Ecclesiastes Chapter Five, Arrival & Departure

Ecclesiastes 5:13 There is a severe evil which I have seen under the sun: riches kept for their owner to his hurt. [14] But those riches perish through misfortune; when he begets a son, there is nothing in his hand. [15] As he came from his mother’s womb, naked shall he return, to go as he came, and he shall take nothing from his labor which he may carry away in his hand. [16] And this also is a severe evil–just exactly as he came, so shall he go. And what profit has he who has labored for the wind? [17] All his days he also eats in darkness, and he has much sorrow and sickness and anger.

The preacher begins to unfold a tale of some severe evil he bore witness to. As Christ our Lord would begin a parable this way, so too does the preacher begin with a certain rich man who hoarded his wealth.

This is more than retention; it is acceleration of acquisition, for we find in verse 14 that the same man, through a foolish financial venture, loses his accumulated riches and is left a pauper. His son, who is his heir, receives nothing from the hand of his formerly wealthy father because his father has nothing in his hand to give him. James wrote, “Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”...as it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil,” James 4:13, 16, ESV.

Presumption leads to ruin. Men are to use time and wealth wisely, as the Lord permits for the time allotted to us so that we may serve responsibly. The rich man here suffered for giving his heart to wealth, where the thief breaks in and steals, and the moth devours. Even worse than that, he taught his son the same. His child would grow up understanding that wealth was the measure of a man’s quality, and accumulating vast sums of it equated into success. Conversely, the ruination of a man comes from the loss of wealth, as the boy could only bear witness as his father squandered his inheritance on a business venture gone awry.

Turning from the rich man in particular, the preacher considers man’s genesis. No, I do not mean our creation from God, being made in His image, because we are trying to devote a modicum of consistency to our search for relevance or meaning under the sun. What I actually mean is the day of our birth. We come from the womb naked, bereft of anything of material value to commend us and in absolute need of another to provide us with our daily substance. Job once said, “Naked I came from my mothers womb, and naked I will depart,” Job 1:21, NIV. This is a fascinating confession, since it was said of Job that he was the greatest man among all the people of the East, Job 1:3. Clearly, Job was a vastly wealthy man, much like the preacher in his time. And like the preacher in his time, Job understood the ephemeral nature of wealth, and how it can easily fly away like an eagle, Proverbs 23:5.

Like we emerge from our mother’s womb with nothing, we enter the grave with an equal amount. The clothes adorning our bodies and the casket we are buried in are hardly ours, because we are gone by that point. Whether you believe in Atheism and winking out like a candle when you breathe your last, or whether you subscribe to Theism and believe the soul survives the body’s death, in either case the body is no longer us. Whether we die as the foolish pauper that lost his inheritance, or as the wealthiest person alive, it matters nothing in the grave, to which we are going, Ecclesiastes 9:10. This is the ultimate fate of humankind, and one of the cardinal points the preacher relentlessly visits again and again. Wealth cannot save one from death; one cannot pay off death. Whether we have amassed much or little, accomplished nothing or a great deal, death is the great leveler.

There is a saying that the ground is level at the foot of the cross. I enjoy this saying since it strips away the veneer of our self importance to make us realize–to make me realize–that young or old, strong or weak, intelligent or otherwise, we are one and all sinners in need of God’s grace. This grace was supplied perfectly and in infinite abundance at the cross of Jesus Christ, where our Lord suffered and died to pay the penalty for our sins. I would liken a similar, but far grimmer saying, that the ground is level in the grave. We begin with nothing, and we shall end with nothing. Some of the greatest minds and most gifted people in the world died from a sudden turn, and all of their wealth and skill were undone in an instant. They became no better (and no worse for that matter) than any other person on earth.

In verses 13 and 16 the preacher laments about this severe evil. First it was the father’s vanity and presumption that deprived his son of an inheritance. Then it was the revelation that whether the man possessed wealth or not, when death arrived our deeds accounted for nothing and we would not be spared because we are important. He reflects that just as a man arrives, so he departs, naked and helpless; he comes from the darkness of the womb, and is embraced by the darkness of the grave. Then he wonders, as he has numerous times to his readership, what did this profit? The preacher considers the accumulation of wealth laboring for the wind. You can’t catch or keep the wind. It is futile; so too is amassing money when the imminent threat of death hangs over every man’s head.

Finally, the preacher states that such a man eats in darkness. He is blind, not knowing what he is doing. He doesn’t know where he is going. He is uncertain where he came from. Nothing is clear, because he cannot see. The darkness also implies fear. Mankind suffers the ancient fear of the dark. Some of my children won’t go into our basement, or outside alone at night because it is dark. When I ask what they are afraid of in the dark, they cannot provide me with a clear answer, simply that they are. So this man eats with fear of what’s ahead, with fear of what’s behind, and with fear of what he may presently be in the midst of. Certainty is an impossibility. Jesus our Lord said that He is the light of the world, John 8:12. Those who wander apart from Christ wander in spiritual darkness, and while they may see THIS world, unfortunately it is ALL they see. And this world is temporary. For this reason it is written that such a man has much sorrow and sickness and anger. The NIV renders that portion as, “frustration, affliction and anger.” Human purpose, it would seem, is that there ultimately is none. Nothing is relevant or laden with meaning beyond whatever personal, subjective platitudes we want to invest it with. But this will offer no comfort when we realize, as the preacher realized, that the grave awaits, and all our overtures to invest life with meaning will die with us.