another to demonstrate innate or learned superiority. Such was the case in the legendary debate between Job and his supposed comforters, when Job said of such men who wielded wisdom like a sword against him, perverting its intent, “No doubt you are the people, and wisdom will die with you!” Job 12:2.

In this instance the preacher’s wisdom reveals the unpleasant reality that life ends the same for every man. The purported advantage of wisdom under the sun has been nullified. The preacher spent time in the house of mourning and now very soberly numbers his days. The crux of his lamentation in this chapter, coming to a boiling point, is that everything that defines his life amounts to naught the instant he ceases breathing. His legacy, his wisdom, his memory and sound rule will be relegated to the ash heap of former potentates whose names invoke some measure of whimsy, if they affect any reaction at all. Think of how many leaders the world has seen since its inception. Think of how many presidents the United States has seen? Can we name all of them and articulate their invaluable contributions to the commonwealth of the country?

The preacher HATED life. But he gives a value to the hate, explaining why he resorts to such extreme language. His work, in which he formerly and superficially rejoiced in in Ecclesiastes 2:10 was now distressing. He saw it for what it was: vanity and grasping for the wind. He cast it onto the same rubbish heap as all other things under the sun. If life is nothing more than the acquisition of material splendor then life is pointless, is what the preacher wants to relate. It distresses him to realize that achievement does not result in contentment, but rather exacerbates his vexation.

He hated all life because of his fruitless labor, and verse 18 transitions into him hating his labor. Why? He leaves it behind to his eventual successor. There is the saying, “you can’t take it with you.” The Egyptians and Vikings both endeavored to do so by burying or burning their worldly goods when they died. The ancient Egyptians wanted the dead to have their creature comforts in the next life, and so enshrined the dead with his wealth. While these themes are overly simplified, they serve to illustrate the point that there were beliefs that taught about material acquisition facilitating comfort to the dead through the medium of their funeral or interment.

Yet the greatest man of his own time by God’s admission said of death, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord,” Job 1:21, see also Job 1:8, 2:3. The preacher’s existential dilemma grows worse in verse 19 as he considers the aptitude of the man that will rule in his wake. He seems to take personal insult, referring to this man as ruling over “my labor in which I toiled.” More than that, his manifold labors revealed his wisdom under the sun. But for all of that he will die as the fool and another man will rule as he sees fit because the preacher, in death, may no longer exercise his wisdom to steer the fortunes of his country and people. He considers this a grievous vanity. We may look no further than last year’s election when Kamala Harris was defeated by Donald Trump, and the democratic party lost its interests as an almost unanimous federal republican party supplanted them. Not dead but merely deposed by the will of the people, the democratic party could do nothing more than watch as the empire they erected for the previous four years began to be systematically dismantled. 

Now picture not a political party with a figurehead in the president, but an actual king whose power is singular and whose word is absolute. The legacy he constructs is his own, and he had been crafting it for forty years. The marvels of his house, the temple, Jerusalem, and Israel’s general wealth and influence served as a barometer for the majesty of the ruling monarch that steered the country’s fortunes. Now, in his twilight years he despaired of life and hated his work, for it reminded him that other men will do other things with what he presumes are his while he in his great wisdom succumbs to death and is buried like a fool. He is bristling at the cruelty of it; but one must wonder what he is angry about, specifically. Is he angry that he must relinquish power? Or is he angry that he is reflecting on his achievements and now wishes in his elderly years that he might have spent his younger days more wisely? Futility, or the feeling of it, is a very normal part of human life. 

Christian or otherwise, we all grapple from time to time with the feeling that life (our life specifically) is worthless, or at least some aspect of it. But worth is viewed from numerous perspectives, and the lens of eternity casts infinite value on ANYTHING done in Christ’s name, for His sake. But the preacher is searching for a universal purpose that is equally personal or intimate, something that gives daily drudgery meaning. Or we are, one and all, living only to fill up our day with a round of activities that contribute nothing to our person and reveal nothing of genuine value concerning us when he die. The reason being, according to our speaker, nothing of value exists, so life cannot be filled with the existential purpose we instinctively crave.