Let's suppose that you are an astronaut that has gone on a mission into deep space to study a newly discovered planet. Scientists have studied the planet from afar via telescope for weeks now and are speculating that there is a good probability that life could flourish on this planet.
So, you land on the planet and discover that the scientists' speculations are true...incredibly true. You discover that there is not only life on the planet, but hospitable and intelligent life. They not only greet upon your arrival but they welcome you into the life of their community and give you free range to study all that you desire to study.
Over time, you develop a suitable means to communicate with them. The aliens have developed a sophisticated way of life, not too dissimilar from our own. Before too long, though, you slowly begin to realize that something is drastically wrong. You have discovered that the intelligent alien race has some sort of disease that is killing them off one by one. There is not an alien that is not infected. All are ill.
The aliens know that they are infected, but, have no idea how to cure themselves. Some seem to think that if they can become smart enough to avoid all of the wrong things, they can somehow dodge infection. Others seem to think that the answer is in being happy...that, if they can keep their spirits upbeat and not get depressed, they may still die from the infection, but a happy heart will help them to live longer...to be more resilient to the disease. Lastly, there are those aliens who just don't care. They know that their time is short, so they live it up however they want, seeking to get the most pleasure out of life before they pass.
You know the truth, though, and are actually shocked that the alien species has not developed a serious medicinal combatant to the awful disease. You know that the cure doesn't lie in any of their methods but they refuse to listen to you.
All of their efforts are meaningless, a chasing after the wind. No matter what they do, they will not be able to avoid the inevitable by living the way that they do. They are infected and they will all die. All of their toil will result in nothing until a cure is revealed.
The "Disease" and Our Methods of Coping:
In this study, we will be shifting further into Solomon's train of thought. Here, we will find that Solomon actually breaks down categorically his different endeavors to fulfill this longing that he has to find "meaning" in this life. Again, we have already seen that he started the book off by saying that "everything is utterly meaningless"....so yeah, you can probably already anticipate what his outcome will be.
We will focus on 1:12-2:26, where Solomon tells us about 4 different things that he thought, once acquired, he might find some sort of true satisfaction in...some true meaning....a cure for all the meaninglessness.
Wisdom:
Solomon was a very wise person and King; arguably one of the best that the world has ever seen. He had enough self awareness to know that because God had gifted him so, he had become one of the wisest people that Jerusalem had ever known. There are 2 things that are really incredible about Solomon and his wisdom (interesting side-note):
1) He asked God for wisdom and God gave it to him (1 Kings 3:5-15).
2) He worked for wisdom. In other words, he put the gift that God had given him into practice (Ecclesiastes 1:13).
There are important lessons to be learned from both of those points: that, we are to understand our utter need for God's grace before we can carry out the tasks that He has laid out before us and that we are not to just think that we can sit idly by while the Lord does all the work for us. We are given gifts in order to put them into practice. But, we must ask for them first.
Solomon learned from his pursuit of wisdom that the more he learned, the more bummed out he got! He says in v. 18:
"For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief."
In other words, "ignorance is bliss!" Hear what he is saying here...that, the more he applied his mind to learning, the more he saw the fallacy and meaninglessness that exists in the world. As his knowledge grew, so did his sorrow. Instead of escaping meaninglessness, he further realized that all of life is submerged in meaninglessness.
Pleasures:
After Solomon came to the shocking realization that the gaining of wisdom would not overcome the meaninglessness of life (even though God had given it to him!), he then turned to the comforts of this world thinking that he would find some gain in them, some sort of true satisfaction through them. This to, "proved" to be meaningless he tells us.
Here is what Solomon sought in order to comfort and pleasure himself:
1) Wine
2) The building of houses
3) the planting of vineyards
4) the planting of lush gardens
5) the making of elaborate parks and ponds
6) the buying of slaves
7) owning more livestock than anyone else around
8) A tremendous amount of silver, gold and other riches
9) formed bands of men and women singers to listen whenever he wanted
10) he had hundreds of women as wives and concubines
11) He became the greatest man by far in all of Jerusalem
12) Oh, yeah, he was also King
I hesitate to say that Solomon was like a rock star, because Solomon probably would put every rock start that I have ever heard of to shame. This guy had it all...he had whatever he wanted. He says:
"I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure." (2:10)
He literally had a limitless supply of methods to satisfy his lust, ego, and esteem, yet, he still came to the conclusion that all of those things did not overcome the meaninglessness of this life, that "nothing was gained under the sun."
Stupidity:
In 2:12-2:26, Solomon takes a fascinating and haunting turn. He tells us that he basically sought to be an idiot to see how that way of life compared to a life filled with wisdom. He says that, in one way wisdom is better than folly/stupidity but, in another way, it is not different at all. In the end, Solomon tells us that stupidity is no different than wisdom because both the wise person and the foolish person will wind up in the grave. He says:
"The fate of the fool will overtake me also. What then do I gain by being wise?"
