# 510 Ecclesiastes – In search of meaning in life. 8:11-17 No condemnation!

Ever wondered about how long it takes sometimes for law courts to come to a decision about a crime. I guess there are many reasons for this delay, and better to be thorough and get it right in the end, but one can’t help feeling for the victim when the case drags on for so long.

Christopher Wright says: “Verse 11 anticipates an English proverb that “delayed justice is no justice” and only encourages increased wrongdoing.” (# 60)

Qoheleth observes that:

¹¹ When the sentence for a crime is not quickly carried out, people’s hearts are filled with schemes to do wrong. 

In Wikipedia we read:

“Justice delayed is justice denied” is a legal maxim. It means that if legal redress or equitable relief to an injured party is available, but is not forthcoming in a timely fashion, it is effectively the same as having no remedy at all.”

 So, here is something that we can certainly agree with Qoheleth about. He then continues:

¹² Although a wicked person who commits a hundred crimes may live a long time, I know that it will go better with those who fear God, who are reverent before him. ¹³ Yet because the wicked do not fear God, it will not go well with them, and their days will not lengthen like a shadow.

Wright continues: “At first sight, verses 12 and 13 seem mutually contradictory: • v. 12—the wicked may live a long time (but it will be better for the righteous in the end); • v. 13—the wicked will not live long (since they don’t fear God). Well, which is it? Probably verse 13 is what he wishes were true, while verse 12 expresses what he sees happening. But either way (and this is the important point), Qoheleth tells us that this is something that he “knows” (he emphasizes the word in verse 12). So here we have strong affirmation of his underlying faith. In spite of some of the things he has said before … he has this deep-down certainty that ultimately the fate of the righteous and the wicked will be different. The fear of the Lord—present or absent—is the determining factor. BUT, then, in his typical way, having stated what he knows and affirms by faith (“that it will go better with those who fear God”), he immediately contrasts it with the baffling enigma that this distinction can seem to be reversed in real life (v. 14). And this seems just plain meaningless—he puts the word at the beginning and end of the verse.” (# 60)

So, he writes that:

¹⁴ There is something else meaningless that occurs on earth: the righteous who get what the wicked deserve, and the wicked who get what the righteous deserve. This too, I say, is meaningless. 

“And we have to agree with him, don’t we? It seems not just pointless but downright unfair, unjust, absurd, and unbearable when good people get treated like criminals while actual criminals get off scot-free. We cry out in protest, “Why?” And if that is our human instinct, Proverbs tells us that it stinks in God’s nostrils also. Acquitting the guilty and condemning the innocent— the LORD detests them both. (Prov 17:15). (# 60)

So, I wonder what Qoheleth would think if he understood what would happen 1000 years after his reign? When the “the righteous who get what the wicked deserve” is exactly what happened at the cross of Christ. That is where “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:21). The ultimate human injustice of the cross became the ultimate divine justice on our behalf in the saving, reconciling righteousness of God.” (# 60)

Consider this truth concerning Jesus as prophesied in the Book of Isaiah:

⁴ Surely he took up our pain
    and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
    stricken by him, and afflicted.
⁵ But he was pierced for our transgressions,
    he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
    and by his wounds we are healed.
⁶ We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
    each of us has turned to our own way; 
and the Lord has laid on him
    the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:4-6)

Qoheleth, at least would have understood the truth about our sinfulness and the need of a substitute if there was to be any hope for us at all.

He later wrote:

The hearts of people, moreover, are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live, and afterward they join the dead.   (9:3)

As Paul says:

… for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, ²⁴ and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. (Romans 3:23-24)

Because of Jesus who gave his life for ours, we can now do what Qoheleth suggests, and this involves the enjoyment of life (8:15), free of the fear of condemnation – Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus… (Romans 8:1)