Enjoying Life
(Bible Study - July 1999)
Last time (Tidings, 6/99) we saw that there are two levels in Ecclesiastes: life under the sun, and life with God in view. There is no profit in the former, but there is great profit in the latter; worldly wisdom may or may not temporarily advantage a person (it usually does, but life is such that this cannot be guaranteed), but Godly wisdom certainly will.
What should we make of life?
Nevertheless, the bulk of material in Ecclesiastes is concerned with the worldly
dimension of living -- life under the sun -- not with spiritual life. What, then, can we
say about this worldly life? Is there anything positive to be said about it? This question
is important for us because we who have a spiritual relationship with God still have to
live our lives in the world subject to its constraints. What attitude should we have
toward things under the sun?
Reading much of Ecclesiastes, one could be forgiven the impression that the Preacher’s outlook is entirely pessimistic as far as worldly activities are concerned, and that all worldly activities should thus be shunned. We have seen the great emphasis placed on death, and we have learned that most things which happen in life are also vain in one sense or another! The Preacher has stressed the unknowability of life, our lack of understanding of God and His ways with man. We have seen Ecclesiastes describe the curse which God imposed on our existence because of the transgression of Adam and Eve.
All these lead to a depressing conclusion — or so it would be thought. Yet remarkably the advice repeated time and again through the book (in a motif almost as insistent as the one of death) is that life is to be enjoyed! It is something to be grateful to God for; it is His gift. The Preacher encourages us to joy and rejoice in our lives, while at the same time recognising fully the limitations of our existence. There is nothing wrong with enjoying life; it is doing so without a recognition of the insignificance and transience of life to which the Preacher objects.
A recurring theme
There are no less than seven passages in Ecclesiastes which have been somewhat
satirically characterised as "Eat, drink and be merry" passages. The
force of these passages, brought out not only in the commands they contain, but also by
their repetition as a motif throughout the book, is often not sufficiently appreciated.
These instructions to eat and drink and be joyful are an essential part of the message of
the book. They are to be taken seriously.
It is also interesting that these passages always mention God. It is God who has given us life — it is His gift to us, and therefore we are to enjoy it. There are qualifications to that enjoyment, as we shall see later, but the basic message that we should enjoy those things that God has given us is one that must not be denied.
The passages I am speaking of occur with particular intensity toward the beginning of the book; the first one is to be found after the description of Solomon’s endeavours in 1:12 to 2:23, which we looked at last time. Solomon concludes there is no ultimate profit to any of the activities in which he was engaged (2:11), and he repeats this point in 2:22,23. Remarkably, this conclusion does not lead to depression, but rather to the realisation that these activities are indeed to be enjoyed, even though they bring no real profit and no full satisfaction. Life is vain, there is no ultimate profit in it; but it is nevertheless to be enjoyed. This is brought out in verse 24: "There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour. This also I saw, that it was from the hand of God" (2:24).
There is some ambiguity surrounding the expression "it was from the hand of God." In one sense it is from the hand of God that there is any enjoyment in life: God could have made life extremely tedious and uninteresting for us, but most of us find considerable enjoyment in many of the activities in which we engage. In another sense, the lack of profit and the emptiness of life is also from the hand of God (as we saw in article 3). Life is simultaneously vain and enjoyable, and both of these are attributable to God! God has designed life in this way.
It is the positive aspect, the enjoyment which is to be found in life, which I want to stress for the remainder of this article and which is the primary topic of the "eat, drink and be merry" passages. The ending of Ecclesiastes makes it abundantly clear that this lesson is intended at face value — that life is to be enjoyed as a gift of God. There is no end profit to life under the sun and its activities, for life is essentially vanity; nevertheless, it is God’s gift to us; it is a good gift, as all His gifts are, and one to be enjoyed.
A progression?
It has been suggested that our seven "eat, drink and be merry"
passages are deliberately worded in such a way as to give ever greater emphasis to them as
we read through the book. This is a very interesting point, one which I came across in the
writings of the Biblical scholar Norman Whybray. To appreciate the point, each of the
seven passages must be written out in full with some explanatory notes. In each case we
see the invocation to enjoy life is introduced by an ever stronger opening line:
1. "There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour. This also I saw, that it was from the hand of God" (2:24). (There is no opening line or introduction; just a plain statement.)
2. "I know that there is no good in them, but for a man to rejoice, and to do good in his life. And also that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the good of all his labour, it is the gift of God" (3:12,13).
3. "Wherefore I perceive that there is nothing better, than that a man should rejoice in his own works; for that is his portion" (3:22).
4. "Behold that which I have seen: it is good and comely for one to eat and to drink and to enjoy the good of all his labour that he taketh under the sun all the days of his life, which God giveth him: For it is his portion. Every man also to whom God hath given riches and wealth, and hath given him power to eat thereof, and to take his portion, and to rejoice in his labour; this is the gift of God" (5:18,19).
