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Ecclesiastes
Ecclesiastes is the most surprising book in the Scriptures. It challenges its readers to reconsider what they think life is about and how far it is possible to understand God's involvement in the world. This commentary seeks to help people enter the world of Ecclesiastes and see how it can increase their understanding of God and of themselves.
496 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 29, 2021
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About the author
John E. Goldingay
87 books67 followersJohn Goldingay is David Allan Hubbard Professor of Old Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. An internationally respected Old Testament scholar, Goldingay is the author of many commentaries and books.
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June 22, 2025
Existentialism. Sartre. Camus. Nihilism. Absurdism. Meaninglessness. A grab-bag of the kind of words that struck angst into the mind and heart of 20th century Christianity, to the degree that they were repudiated and in many cases fought vigorously against. In many ways, an understandable response.
But in Ecclesiastes, the Jewish and Christian traditions have their very own existential pessimist, or should we say pessimistic existentialist (if not nihilist), not atheistic but in some ways almost seeming to be functionally so in his sense of abandonment to fate and inevitability, sitting right in the midst of their scriptures.
In this book, the teacher (Qohelet/Qoheleth/Kohelet etc in Hebrew) takes us to the edge of the abyss of meaninglessness, where life is no more than vapour formed by breath on a cold morning, brief and empty, and there advises us that the best of an ambiguously useful lot of options is to enjoy life while you've got it and respect (or fear) God.
Like the Psalms and Job (amongst others), Ecclesiastes encounters the human condition, with all its ambiguities (to put it mildly) and contradictions, as it is experienced, and desperately tries to find meaning there.
It's salient stuff, on the cutting edge of existential considerations. For example, you could say that Viktor Frankl is engaging with both Job and Ecclesiastes in putting forth Man's Search for Meaning. He isn't mirroring the conclusions of those books but he is encountering the same facets of the human condition that they are engaged with.
Having these 'existentialist' texts in the scriptures, and engaging with and allowing (rather than simply dismissing) their stark (and you might say, 'accurate') observations about the human condition, is appropriate to a faith system that seeks to be comprehensive - a belief system or ontology that takes in every facet of reality.
Well, somehow related to all that, I decided to engage with Ecclesiastes for Lent (that most existentially raw of liturgical seasons). The somewhat amusing irony was that in thinking through some possibilities for Lenten exercises, one that I considered was 'fasting' from complaint. Nothing does complaint quite like the Hebrew scriptures, and I can only imagine the cognitive dissonance that might have developed had I been practising non-complaint while also reading Ecclesiastes. It feels like it might have put optimism and pessimism on a collision course in my psyche, but maybe something interesting would have emerged.
Anyway, over the course of six mornings, I worked my way through Ecclesiastes two chapters at a time, reading the text in the NRSV, then listening to the audiobook version of Robert Alter's literary translation, and arrived at the thoughts outlined above.
That being done, I embarked upon the reading of John Goldingay's excellent commentary, which integrates a translation of his own.
I didn't manage to finish reading the commentary for Lent - I hadn't realised how long it was (ebooks can get you like that). Once Lent was over, I moved it out of the slot of being my morning devotional. You may be surprised to learn that reading about the meaninglessness of life at the beginning of each new day is not actually all that conducive to undertaking a day's work (the eventual 'enjoying the fruit' of one's labours and fearing God notwithstanding)! Even out of that time slot, as the weeks dragged on, I often found the exercise of engaging with Ecclesiastes wearying... which is probably entirely in keeping with the intent of the author - the experience mirrors the message.
That is, until it came into collision with Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling, which I conveniently happened to start reading part way through the process. There I found a new level of stimulation. (More from Kierkegaard later.) Meanwhile, Goldingay brings together an absolute wealth of sources (1,085 footnotes! and I counted over 400 quoted authors in the index; though never Kierkegaard), interweaving them with his own excellent insights, and these also glimmered.
My informal hunch about viewing Ecclesiastes as a kind of existentialist text remained throughout the reading process, although Goldingay never uses the terms 'existentialist' or 'existentialism' in the commentary (though he does use the term existential a few times, and puts Ecclesiastes in the category of philosophical theology).
