So Qoheleth, the nominal author of the book (Ecclesiastes 1:1, 2, 12; 7:27; 12:8, 9, 10), proposes that perhaps this is the best anyone can do in this meaningless world: “Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has long ago approved what you do … Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life … Whatever your hand finds to do, do with your might; for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going” (9:7-10).

Certainly many people today would agree with that assessment: find what enjoyment you can with work and food and family, because soon you will be gone. Possibly your death will come in a miserable old age (12:1-7); maybe it will come in a sudden calamity (9:11-12); but either way, it comes to everyone, the saints and the sinners, the righteous and the wicked (9:2-3).

This anguish is somewhat reminiscent of Paul’s lament – “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death!” (Romans 7:24). Yet in today’s text it holds a more haunting desperation, for Qoheleth – The Preacher – Solomon the Wise himself, perhaps – could not know the answer that Paul had discovered in Jesus.

Even in his near-despair, though – and even in the recognition that too “much study is a weariness of the flesh (12:12) – Qoheleth still had the insight to recognize that the end of the matter is this: God is bigger than all of human wisdom (Ecclesiastes 8:17); and the purposes of God endure forever (3:14); and reverent trembling awe before God – the fear of the Lord – is what we all need (12:13).

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Open our eyes to see clearly the emptiness and vanity of our existence, O Lord, when we try to live a life apart from you. And then open our hearts as well, that we may perceive your great goodness, and joyfully step into your presence to tremble with awe and worship before you.

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