Life is Repetitive

Devotional Ecclesiastes nuggets of wisdom Voices of Wisdom 1 Comment

 

If we won’t live forever, or even long enough to make a lasting difference to the world, how then should we live? -David Gibson

 

Ecclesiastes 1:1-11

Qohelet’s idea that everything is a “breath” , a mist, a puff of wind, a vapor is a common Biblical idea we find in passages such as Psalm 39:5-6, 11, Psalms 144:3-4. Qohel’s portrayal of life is this: Everything is a breath. He will take the rest of the book to unpack what he means. Here are some ways to think about it:

Life is Short – The book of Ecclesiastes is a meditation on what it means for our lives to be like a whisper spoken in the wind: here one minute and carried away forever the next.

Life Is Elusive – But the smoke in front of your eyes is not just transient; it is also elusive…… Ecclesiastes is a meditation on how life seems to elude our grasp in terms of lasting significance. If we try to gain control of the world and our lives by what we can understand and by what we can do, we find that the control we seek eludes us……How much control do you really have over whether your job is secure, or how healthy you will be, or what will happen to interest rates and house prices, over whom you will meet and what you will be doing in ten years’ time?……. When we consider the brevity of our lives set against the millennia of the earth, we know that what the Preacher says is true. Except, of course, in everyday life we pretend it isn’t. We imagine we will live forever, or at the very least that someone else will get cancer, not us. We think our lives are built with granite, not sand. We pretend we’re in control….And so Ecclesiastes sets out to demolish our pretense by confronting us with reality.

Qoheleth then asks the programmatic question of the book, “What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?” (1:3).

This question in many ways shapes the book and is developed throughout. The question, “What does a man gain?” sets the agenda….

The question itself, “What advantage or benefit or profit does a man have in all his work?” is not a philosophical question, but rather it is a practical one. It is focused on the reality that in this vaporous life we labor and then ask, “will it last?”…….Why spend a life toiling away when it is so short and nothing we do appears to last?

Doesn’t the curse and the reality of hebel nullify any advantage in our labor? This life of labor under the sun seems like building sandcastles. We work, and work, and work. Then comes a wave! “How long do sandcastles last? And how much control do we have over the castle we have constructed?….While we are toiling, we feel like we are accomplishing something, that we are in control. But it is an illusion. The next wave proves it. Qoheleth wants that to lie heavy on us for a while. He won’t give an easy answer. He wants us to feel his pain. To twist the knife a little deeper, he gives us a poem about the cyclical nature of this world. Nature is teaching us something. – Brian Borman

“A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever” (Eccl. 1:4).

Life Is Repetitive – The Preacher pictures the momentary and elusive nature of human life with a beautiful rhythmic pattern to his poetry. Read Ecclesiastes 1:4–10 aloud and feel the lyrical tilt with its tidal ebb and flow. That’s the point. Everything either goes around and around, or comes and goes; it rises and sets; what has been will be again; what has been done will be done again; what is present will soon be past.

In verses 5–8 the Preacher focuses on a threefold pattern in the world that is matched by a threefold pattern in human experience. The activities of sun, wind, and water follow the same course as the activities of speaking, seeing, and hearing. The point is that the world itself doesn’t seem to go or get anywhere, for everything is cyclical rather than linear, so why should humans get anywhere?

The sun chases its tail. The wind goes to the south and comes back around again to the north. Streams flow into the sea, and the water evaporates, and then streams flow into the sea again and it is never full. So is the world, and so it will always be. So is humankind, and so we will always be……..

What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. (1:9)

The Preacher’s perspective is this: humans long to come across something in their lives that will break the constant repetitive cycle, something to say or see or hear that will be truly new and therefore significant—​​​but there is nothing. No such thing exists……

A new government is still a government, and we’re all familiar with those…..A new baby is still a baby, and the world has always been full of them. Even landing on the moon is still a form of adventure and exploration that has been with us since humans have walked the earth… He doesn’t mean no “new” things are ever invented in the world, for clearly that is not true. He means there is nothing new we can ever discover to break the cycle and so satisfy us……

Prepare to Die – The Preacher has answered his own question by pointing to the cyclical comings and goings of the world. His answer is that people do not gain from their labor and toil because ultimately they are going to die and be forgotten. Life stretches ahead of the young employee with dreams of a fulfilling career and a happy family; but it will all come and go. She is going to die and will not be remembered….