The experiencing 'I' of existentialism is nicely highlighted by Goldingay's translation, e.g. "I - I said within myself..." (3:17). And Qohelet's field of reference: "everything under the sun" - i.e. the material world and the human experience of it. Qohelet primarily limits himself to what he can personally see and observe. Although he often mentions God, rather than exploring abstracted metaphysical realms this is about the meaning of things for us, now.
Taking a step back from the full extent of the idea that Ecclesiastes is an examination of the meaninglessness of existence, or at least a strong sense of meaninglessness in the human condition, the book can otherwise be read as an indictment on the games we play to get ahead and make ourselves significant. It's about putting things into perspective. It's also a critique of power and money.
I imagine it in conversation with a book like Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton.
I love this bit (Goldingay's translation): "Better a relaxed palmful than a hardworking pair of fistfuls and a desire for wind." Or literally, "better a fullness of palm - relaxation, than a fullness of a pair of fists - hard work.” (4:6)
Christian commentators (including Goldingay), by dint of the basic worldview and proposition of Christianity, not to mention a basic human urge to cope by looking on the bright side, are keen to bring out a positive / redemptive spin on biblical texts. We need that right? The turn towards mitigation and alleviation. Qohelet himself makes some of these little moves. But we have to be careful not to romanticise Ecclesiastes - it is a bleak book and we shouldn't try to reduce its negative force. Even when Qohelet makes a turn towards enjoyment, I can't help reading an air of cynicism there - it remains in the mix. Meanwhile, the ambiguities of his discourse make definitive statements about his intent almost impossible. That said, some scattered and disjointed possibilities follow...
Qohelet's salutary and proverbial advice notwithstanding, I wonder if he is not necessarily seeking to make definitive statements as his overarching intent. Perhaps, in presenting a think-piece (albeit a very existentially raw one), he is instead inviting us to consider, to argue - a sort of dialectical move to provoke a contrary response. (It might be good if we viewed more of scripture in this way - inviting us to think, to enter into discussion - rather than viewing it as a thing delivering one-off definitive statements.)
In inviting us to consider, to confront our human condition and to look into the abyss, apart from any wisdom and overcoming of glib shallowness we can glean from this consideration and critique of finitude (death) and striving, it might be that we notice something else rising in us contra the assertion of meaninglessness. Something quite strong, and perhaps the more so for having looked the material human condition full in the face. In discombobulating us with ambiguity and contradiction (or, a "brave equivocality"), perhaps we find ourselves reaching out for some kind of 'solidity'. Or if not that, a kind of freedom in not knowing - an acceptance that can be a kind of springboard.* In the face of the dire conditions of life and our response to them, "Qohelet is not talking about resignation but about acceptance, and 'in acceptance lieth peace.'"* But perhaps more than peace alone.
Incorporating a quote from Milton Horne, Goldingay says:
"Each time the advice to appreciate life comes, it comes with more enthusiasm. 'Every day of life should be celebrated because it is a divine gift.' Appraising or praising enjoyment is quite a change from appraising or praising people who are lucky enough to be dead (4:2). [Horne:] 'The sage continues his perilous trek near the edge of the precipice of meaning, peering for a prolonged time down deep into the darkness of the chasm... Yet, only as people resist this sense of life as a bottomless pit will they experience the effect of yet another commendation of enjoyment... Only at the conclusions of the sage’s observations does he pull his readers back, inviting them to consider again the possibility that there can really be joy, that some experiences are better than others.'"
Truly, the affirmation of the material life, and the enjoyment of the 'simple things' that can be gleaned from Ecclesiastes is important work.
Here's another thing, another confronting possibility:
"Death is the touchstone of our attitude to life. ...to solve the problem of death is not a luxury.... Most of the time we live as though we were writing a draft for the life which we will live later. We live, not in a definitive way, but provisionally, as though preparing for the day when we really will begin to live.... The injunction 'be mindful of death' is not a call to live with a sense of terror in the constant awareness that death is to overtake us. It means rather: 'Be aware of the fact that what you are saying now, doing now, hearing, enduring or receiving now may be the last event or experience of your present life.' ...Only awareness of death will give life this immediacy and depth, will bring life to life, will make it so intense that its totality is summed up in the present moment. All life is at every moment an ultimate act." (Goldingay quoting Anthony of Sourozh, aka Anthony Bloom)
It might be that Qohelet walks away quietly satisfied that his bombardment of pessimism and cynicism - his dose of 'reality', his memento mori - has caused us to push back - that some kind of life-force has arisen.
