Iain Provan offers this comment in his Ecclesiastes commentary: “Modern people tend to view the movement of history, as far as human beings are concerned, as being from primeval swamp to divinity. The beginning was unpromising, but quite against expectation the forces of evolution have propelled us along, to a point where we stand on the verge of greatness. We have already overcome so many of the limitations of human life as it was experienced by most of our predecessors.... Read more
Ecclesiastes 12:1: Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth. Solomon ends Ecclesiastes, as we have seen, emphasizing again the brevity of life. Life is vapor, all is vapor, a vapor of vapors, most vaporous, superlatively vaporous. Solomon makes it clear at the end of the book that life is vaporous because it will inevitably end in death. Someday, the sun, moon, and stars of your world will go out; someday, the house of your body will cease... Read more
Ecclesiastes 11:1: Cast your bread on the face of the waters, for you will find it after many days. We saw in this morning’s sermon Solomon’s image of casting bread on the water encourages a reckless faith, a willingness to act in spite of the risks. You don’t know whether your projects in life are going to succeed or not, and that uncertainty can be paralyzing. But Solomon tells us not to be paralyzed. Whether we are talking about investments... Read more
What kind of guidance should we give our children? We often focus exclusively on all the things that they may not do. That is a perfectly sound approach, especially for younger children. After all, we worship and serve a God whose first words to newborn Israel were “Thou Shalt Not.” At the end of Ecclesiastes, Solomon offers a different sort of guidance. Speaking specifically to young men, he urges them to rejoice, to let their hearts be pleasant, and to... Read more
Francis Bacon offered this wise caution, “The human understanding is no dry light but receives an infusion from the will and affections; whence proceed sciences which may be called ‘sciences as one would.’ For what a man had rather were true he more readily believes . . . . Numberless in short are the ways, and sometimes imperceptible, in which the affections colour and infect the understanding.” Thus, “whatever his mind seizes and dwells upon with particular satisfaction is to... Read more
Some notes on Freud, mainly as background for discussion of Ernest Jones psycho-analytic treatment of Hamlet, largely based on Merold Westphal’s summary in Suspicion & Faith. FREUD AND SCIENCE Freud is an Enlightenment man who subverted the Enlightenment, an advocate of scientism whose theories rendered scientism impossible. He appears not to understand what he was doing. His hostility toward religion was inspired by his recognition that religion’s truth-claims posed the greatest threat to the monopoly of truth claimed by science.... Read more
“Follow the ways of your heart and what your eyes see; and know that on account of all these, God will bring you into judgment.” The last part of this is often taken as a warning about the limits of joy and pleasure-taking. Seow thinks otherwise: “Human beings are supposed to enjoy life to the full because it is their divinely assigned portion, and God calls one into account for failure to enjoy. Or, as a passage in the Talmud... Read more
Ecclesiastes 11:5 emphasizes the limitations of human knowledge by emphasizing that God works everything: “you do not know the works of God (ELOHIM) who does all (Y’SH ET-HAKOL).” There are two possible translations of the last relative clause: 1) “who does all.” If we go with this translation, we have a straightforward statement about the scope of God’s working. What does God do? “All.” What is the scope of the “deeds” of God? Everything. He is the one who works... Read more
I saw a man hoarding his treaures, building bigger barns and stuffing his safety deposit boxes and worrying over his portfolio. Disaster struck, and he lost everything because he had everything to lose. He didn’t even have three comforters. I saw a man throwing around his money with abandon, emptying his barns and turning his portfolio over to charities. Disaster struck, and he lost nothing because he had nothing to lose. And he was received into eternal dwellings. Read more
I saw a man with a bag of seed. He looked at the sky to discern the weather, and decided tomorrow would be a better day to plant. The next day, he invented instruments to test the humidity and to predict the wind, and decided that tomorrow would be a better day to plant. And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow crept on its petty pace to the last syllable of time. This too is vapor and shepherding wind. I saw... Read more
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