In the book, the Preacher is not commenting on what life is like without Christ. He is not saying this repetitive roundabout is what life is like from a secularist perspective. This is not what the world feels like from the viewpoint of existential nihilism, or postmodern navel gazing. It’s just what the world is like. It’s reality. It’s the same for everyone, Christian or non-Christian, adherent or atheist: we each live under the sun…..

We do the same things over and over again in a world repeating itself over and over again, and then we die, only to be followed by our children who will do the same things in the same way and then meet the same end. Being a Christian doesn’t stop this being true. Rather, it should make us the first to stop pretending that it isn’t true. That is the Preacher’s aim……In these days, under the sun, it is unavoidably true that we live in a world where we will soon be dead.

Learn to Live -The Preacher wants us to let the reality of our death sink into our bones and lodge itself deep in our hearts. But that’s because he’s writing a book about what it means to live. He wants the consequences of our fast-approaching disappearance from the earth to work their way out into all the realities of the way we see the world and the way we view ourselves within that world.

The single question that animates him is this: If we won’t live forever, or even long enough to make a lasting difference to the world, how then should we live?

It takes the whole of Ecclesiastes to answer that question, and I want to unpack it in the successive chapters of this book…. the Preacher is going to show us what we should, and should not, expect out of life. He is not just saying there’s no gain after we’ve chased the wind; he will insist there’s no need for the chase in the first place. There is no gain to be had under the sun, and that’s precisely the point. None need be sought. -David Gibson

Recommended Resources: 

“Living Life Backward: How Ecclesiastes Teaches us to Live in Light of the End”

By David Gibson

“Don’t Waste Your Breath: Ecclesiastes and the Joy of a Fleeting Life”

By Brian Borgman

Soli Deo Gloria

Intro To Ecclesiastes Pt.2

Ecclesiastes nuggets of wisdom Voices of Wisdom 1 Comment

“The phrase “under the sun” is used twenty-nine times in Ecclesiastes. It is frequently paired with hebel. Many commentators take the phrase to be an expression of life without God. The reality is that “under the sun” is just life. It is life for everybody” – Brian Borgman

 

The most crucial aspect to understanding Ecclesiastes and how it connects with our life is to properly grasp the word which our translations translate “vanity,” “futility,” or “meaningless.”………. The Hebrew word translated “vanity” is hebel. It is used 38 times in this book, which is about half of all Old Testament uses. But when we consider that Solomon says twice, “Hebel of hebels. Hebel of hebels. Everything is hebel,” then we have a keyword and a key theme that helps us understand this book…..

We now understand that everything is hebel of hebels, but what does it mean?…….. One of the first things to observe is that Abel’s name is the Hebrew word hebel, depicting the brevity of his life. The word is used in many contexts and, according to the way words work, may have a variety of implications. The basic sense of hebel is breath, mist, fog, or vapor……

Based on the above understanding of hebel, it becomes apparent that Ecclesiastes should read: “Breath of breaths. Breath of breaths. Everything is breath.” Or, “Vapor of vapors. Vapor of vapors. Everything is vapor.” Or as David Gibson suggests, “The merest of breaths … the merest of breaths. Everything is a breath.”

Hebel Is for Everybody –  Hebel is a constant in everyone’s life. The life of the sinner and the life of the saint are both marked by hebel. Nobody escapes it. It is a reality for those who love God and those who hate Him. There is no escaping it. Life is short and elusive, for everyone. ……The point of the book is not how to get around hebel, but how to cope with it and thrive within it.

Hebel Is from God –  Hebel is not only a constant for everyone, but also the constant condition of this present life because of God’s judgment. Hebel is part of the curse. It is the graffiti written all over a fallen world. Therefore, God is the one who is in control of hebel.

Hebel and Life Under the Sun – The phrase “under the sun” is used twenty-nine times in Ecclesiastes. It is frequently paired with hebel. Many commentators take the phrase to be an expression of life without God. The reality is that “under the sun” is just life. It is life for everybody. Every mere mortal lives “under the sun.” It is the perspective, as one writer put it, of our death row cell existence.

