Leithart.com | Bible - OT - Ecclesiastes Archives

Category Archive: Bible - OT - Ecclesiastes

Vapourous idols - March 01, 2007
According to our translations, the OT describes idols as "vain" (eg, Isaiah 57:13), but the word used is the same as the word in Ecclesiastes - and is better translated as "vaporous." The point is not simply that idols are...

New Year's Sermon - December 25, 2006
INTRODUCTION We often have a problem with time. We get used to things the way they are, and we want them to stay that way. We are nostalgic for what seems a happier time of our lives. Living in time...

Eternity in the heart - November 16, 2006
Brian Gault gave a carefully-argued paper on the meaning of "ha-olam" in Ecclesiastes 3:11 - normally translated as "eternity." Gault ran through a number of possible interpretations of the verse, finally suggesting a repointing leads to a translation as "darkness"...

Qoheleth and Postmodernism - July 25, 2006
Doug Ingram suggests in his 2004 Grove Book study of Ecclesiastes that the book has a peculiarly postmodern emphasis on the ambiguity of the world and human life. Pointing to the proliferation of studies of Ecclesiastes over the past decade...

Exhortation, Fourth Epiphany - January 29, 2006
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...

Culpable gloom - January 25, 2006
"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...

Calvinist Proof Text - January 25, 2006
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...

Portions to eight - January 25, 2006
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...

Bread on Waters - January 25, 2006
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...

Sermon Outline, Fourth Epiphany - January 23, 2006
INTRODUCTION Solomon ends Ecclesiastes where he began, by emphasizing our lack of control (11:5) and the brevity of life (12:1-8). Wisdom means adjusting our actions and expectations to these realities. THE TEXT "Cast your bread upon the waters, for you...

Exhortation, Third Epiphany - January 22, 2006
According to what has become the "traditional" interpretation of the Constitution, every American woman has the right to kill her unborn baby. Since the Roe v. Wade decision in January of 1973, over 45 million babies have been killed, and,...

Vaporous labor - January 18, 2006
One man sits and does nothing; and eats himself up. Another labors alone without end; and eats himself up. One folds his hands and refuses to grab anything; and his hands are empty. Another grabs whatever comes near with both...

Relativity - January 18, 2006
Surely Solomon believed there were absolute goods, or One Absolute Good, but he spends most of Ecclesiastes talking about relative goods. The Hebrew idiom tob . . . min ("good/better . . . than") is used throughout chapters 4 and...

Tragic Wisdom? - January 18, 2006
Among all the books of the Bible, Ecclesiastes appears to come closest to the tragic wisdom of the ancients. But this is an illusion. Solomon warns that it is folly to say that the old days were better than the...

Sermon Outline, Third Sunday After Epiphany - January 16, 2006
INTRODUCTION How are we to live in this world of vapor? Solomon tells us again and again to rejoice (e.g., 5:19-20), and implies that this joy comes in community with others. That theme of community is explicit in chapter 4,...

God does everything fitting - January 08, 2006
God is the lead partner in the dance of life; we're called to follow Him gracefully. But we don't know whether it's a waltz or the Charleston, and we don't know what the next step will be. God is singing...

Times - January 07, 2006
Choon-Leong Seow has some helpful comments about the "time for this, time for that" poem in Ecclesiastes 3. He points out that the thrust of the section is about God's control of times and portions. As evidence, he notes that...

Shepherding spirit - January 04, 2006
Thanks to my friend Alex Trochez for stimulating the following line of thought. According to Jordan's count (confirmed by my own), the phrase "shepherding wind" occurs twice in Ecclesiastes by itself (1:17; 4:6) and 7 times with the word "vapor"...

Solomonic epistemology - January 04, 2006
Solomon pursued knowledge and wisdom, and concluded that the pursuit was no more than vapor and shepherding wind, and besides the more he knew the more pain and grief he suffered (1:17-18). There is so much in this wispy world...

Beginnings - January 02, 2006
Solomon captures the aporia of beginnings in Ecclesiastes 3:15: "That which is has been already, and that which will be has already been, for God seeks what has passed by." This not only restates "there is nothing new under the...

Sermon Outline, First Sunday After Epiphany - January 02, 2006
INTRODUCTION Solomon begins Ecclesiastes talking about the regularities of the natural world (1:3-11), and in chapter 3 turns to the regular rhythms of human life (3:1-8). THE TEXT "To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under...

Qohelet and the gospel - January 02, 2006
Provan has this insightful comment: "A central theme of [Jesus'] ministry, enacted in his own life, is that the proper way in which to respond to the nature of reality is to give away one's life rather than hold on...

Qohelet, Modernism and Postmodernism - January 02, 2006
Despite the problems with his arguments about authorship, Provan's commentary on Ecclesiastes (NIV Application) is quite good. He rightly translates HEBEL as "vapor" or "breath" rather than as "vanity," and does a good job of showing how deeply that change...

Exhortation, First Sunday After Christmas - January 01, 2006
God is unchanging. The calendar changes, but Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. We have trouble thinking about the same thing for ten minutes, but "the Glory of Israel . . . is not a man that...

Late Modern Vapor - January 01, 2006
The style industry exists to keep producing new styles, to keep everyone thinking that they have to buy a new wardrobe each year to keep up, to bring shame to everyone uncool enough to wear last season's colors. A celebrity,...

Eucharistic meditation, First Sunday After Christmas - January 01, 2006
Ecclesiastes 2:24-25: There is nothing better for a man than to eat and drink and tell himself that his labor is good. This also I have seen that it is from the hand of God. For who can eat and...

Solomon's imagination - December 31, 2005
Iain Provan doubts that Solomon wrote Ecclesiastes. One of the "striking" bits of evidence is "that many of the later passages in Ecclesiastes appear to be written from a non-Solomonic point of view (i.e., from the perspective of the subject...

Vapor and Wind - December 31, 2005
More thoughts on Ecclesiastes, stealing, as always, from James Jordan. The image of "shepherding wind" has a particular application to the king, who is the shepherd of flock of Israel. Solomon recognizes that ruling a kingdom is like trying to...

Sermon Outline, Sunday After Christmas - December 27, 2005
Much of the following is borrowed from James Jordan's lectures on Ecclesiastes given at the 2005 Biblical Horizons Summer Conference. INTRODUCTION Life in the twenty-first century is frantic and ever-changing. Today’s styles quickly become passé, old skills are soon useless,...

Change and Permanence - December 27, 2005
In Ecclesiastes, Solomon offers intriguing, somewhat paradoxical reflections on the problems of change and permanence. On the one hand, the reality that provokes his opening lament that the world is "vapor" is the apparently unchanging permanence: The sun rises and...

Ecclesiastes and the Gospel - June 28, 2004
Iain Provan suggests the following interpretation of Ecclesiastes 8:12-13: "The clear implication of his thinking must be that there is some 'time' beyond the 'times' of life in which wrongs can be righted and imbalanced corrected; yet as we have...

Temple Worship in Ecclesiastes - March 03, 2004
In Ecclesiastes, Solomon repeatedly exhorts his readers to "eat, drink, and rejoice" as a response to the vaporousness of life" "There is nothing better for a man than to eat and drink and tell himself that his labor is good....

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