Taking things in another slightly different direction, to quote another (somewhat slippery) existential interlocutor on the human condition, in another context, "If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the bottom of everything they were only a wild ferment, a power that twisting in dark passions produced everything great or inconsequential; if an unfathomable, insatiable emptiness lay hid beneath everything, what would life be but despair? If it were thus, if there were no sacred bond uniting mankind, if one generation rose up after another like the leaves of the forest, if one generation succeeded the other as the songs of birds in the woods, if the human race passed through the world as a ship through the sea or the wind through the desert, a thoughtless and fruitless whim, if an eternal oblivion always lurked hungrily for its prey and there were no power strong enough to wrest it from its clutches – how empty and void of comfort life would be! But for that reason it is not so, and as God created man and woman, so too he shaped the hero and the poet or speech-maker." (Enter Kierkegaard, writing as Johannes de silentio, in Fear and Trembling, p14)
(Though I'm sure Qohelet wouldn't have much truck with heroes, and presumably (if he's being consistent) a low regard even for this own cogitations, the irony is that his act of utterance itself is a pushing back against meaninglessness; and though he might wonder what good it's done him, his words have so far endured for about two and a half millennia.)
We may even bring love into it ‐ something which Qohelet only fleetingly does. Kierkegaard's Johannes de silentio again: "everyone was great in his own way, and everyone in proportion to the greatness of what he loved." (p15)
Actually the voice of Johannes de silentio provides yet another interesting piece that can be brought into conversation with Ecclesiastes (though Johannes himself doesn't explicitly mention any such connection). He begins by making an observation about the material world ('everything under the sun') that could easily have come from Qohelet's mouth:
"An old proverb pertaining to the outward and visible world says: 'Only one who works gets bread.' Oddly enough, the saying doesn't apply in the world to which it most properly belongs, for the outward world is subject to the law of imperfection; there it happens time and again that one who gets bread is one who does not work, that one who sleeps gets it in greater abundance than one who labours. In the outward world everything belongs to whoever has it, the outward world is subject to the law of indifference and the genie of the ring obeys the one who wears it, whether he be a Noureddin or an Aladdin, and whoever holds the world's treasures does so however he came by them."
But then he makes a turn that Qohelet doesn't make, a turn that transcends Qohelet's frame of reference, a turn to the spiritual (or the 'eternal consciousness' mentioned before, the one that often seems to go missing from Qohelet):
"It is otherwise in the world of spirit. Here there prevails an eternal divine order, here it does not rain on the just and the unjust alike, here the sun does not shine on both good and evil, here only one who works gets bread, and only one who knows anguish finds rest, only one who descends to the underworld saves the loved one, only one who draws the knife gets Isaac." (Fear and Trembling, p27). It's still jarring, and unsettling, if you really think on it, but it presents a wider scope of meaning. All in all, existence requires quite a lot.
To view it in terms Kierkegaard might use, Qohelet could be seen as performing the movement of 'infinite resignation' (which is of a different, braver order than just giving up) mitigated by a bit of enjoyment here and there, or at least tending in the direction of infinite resignation. But what about the movement of faith, performed like a dancer's leap, grounded, then rising, grounded, then rising? (Kierkegaard tells us it's no easy movement (though it appears graceful and effortless in its truest form), so it's understandable Qohelet may not make it.)
And so it goes.
If nothing else, the vapour formed by breath on a cold morning is actually quite beautiful and fascinating if you look at it and observe how it appears, moves and then gently reintegrates with the air around it.
But then, of course, if we go a little deeper, it's been said that there are forms of Breath that are more than just mereness. And striving after Ruach could be something more than a mere chasing after the wind. To be faced with the weight of the reality of the world and all its ambiguities, to accept it (and again), to be grounded there, but then (to once more reference Kierkegaard) to take the dancer's leap, to perform the movement of faith (and again). Let's see into what realities this totality (or fullness) of existence might take us.
