This post continues my commentary on the Book of Ecclesiastes, the first installment of which is here. But a brief review is in order. The central theme of the book, you will recall, is the vanity and futility of all human endeavor including such pursuit of wisdom and understanding as the Preacher himself undertakes in the book in question. Surprisingly, this seems to extend even to God's rewarding of the righteous and punishing of the sinner. "This too is vanity and striving after wind." (2:26) Here are some questions that the book suggests:
Q2. What exactly is vanity?
Q3. Why does universal impermanence, and in our case death, argue vanity? (Why does the fact of death render futile all our endeavors?)
Q4. Does death argue vanity whether or not God exists?
Q5. If yes to (Q4), what role does God play? Is the existence of God unconnected to the meaning of human existence? (If death is the absolute end, why should it matter whether or not God exists?)
Q6. Why was this absurdist/Epicurean tract judged canonical?
I have addressed and partially answered the first two questions in the previous installment. The other questions remain open.
Chapter 3 offers us the famous litany of opposites that Pete Seeger crafted into the song "Turn, Turn, Turn" here sung by Judy Collins and made famous in the mid-60's by the folk-rock band, The Byrds. Being born/dying; sowing/reaping; killing/healing; . . . loving/hating; making war/making peace. What is the point of this litany of opposities, and what does it have to do with the overarching theme of vanity which is sounded yet again in this chapter at 3:19?
One idea is that the interdependence of opposities is being suggested as argumentative support for the ultimate emptiness and insubstantiality of all finite things. If each member of a pair of opposites is what it is only by not being its other in that pair, then nothing is truly substantial: each thing is what it is only in relation to what it is not. All finite things being ultimately insubstantial, they are ultimately unsatisfactory: they do not satisfy our infinite longing for such things as eternal life (as opposed to a life that ends in death and is tied to death as a necessary condition of its being life), true love (as opposed to the love fickle and fleeting which can easily turn into its opposite), and true peace, the peace that surpasseth all understanding (as opposed to the peace which is the absence of war and lasts only as long as potentially warring parties deter each other from aggression).
God comes in again at 3:10 but the emphasis on vanity remains. Man and beast share the same fate, death. Man enjoys no advantage, "for all is vanity." His breath or spirit does not ascend upwards at death, but dissipates into the earth like that of a beast. (3:19) In an allusion to Genesis 3:19, we are told that everything is from dust and will return to dust. In what sense, then, will God judge the righteous and the wicked? (3:17) It is not as if the righteous always prosper and the wicked always suffer. How can there be divine judgment if death spells the absolute end, if man dies like a dog? Is not immortality in some sense (whether Platonically or via resurrection of the body) a necessary presupposition of divine judgment, and thus of the ultimate triumph of justice, which is in turn connected with the meaningfulness of human life?
Chapter 3 leaves us wondering what role God plays in the Preacher's scheme of things. If all is vanity because death is an absolute termination, then God would seem to have no connection either with the meaning of human life or with any judging of the righteous and the wicked. There seems to be a rather uneasy fit between the Preacher's theism and his conviction of the universality of vanity.