5. "Then I commended mirth [= so I praise joy], because a man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry: for that shall abide with him of his labour the days of his life, which God giveth him under the sun" (8:15).
6. "Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart; for God now accepteth thy works...live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity...for that is thy portion in this life, and in thy labour which thou takest under the sun..." (9:7,9). (Note that this example now switches into the imperative or command form of address, the Preacher urging his hearer.)
7. "Rejoice, O young man in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes...therefore remove sorrow from thine heart...remember now thy creator in the days of thy youth..." (11:9,10; 12:1). (Imperative, command address again.)
Notice that most of these passages not only encourage man to enjoy life, but also state explicitly that this is given to him as his "portion," his hand-out or gift, from God.
This may seem a striking teaching, somewhat in contradiction with the rest of Scripture. Yet it is not really so. The Scriptures do not encourage asceticism, the buffeting of the body, but rather teach that God has "given us life, and breath, and all things" (Acts 17:25), "causing his rain to fall on the just and on the unjust" (Matt. 5:45). Perhaps the best parallel is the attitude expressed in I Timothy 6:17 in which God is described as He who "giveth us richly all things to enjoy" (I Tim. 6:17). Interestingly, Paul’s comment comes in the context of an encouragement not to indulge and trust in riches: "Do not trust in riches but trust in God who gives us all things to enjoy." Ecclesiastes has a similar message: life is vain and there is no profit in the various activities we engage in under the sun — but this does not mean that we may not enjoy them! We should enjoy them while recognising their obvious limitations.
Advice in the face of death
Ecclesiastes mentions the certainty of judgement at a number of points, and this
impinges forcefully on our enjoyment of life’s pleasures: God takes into account the
things that we do, and there will be a reckoning up according to the way in which we have
spent our lives. At that time, God will measure whether we have simply indulged, or
whether we have understood our responsibilities toward God and put them first, while
simultaneously recognising and enjoying the good things God has blessed us with in this
life. Nowhere is this point made in clearer fashion than in the last part of the body of
Ecclesiastes (11:7-12:7; it is in the middle of this section that the last of our seven
sayings is to be found).
This becomes all the more urgent when we are conscious of the brevity of life. In article 2, we examined in some detail the description of the aging process which culminates in death, described so graphically in the first half of Ecclesiastes 12. Yet remarkably this depressing picture was not given purely with the intention of depressing us, although there is no doubt it is meant to arrest our thinking and make us realise the reality of death.
No, the real reason for the description of aging and death at the end of Ecclesiastes is to encourage us to make the most of our lives now. There are no reruns in life. We do not have another opportunity, so we must make use of today. This comes out in the last of the passages quoted above (number 7). We are encouraged there to rejoice and let our hearts cheer us while we are young, to remove sorrow from our heart (even though we know death is coming), but most especially to "remember our Creator while we are young."
What we are saying is that the encouragement to get on with and enjoy life is set in a context. A man is encouraged to rejoice, but also "to remember the days of darkness" (11:8). He is encouraged to be cheerful, and yet he is also urged "know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgement" (11:9). He is encouraged to remove sorrow from his heart, but also to "put away evil from thy flesh" (11:10). The encouragement to enjoy God’s gift of life is set in the context of God’s coming judgements and our responsibilities toward Him. We are left to put our priorities right, to get our own lives in order. The message to enjoy God’s gifts is an important one, but it is not without qualification. For the things we do, the way and extent to which we enjoy and indulge ourselves is important in God’s sight. This is where the "thou" passages of Ecclesiastes come in (article 1), those which address the God-fearer, the one who "beholds the sun" and is not oblivious to God.
The conclusion of the whole matter
There are two positive things that we should take away from the teachings of
Ecclesiastes concerning life and concerning God. Life is to be enjoyed, and God is to be
thanked for it. But our primary responsibility is to serve Him and to ensure that our
enjoyment comes predominantly from that. This is made abundantly clear in the conclusion
to the book (12:9-14). This conclusion forbids any mistakes in interpreting the message of
Ecclesiastes. Many have misunderstood the book because they have failed to appreciate the
context which 12:9-14 provides. They see the Preacher’s message as being heterodox,
concluding that he was a pessimist and cynic.
We have seen rather that he was a realist, a man who believed sincerely in God’s control in the world and in the punishments that God meted out in the book of Genesis. We, as descendants of Adam and as inhabitants of a cursed earth, are subject to this vanity. But this does not lead to pessimism. It should lead to an attitude which enjoys the good things in life God has given us, while fully being aware of their limitations. It should lead to a determination to seek first the wisdom which is from above, shunning reliance on the material and temporal things of this vain world. And it should lead also to a longing for Him — a longing for the curse of vanity to be removed, a longing for eternity. The only way that longing can be fulfilled in ourselves is by ordering our lives correctly now, by remembering our Creator, and putting Him first in our lives:
"Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: fear God and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgement, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil" (12:13,14).
Mark Vincent