* I only touch lightly on acceptance here, but for a deeper exploration of the themes of acceptance and possibility, and their paradoxical interplay, see my essay 'The Sacrament of Breathing'. (https://sacramentofbreathing.wordpres...)
But in Ecclesiastes, the Jewish and Christian traditions have their very own existential pessimist, or should we say pessimistic existentialist (if not nihilist), not atheistic but in some ways almost seeming to be functionally so in his sense of abandonment to fate and inevitability, sitting right in the midst of their scriptures.
In this book, the teacher (Qohelet/Qoheleth/Kohelet etc in Hebrew) takes us to the edge of the abyss of meaninglessness, where life is no more than vapour formed by breath on a cold morning, brief and empty, and there advises us that the best of an ambiguously useful lot of options is to enjoy life while you've got it and respect (or fear) God.
Like the Psalms and Job (amongst others), Ecclesiastes encounters the human condition, with all its ambiguities (to put it mildly) and contradictions, as it is experienced, and desperately tries to find meaning there.
It's salient stuff, on the cutting edge of existential considerations. For example, you could say that Viktor Frankl is engaging with both Job and Ecclesiastes in putting forth Man's Search for Meaning. He isn't mirroring the conclusions of those books but he is encountering the same facets of the human condition that they are engaged with.
Having these 'existentialist' texts in the scriptures, and engaging with and allowing (rather than simply dismissing) their stark (and you might say, 'accurate') observations about the human condition, is appropriate to a faith system that seeks to be comprehensive - a belief system or ontology that takes in every facet of reality.
Well, somehow related to all that, I decided to engage with Ecclesiastes for Lent (that most existentially raw of liturgical seasons). The somewhat amusing irony was that in thinking through some possibilities for Lenten exercises, one that I considered was 'fasting' from complaint. Nothing does complaint quite like the Hebrew scriptures, and I can only imagine the cognitive dissonance that might have developed had I been practising non-complaint while also reading Ecclesiastes. It feels like it might have put optimism and pessimism on a collision course in my psyche, but maybe something interesting would have emerged.
Anyway, over the course of six mornings, I worked my way through Ecclesiastes two chapters at a time, reading the text in the NRSV, then listening to the audiobook version of Robert Alter's literary translation, and arrived at the thoughts outlined above.
That being done, I embarked upon the reading of John Goldingay's excellent commentary, which integrates a translation of his own.
I didn't manage to finish reading the commentary for Lent - I hadn't realised how long it was (ebooks can get you like that). Once Lent was over, I moved it out of the slot of being my morning devotional. You may be surprised to learn that reading about the meaninglessness of life at the beginning of each new day is not actually all that conducive to undertaking a day's work (the eventual 'enjoying the fruit' of one's labours and fearing God notwithstanding)! Even out of that time slot, as the weeks dragged on, I often found the exercise of engaging with Ecclesiastes wearying... which is probably entirely in keeping with the intent of the author - the experience mirrors the message.
That is, until it came into collision with Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling, which I conveniently happened to start reading part way through the process. There I found a new level of stimulation. (More from Kierkegaard later.) Meanwhile, Goldingay brings together an absolute wealth of sources (1,085 footnotes! and I counted over 400 quoted authors in the index; though never Kierkegaard), interweaving them with his own excellent insights, and these also glimmered.
My informal hunch about viewing Ecclesiastes as a kind of existentialist text remained throughout the reading process, although Goldingay never uses the terms 'existentialist' or 'existentialism' in the commentary (though he does use the term existential a few times, and puts Ecclesiastes in the category of philosophical theology).
The experiencing 'I' of existentialism is nicely highlighted by Goldingay's translation, e.g. "I - I said within myself..." (3:17). And Qohelet's field of reference: "everything under the sun" - i.e. the material world and the human experience of it. Qohelet primarily limits himself to what he can personally see and observe. Although he often mentions God, rather than exploring abstracted metaphysical realms this is about the meaning of things for us, now.
