Ecclesiastes Chapter Two, To Whom God Gives

 Ecclesiastes 2:26 For God gives wisdom and knowledge and joy to a man who is good in His sight; but to the sinner He gives the work of gathering and collecting, that he may give to him who is good before God. This also is vanity and grasping for the wind.

As Henry Morris points out, the preacher never refers to God as Yahweh, Israel’s covenant God and redeemer. No, He is known as Elohim, the Creator of the universe and mankind’s maker. Saved or unsaved, sinner or saint, God reigns over His creation, and every soul no matter their eternal state, is answerable to Him. This is Elohim, the Creator God of Genesis, before He reveals His covenant name through Moses to Israel prior to the Exodus.

In this instance for verse 26, the good the preacher refers to is obedience to God’s revealed will. This will is revealed even in human conscience, as kingdoms and governments arose with VERY similar laws dealing with theft, murder, lying, marriage, etc. This very extreme similarity, such as that revealed in the law of Hammurabi as opposed to the Law of Moses, has led many to speculate that such origins are bound together as flattering plagiarisms. What does not seem to be considered is that such laws, arising from men’s hearts, reveal the stamp of God’s creative touch in us, and that mankind was made in His likeness. For the good of the social whole, evil is not publicly tolerated, and most people hide their evil doings because they recognize what they are doing is morally wrong.

To the man who is good in God’s sight, he is given wisdom, knowledge, and joy. Backtracking to verse 24, we note that the preacher believed nothing on earth was better for a man to enjoy than the fruit of his labor, and that joy, that ability to find enjoyment was from God. In the following verse he appears to attribute God’s providential hand in his own ability to reap the benefit of his handiwork more than any other man. Or at the least, he makes the rhetorical question regarding the lavish estate of his resources, so who could hope to outstrip him in the simple pleasures God has permitted mankind to indulge in.

Conversely for the sinner, God appoints their lot to gather and collect for the righteous, or to the man who is good before God. This perspective is hardly universal, even in the context of Scripture. Asaph writes about witnessing how sinful men enjoy their lives to a certain extreme, even provoking envy in the godly, Psalm 73:3-5. Job’s supposed comforters leveled the whole of their argument on the position that the righteous only prospered, while the wicked only suffered and that Job suffered because he had unconfessed sin, see Job 15:20-35 just for one example. It is interesting to observe that the book of Job also does not use the covenant name of God, “Yahweh”, excluding the opening and closing chapters of the book, save twice in conversation in Job 12:9 and 28:28. Both instances it was Job himself speaking. It would seem, then, that Job possessed a more intimate relationship with the Lord than Eliphaz and his cohorts, who knew Him as Elohim, but not as Yahweh. Job, invoking the Lord’s covenant name, says, “Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding.”

Wisdom’s ultimate function then is to separate man from sin and separate him to his God. Wisdom demonstrates that safety and solace are uniquely found in God’s presence. The sinner’s prosperity will eventually become the inheritance of the saints, but many who boldly oppose God live what seem to be carefree lives and who want nothing to do with forgiveness or holiness. Nor are they the servants of the righteous. But they are servants of God as His creatures. In fact, much of this letter contradicts this generalized statement, as the preacher goes to some lengths to expound on the perceived injustices man gets away with “under the sun.” But like Jacob and Esau, who did not fulfill Isaac’s blessing in their lifetime, the wicked will have their comeuppance, while the righteous will truly enter into peace, but for the time being such peace is not to be found “under the sun.” Regardless, the preacher once more ascribes such antics as vanity and grasping for the wind, an impossible endeavor, which only the truly deluded or incurably proud would continue in once they realized its futility.