Hebel and Chasing After the Wind – The phrase “striving after the wind” is used seven times, and six of those are paired with hebel. Chasing the wind, or shepherding the wind, is trying to do something impossible. It is trying to control the uncontrollable……..For those who think they have their future wrapped up with a neat bow, for those who have done everything right and made all the proper preparations for a life of joy, know this: the wind can shift. No one can shepherd the wind. Making plans is wise, but in a life that is a breath on a cold morning, you never know what awaits you at the next turn. This short life is unpredictable and uncontrollable.

Ecclesiastes stands out in our Bibles as an unusual gift. It is a book of inspired wisdom that sounds different from other books. It deals with the exceptions and mysteries of life. Ecclesiastes helps us break through the make-believe, pretend views of life, which are designed to anesthetize us. If we live anesthetized, fabricated lives, we will be unprepared when it is time to die. Ecclesiastes shouts, “Life is a gift, it is really short, you will die, and you need my wisdom to live it joyfully.” Ecclesiastes is an unexpected source of joy that warns us and equips us to not waste our breath before it ends in death. – Brian Borgman

Everyone gives mental assent to the fact that we will die oneday, but because the society has been designed to distract us from facing the reality of death, so many do not live as those ready to stand before God and give an account for their lives. Ecclesiastes challenges us to put first things, first. – Elizabeth

Soli Deo Gloria

 

 

Recommended Resources: 

“Living Life Backward: How Ecclesiastes Teaches us to Live in Light of the End”

By David Gibson

“Don’t Waste Your Breath: Ecclesiastes and the Joy of a Fleeting Life”

By Brian Borgman

Intro to Ecclesiastes

Ecclesiastes nuggets of wisdom Voices of Wisdom 3 Comments

 

Ecclesiastes wrestles with the brevity of life, not its meaninglessness…..
It’s a book in the Bible that gets under the radar of our thinking and acts like an incendiary device to explode our make-believe games and jolt us into realizing that everything is not as clean and tidy as the “let’s-pretend” world suggests…..

 

The Bible’s Problem Child Ecclesiastes has been called “the black sheep of the Bible.” It has been called the “problem child of Scripture.” Iain Provan has commented, “Ecclesiastes has a long history of perturbation behind it.” And yet for all its bad press, the book has always captured my attention. When I was in college I took an elective on wisdom literature, trying to better understand Scripture’s “problem child.” When I was in seminary, I took another class that covered Ecclesiastes. Although I was able to grow some in my understanding of the Bible’s “black sheep,” I could not unravel the mystery. I collected articles, books, and commentaries. I read, I asked questions, read more, and still the message of this book eluded me. The mystery of the book is wrapped up in so many of the apparent pessimistic and even contrary statements to what is in the rest of the Bible.

This book was like a jigsaw puzzle to me. Some expositors held up various pieces and claimed to know what the picture on the box was supposed to look like. But those claims always sounded off or incomplete. Was I chasing the wind? In the back of my mind, I wanted to preach Ecclesiastes, but I knew I was not ready. I had not found the corner pieces of the puzzle. I had not discovered the edges. It is a fool’s errand to try to put a puzzle together without the corners and edges. I knew I needed to see the forest if I was ever going to understand the trees. My “hebel moment” gave me the impetus to put the puzzle together. I was driven………

My journey in Ecclesiastes has led me to believe that this is a wonderful, even positive book that shows us that life is a gift from God which is to be enjoyed for His glory. Hebel is not meaninglessness, it is vapor, breath, or mist (as I will demonstrate). Ecclesiastes wrestles with the brevity of life, not its meaninglessness……-Brian Borgman

The book of Ecclesiastes is one of God’s gifts to help us live in the real world. It’s a book in the Bible that gets under the radar of our thinking and acts like an incendiary device to explode our make-believe games and jolt us into realizing that everything is not as clean and tidy as the “let’s-pretend” world suggests…….- David Gibson

 

Recommended Resources: 

“Living Life Backward: How Ecclesiastes Teaches us to Live in Light of the End”

By David Gibson

 

“Don’t Waste Your Breath: Ecclesiastes and the Joy of a Fleeting Life”

By Brian Borgman

 

Soli Deo Gloria