Taking a step back from the full extent of the idea that Ecclesiastes is an examination of the meaninglessness of existence, or at least a strong sense of meaninglessness in the human condition, the book can otherwise be read as an indictment on the games we play to get ahead and make ourselves significant. It's about putting things into perspective. It's also a critique of power and money.
I imagine it in conversation with a book like Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton.
I love this bit (Goldingay's translation): "Better a relaxed palmful than a hardworking pair of fistfuls and a desire for wind." Or literally, "better a fullness of palm - relaxation, than a fullness of a pair of fists - hard work.” (4:6)
Christian commentators (including Goldingay), by dint of the basic worldview and proposition of Christianity, not to mention a basic human urge to cope by looking on the bright side, are keen to bring out a positive / redemptive spin on biblical texts. We need that right? The turn towards mitigation and alleviation. Qohelet himself makes some of these little moves. But we have to be careful not to romanticise Ecclesiastes - it is a bleak book and we shouldn't try to reduce its negative force. Even when Qohelet makes a turn towards enjoyment, I can't help reading an air of cynicism there - it remains in the mix. Meanwhile, the ambiguities of his discourse make definitive statements about his intent almost impossible. That said, some scattered and disjointed possibilities follow...
Qohelet's salutary and proverbial advice notwithstanding, I wonder if he is not necessarily seeking to make definitive statements as his overarching intent. Perhaps, in presenting a think-piece (albeit a very existentially raw one), he is instead inviting us to consider, to argue - a sort of dialectical move to provoke a contrary response. (It might be good if we viewed more of scripture in this way - inviting us to think, to enter into discussion - rather than viewing it as a thing delivering one-off definitive statements.)
In inviting us to consider, to confront our human condition and to look into the abyss, apart from any wisdom and overcoming of glib shallowness we can glean from this consideration and critique of finitude (death) and striving, it might be that we notice something else rising in us contra the assertion of meaninglessness. Something quite strong, and perhaps the more so for having looked the material human condition full in the face. In discombobulating us with ambiguity and contradiction (or, a "brave equivocality"), perhaps we find ourselves reaching out for some kind of 'solidity'. Or if not that, a kind of freedom in not knowing - an acceptance that can be a kind of springboard.* In the face of the dire conditions of life and our response to them, "Qohelet is not talking about resignation but about acceptance, and 'in acceptance lieth peace.'"* But perhaps more than peace alone.
Incorporating a quote from Milton Horne, Goldingay says:
"Each time the advice to appreciate life comes, it comes with more enthusiasm. 'Every day of life should be celebrated because it is a divine gift.' Appraising or praising enjoyment is quite a change from appraising or praising people who are lucky enough to be dead (4:2). [Horne:] 'The sage continues his perilous trek near the edge of the precipice of meaning, peering for a prolonged time down deep into the darkness of the chasm... Yet, only as people resist this sense of life as a bottomless pit will they experience the effect of yet another commendation of enjoyment... Only at the conclusions of the sage’s observations does he pull his readers back, inviting them to consider again the possibility that there can really be joy, that some experiences are better than others.'"
Truly, the affirmation of the material life, and the enjoyment of the 'simple things' that can be gleaned from Ecclesiastes is important work.
Here's another thing, another confronting possibility:
"Death is the touchstone of our attitude to life. ...to solve the problem of death is not a luxury.... Most of the time we live as though we were writing a draft for the life which we will live later. We live, not in a definitive way, but provisionally, as though preparing for the day when we really will begin to live.... The injunction 'be mindful of death' is not a call to live with a sense of terror in the constant awareness that death is to overtake us. It means rather: 'Be aware of the fact that what you are saying now, doing now, hearing, enduring or receiving now may be the last event or experience of your present life.' ...Only awareness of death will give life this immediacy and depth, will bring life to life, will make it so intense that its totality is summed up in the present moment. All life is at every moment an ultimate act." (Goldingay quoting Anthony of Sourozh, aka Anthony Bloom)
It might be that Qohelet walks away quietly satisfied that his bombardment of pessimism and cynicism - his dose of 'reality', his memento mori - has caused us to push back - that some kind of life-force has arisen.