Here is where a sobering reality again awaits us....that we will die and not be remembered. Solomon takes another massively depressing step forward, though:
No matter what you do in your life, good or bad, wise or foolish...you will be utterly forgotten and all that you have gained will be lost. The "difference" that you make in this life is of no significance at all in reality. Sure, you may make and impact on the world where people remember the impact that you made; what you stood for and what you started but they won't remember you; your character, your laughter, your heartache, you in your truest essence. You, like everyone else, will be utterly and totally forgotten at some point.
Solomon is saying, "Sure, you can pursue money, fame, the perfect home and amazing sex but, in the end, it will make no difference. You will die and will be forgotten by all. You could acquire all things but in the end, you will die just like the most foolish of people. Your end will be no different than that of a fool's."
Work:
The last pursuit that Solomon tells us that he turned to for comfort and meaning is "toil" or work. Actually, all that he has spoken of so far is essentially included in this category. That wisdom, pleasure and folly are all encompassed under what Solomon calls "toil."
In this part, we can really sense Solomon's frustration with the system of things. He worked for wisdom but he gained nothing. He worked to satisfy all pleasure, but he gained nothing. He even worked at being an idiot only to discover that he could gain nothing from that as well! All this work for no gain!
So, he "hated life" because nothing could be gained from it; something of a real essence, something that would truly bring satisfaction to his soul, something that would complete his life's endeavor. He acknowledges the fact that all of his hard work, all that he has gained, will eventually end up in the hands of others. He will lose all that he has worked for in the end....
"For people may labor with wisdom, knowledge and skill, and then they must leave all they own to others who have not worked for it. This to is meaningless..." (2:21)
This is the point where Solomon's thoughts can be summed up in this way:
You can gain nothing in this life. All of your gain is truly no gain at all. It is all utterly meaningless.
If you have not noticed yet, an important Old Testament theme is beginning to surface a bit. It is like standing on a pier next to the ocean and seeing a fin parting the water off in the distance. Is it a shark? A dolphin? Maybe a whale? You don't really know at this point. All that you know is that there is some sort of fish/mammal swimming around out there.
What is Surfacing; The Origin of "Toil":
To Adam He said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,'
"Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return." -(Genesis 3:17-19)
If you haven't already, take the time to observe how Solomon starts off the portion of Scripture that we have examined in this study. In verse 1:13, he echoes the curse of the garden by saying, "What a heavy burden God has laid on the human race!"
According to Solomon, God has laid a burden on the human race. However, according to Genesis, at one point, there was no burden in being a human. In other words, it wasn't always this way. That, the burden found its origin in human sinfulness and God's curse upon it.
God cursed mankind. God "laid this burden" on our shoulders not as a cruel joke...but to teach us about heartache. Yes, the curse does teach us about our own heartache as a result of our sinfulness. Mankind toils painfully and suffers endlessly during his time on earth because of the curse.
However, the curse teaches us, mainly, not about our own heartache, but God's. All of this work, all of this toil, all of this time and energy and, in the end, what does it produce? Heartache. The curse is a sign that points us not to human suffering, but to God's, by causing us to suffer in a similar way as He has. There is suffering in our labor because we have produced suffering in God's. Just as the creation of our hands seem to turn on us, so has God's creation. Our work produces thorns...we are the creation that has turned thorny in God's hands. Our work is a painful burden because we became a painful burden to God.
The curse, the toil, shows us more about God's relationship to us than anything. That, despite the fact that His work has produced thorns, He has yet to give up on it.
More on this in a later study....
What, then, is the conclusion of the matter?:
For the first time so far, Solomon begins to take somewhat of a pseudo positive mood in verses 2:24-26.
Even though this is not the ultimate conclusion of the matter, as we will see in a later study, Solomon gives us a little tidbit of how we are to live in a meaningless world.
He tells us that, "People can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their toil. This too, I see is from the hand of God, for without Him, who can eat or find enjoyment?"
Note that Solomon's issue with meaninglessness is not at all resolved here by any means. The problem has not been fixed and the infection has not yet been cured and there is nothing we can do about it in the meantime. So...live.
In essence, he is saying: "Even though it is meaningless...it is good to try to find some sort of satisfaction in what you do during your time on earth. Even though your satisfaction will only be temporary, enjoy it while it lasts because this is a gift from God."
The Ultimate Conclusion of the Matter is Yet to Come:
Again, as we end this study, bear in mind that Solomon wrote this during a certain time in history. A time during which history had yet to reach it's climax. Since Solomon's time, history has now reached it's recapitulation in the "2nd Adam," in the "new creation."
There is now something better for man to do than simply accept the meaninglessness of all of our toil...no longer is everything meaningless under the sun and a chasing after the wind.
Mankind is now called to understand that, through one man, all has been made meaningful once again and the burden that once was placed on mankind has now been lifted. Instead of bearing thorns, humanity can now bear fruit.
In other words, even though Solomon was in all his wisdom truly great, and even though he had tremendous insight into the ways of the world, "now One greater than Solomon is here." -(Matthew 12:42)
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