# 506 Ecclesiastes – In search of meaning in life. 6:1-12. Life after death?

I finished off my last Post with the words from 2 Corinthians 9:7 which use the word “cheerful”! A great word but I have to confess the next passage in Ecclesiastes is anything but cheerful! In fact, it could well be described as morbid! So, if you are in need of something cheerful and encouraging to read today, then I suggest you turn to my Post on Psalm 100 instead. But, if not, then press on. You may still learn something very relevant.

I think it is important here to say that the authors of the OT Scriptures had a very different understanding of death and what follows it. There are certain hints that were there in the OT concerning life after death, but those living BC  had not yet had the privilege of being around when Jesus, the One who would conquer death would come. So we read:

 I have seen another evil under the sun, and it weighs heavily on mankind: ² God gives some people wealth, possessions and honor, so that they lack nothing their hearts desire, but God does not grant them the ability to enjoy them, and strangers enjoy them instead. This is meaningless, a grievous evil.

³ A man may have a hundred children and live many years; yet no matter how long he lives, if he cannot enjoy his prosperity and does not receive proper burial, I say that a stillborn child is better off than he. ⁴ It comes without meaning, it departs in darkness, and in darkness its name is shrouded. ⁵ Though it never saw the sun or knew anything, it has more rest than does that man— ⁶ even if he lives a thousand years twice over but fails to enjoy his prosperity. Do not all go to the same place?

If this life is all there is, as Qoheleth suggests here, then what a tragedy if a person has all the resources to actually enjoy this short life we have been given by God and yet he/she is unable to do so for some unknown reasons. He emphasizes his point with the words in Bold font above in verse 6. And then those rather morbid words, Do not all go to the same place?  Meaning death and the grave.

David Pawson comments: “It is good for us to have reminders, to be brought up short, to be reminded that nobody is here forever, and no family circle is secure, and that death is the greatest fact of life. Therefore, I have encapsulated the passage in a single question: if we are going to die tomorrow, what shall we do today? The answer is: that depends on what happens the day after tomorrow. To put it in a very different way, what we believe about life after death decides how we behave during life before death. It is what we believe concerning beyond the grave that is going to decide what we do with our time this side of it.” (# 61)

For Qoheleth, the answer was just try and make the most of it, enjoy it if you can. In 8:15 he says: So I commend the enjoyment of life, because there is nothing better for a person under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad. Then joy will accompany them in their toil all the days of the life God has given them under the sun.

And so, with this point of view he continues:

⁷ Everyone’s toil is for their mouth,
    yet their appetite is never satisfied.
⁸ What advantage have the wise over fools?
What do the poor gain
    by knowing how to conduct themselves before others?
⁹ Better what the eye sees
    than the roving of the appetite.
This too is meaningless,
    a chasing after the wind.

¹⁰ Whatever exists has already been named,
    and what humanity is has been known;
no one can contend
    with someone who is stronger.
¹¹ The more the words,
    the less the meaning,
    and how does that profit anyone?

As I said at the beginning, not exactly “cheerful”! He then summarizes his thoughts with the following:

¹² For who knows what is good for a person in life, during the few and meaningless days they pass through like a shadow? Who can tell them what will happen under the sun after they are gone?

Well, Qoheleth, I have the answer to your last question! “Who can tell?” The answer is Jesus!

For example, listen to the words of Jesus to the leaders of the Jewish Sect known as the Sadducees who did not believe in life after death and so presented Jesus with a rather strange example to endeavour to prove their point:

²³ That same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question. ²⁴ “Teacher,” they said, “Moses told us that if a man dies without having children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for him. ²⁵ Now there were seven brothers among us. The first one married and died, and since he had no children, he left his wife to his brother. ²⁶ The same thing happened to the second and third brother, right on down to the seventh. ²⁷ Finally, the woman died. ²⁸ Now then, at the resurrection, whose wife will she be of the seven, since all of them were married to her?”

²⁹ Jesus replied, “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God. ³⁰ At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. ³¹ But about the resurrection of the dead—have you not read what God said to you, ³² ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.” (Matthew 22:23-32)

Then at the time of the death of Jesus’ good friend, Lazarus, Jesus, just before he raises Lazarus from death, says to his sister, Martha:

“I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; ²⁶ and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26)

And the final proof was what we celebrate every Easter and that is the death and the resurrection of Jesus!

Prior to this Jesus spoke to the disciples and gave the promise which is also for us today, we who are followers of Jesus. He said:

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. ² My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? ³ And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.  (John 14:1-3)

I think Qoheleth, who in his own right was a man of faith, may have been a little surprised when he did actually die!

Let me finish by asking you the same question Jesus asked Martha: The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; ²⁶ and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”