Taking things in another slightly different direction, to quote another (somewhat slippery) existential interlocutor on the human condition, in another context, "If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the bottom of everything they were only a wild ferment, a power that twisting in dark passions produced everything great or inconsequential; if an unfathomable, insatiable emptiness lay hid beneath everything, what would life be but despair? If it were thus, if there were no sacred bond uniting mankind, if one generation rose up after another like the leaves of the forest, if one generation succeeded the other as the songs of birds in the woods, if the human race passed through the world as a ship through the sea or the wind through the desert, a thoughtless and fruitless whim, if an eternal oblivion always lurked hungrily for its prey and there were no power strong enough to wrest it from its clutches – how empty and void of comfort life would be! But for that reason it is not so, and as God created man and woman, so too he shaped the hero and the poet or speech-maker." (Enter Kierkegaard, writing as Johannes de silentio, in Fear and Trembling, p14)
(Though I'm sure Qohelet wouldn't have much truck with heroes, and presumably (if he's being consistent) a low regard even for this own cogitations, the irony is that his act of utterance itself is a pushing back against meaninglessness; and though he might wonder what good it's done him, his words have so far endured for about two and a half millennia.)
We may even bring love into it ‐ something which Qohelet only fleetingly does. Kierkegaard's Johannes de silentio again: "everyone was great in his own way, and everyone in proportion to the greatness of what he loved." (p15)
Actually the voice of Johannes de silentio provides yet another interesting piece that can be brought into conversation with Ecclesiastes (though Johannes himself doesn't explicitly mention any such connection). He begins by making an observation about the material world ('everything under the sun') that could easily have come from Qohelet's mouth:
"An old proverb pertaining to the outward and visible world says: 'Only one who works gets bread.' Oddly enough, the saying doesn't apply in the world to which it most properly belongs, for the outward world is subject to the law of imperfection; there it happens time and again that one who gets bread is one who does not work, that one who sleeps gets it in greater abundance than one who labours. In the outward world everything belongs to whoever has it, the outward world is subject to the law of indifference and the genie of the ring obeys the one who wears it, whether he be a Noureddin or an Aladdin, and whoever holds the world's treasures does so however he came by them."
But then he makes a turn that Qohelet doesn't make, a turn that transcends Qohelet's frame of reference, a turn to the spiritual (or the 'eternal consciousness' mentioned before, the one that often seems to go missing from Qohelet):
"It is otherwise in the world of spirit. Here there prevails an eternal divine order, here it does not rain on the just and the unjust alike, here the sun does not shine on both good and evil, here only one who works gets bread, and only one who knows anguish finds rest, only one who descends to the underworld saves the loved one, only one who draws the knife gets Isaac." (Fear and Trembling, p27). It's still jarring, and unsettling, if you really think on it, but it presents a wider scope of meaning. All in all, existence requires quite a lot.
To view it in terms Kierkegaard might use, Qohelet could be seen as performing the movement of 'infinite resignation' (which is of a different, braver order than just giving up) mitigated by a bit of enjoyment here and there, or at least tending in the direction of infinite resignation. But what about the movement of faith, performed like a dancer's leap, grounded, then rising, grounded, then rising? (Kierkegaard tells us it's no easy movement (though it appears graceful and effortless in its truest form), so it's understandable Qohelet may not make it.)
And so it goes.
If nothing else, the vapour formed by breath on a cold morning is actually quite beautiful and fascinating if you look at it and observe how it appears, moves and then gently reintegrates with the air around it.
But then, of course, if we go a little deeper, it's been said that there are forms of Breath that are more than just mereness. And striving after Ruach could be something more than a mere chasing after the wind. To be faced with the weight of the reality of the world and all its ambiguities, to accept it (and again), to be grounded there, but then (to once more reference Kierkegaard) to take the dancer's leap, to perform the movement of faith (and again). Let's see into what realities this totality (or fullness) of existence might take us.
* I only touch lightly on acceptance here, but for a deeper exploration of the themes of acceptance and possibility, and their paradoxical interplay, see my essay 'The Sacrament of Breathing'. (https://sacramentofbreathing.wordpres...)
December 24, 2022
A very readable and enjoyable (!) commentary on Ecclesiastes that wears its scholarship lightly, opens up the text, and bodes well for this new series.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews