1 Like things happen to good and bad. 4 There is a necessity of death unto men. 7 Comfort is all their portion in this life. 11 God’s providence ruled over all. 13 Wisdom is better than strength.
Death Comes to All
Ecc 9:1 So I reflected on all this and concluded that the righteous and the wise and what they do are in God’s hands, but no one knows whether love or hate awaits them.
All this. That is, the problem of the adversity of the righteous and the prosperity of the wicked.
I reflected. Solomon exercised his mind in the endeavour to solve the problem.
The righteous. A man’s deeds declare him for what he is. By his fruits he will be known (Matt. 7:15–20).
God’s hand. His will is supreme. The hand is figurative of power and authority (Deut. 33:3; Isa. 62:3).
Love or hate. It is often difficult to know what purpose lies back of the various experiences of life. For the most part, these experiences illustrate the working of cause and effect (see Gal. 6:7).
At times God may overrule for the accomplishment of that which in His wisdom He knows is best. But every experience may, in the providence of God, become an opportunity for character development.
Human reason alone often cannot fathom the vicissitudes of life, the nature of God’s plans for the life, or what lies in the future.
Ecc 9:2 All share a common destiny—the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the clean and the unclean, those who offer sacrifices and those who do not. As it is with the good, so with the sinful; as it is with those who take oaths, so with those who are afraid to take them.
Ecc 9:3 This is the evil in everything that happens under the sun: The same destiny overtakes all. 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.
This is an evil.
Solomon is still unreconciled to the fact that good men and bad alike die. Full of evil. All sin is devoid of reason and good sense. It does not seem reasonable that the majority should prefer the enjoyments of this life to an eternity in the new earth. Go to the dead. Literally, “after it to the dead [ones]” (see Job 30:23; Isa. 14:9; 38:18; Eze. 32:18).
Ecc 9:4 Anyone who is among the living has hope—even a live dog is better off than a dead lion!
Hope. This emphatic Hebrew word translated “hope” is given as “confidence” in 2 Kings 18:19 and Isa. 36:4. The verb root has the meaning of “trust” (see Ps. 25:2; 26:1; 28:7).
A living dog. The dog is depicted in the Bible as the most despised of all animals (Ex. 22:31; 1 Sam. l7:43; Prov. 26:11; 2 Peter 2:22), and is so regarded today in Eastern countries. The dog is a symbol of the viciously wicked (Ps. 22:16; 59:2, 6, 14; Isa. 56:10, 11; Rev. 22:14, 15).
A dead lion. The lion is set forth as a symbol of majesty and might (Prov. 30:30), and, accordingly, of God and Christ (Rev. 5:5; cf. Hosea 13:4–7).
Ecc 9:5 For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward, and even their name is forgotten.
The living know. They are able to plan and make preparations for death, which they know they must meet.
Dead know nothing. See Ps. 88:10–12; Ps. 115:17 A reward. Not a reference to eternal rewards, whether of death for the wicked (Rev. 20:11–15) or of immortality for the righteous (see Rev. 21:1–4; cf. Matt. 16:27; 1 Cor. 15:51–54).
Solomon is here speaking of enjoying the fruits of labor in this life. The memory of them. That is, the memory of them in the minds of the living, not their own mental faculty of memory. This is clear from the meaning of the word zeker, “remembrance,” “memorial,” and from its usage in the OT.
Without exception it refers to “remembrance” about persons or events, never to the faculty of memory (Job 18:17; Ps. 31:12; Ps. 112:6).
Forgotten. That is, “lost.”
Ecc 9:6 Their love, their hate and their jealousy have long since vanished; never again will they have a part in anything that happens under the sun.
Love, hatred, and envy are generally the strong, ruling emotions during life; but in death they function no more. Is now perished. In Hebrew this verb is in the singular number, by which attention is called to each passion individually.
Never have part. When a man is alive he has a part to play, and may enjoy the reward of his labours. But death terminates his role in life.
Job expresses the same truth (Job 14:10–14), as does the psalmist (Ps. 30:9), and the prophet Isaiah (Isa. 38:10).
Enjoy Life with the One You Love
Ecc 9:7 Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for God has already approved what you do.
Make the best of life, advises Solomon; do not sit idly brooding over the seeming inequalities and futilities of life.
Eat your food. Bread and wine are here used figuratively of all the necessities and luxuries of life (see Gen. 14:18; Deut. 33:28).
God provides bountifully the blessings of this life, and it is His will that men shall enjoy them. But the day comes when a distinction is to be made between the righteous and the wicked (Mal. 3:18), based on whether they have used these blessings in self-gratification, or have used them to minister to the needs of their fellow men (Matt. 25:31–46).
Ecc 9:8 Always be clothed in white, and always anoint your head with oil.
White garments were worn on festive occasions, and were considered symbolic of joy and gladness. Angels appeared clad in white (Mark 16:5; John 20:12), and John saw the immortal saints thus clad (Rev. 6:11; 7:9; 19:8), symbolic of their purity of character and their state of joy.
Anoint tour head. It was an Oriental custom to apply oil to the head to cool the body and as a perfume (see Ps. 23:5; Amos 6:6). To fail to anoint the head was considered a sign of mourning or fasting (2 Sam. 14:2; Matt. 6:17).
Oil is also used as a figure of God’s richest blessings (Ps. 92:10; 104:15; cf. Isa. 61:3).
Ecc 9:9 Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun—all your meaningless days. For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun.
The clause reads, literally, “see life with a woman who you love.”
Marriage was ordained to bring supreme joy, and the home to be a little heaven on earth (see Prov. 5:18, 19; 18:22).
Your lot in life. That is, for a man to have a happy marriage. It was God’s design that man should live a happy life, in all good conscience. Man is to make full use of the privileges and responsibilities life brings him.
Ecc 9:10 Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.
He who is wise will put his heart into the tasks life brings him, in the realization that after death there will be no chance to make up for opportunities neglected in this life (John 9:4; cf. Gal. 6:10).
The realm of the dead. Heb. she’ol, the figurative realm of the dead (see on 2 Sam. 12:23; Prov. 15:11). This is the only mention of she’ol in Ecclesiastes.
It is evident that Solomon believed in a state of unconsciousness in she’ol (see on Eccl. 3:19–Where you are going. Death is the lot of all men, for “in Adam all die” (1 Cor. 15:22; see on Eccl. 3:19–21).
Wisdom Better than Folly
Ecc 9:11 I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all.
Unlike men, the Lord is not dependent on the human qualities of physical and mental strength (1 Sam. 14:6; 17:47). Similarly, with man, it is not these outward qualities, which seem to give one man an advantage over others, that are most important in life.
Time and chance happen to them all.
There is a proper time, a right moment, for a certain task. When a man lets slip the appropriate time, his efforts will fail, in whole or in part, to accomplish what they might have, irrespective of the belated zeal he brings to the task.
Ecc 9:12 Moreover, no one knows when their hour will come: As fish are caught in a cruel net, or birds are taken in a snare, so people are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them.
Taken in a snare. A figure depicting sudden disaster (Ps. 91:3; 124:7; Prov. 1:17; 6:5; Hosea 7:12).
Ecc 9:13 I also saw under the sun this example of wisdom that greatly impressed me:
Ecc 9:14 There was once a small city with only a few people in it. And a powerful king came against it, surrounded it and built huge siege works against it.
Small city.
The size of the place was insignificant; therefore its defenders, who were few, would be able to hold off attackers but briefly.
This may be a veiled allusion to some historical event.
Ecc 9:15 Now there lived in that city a man poor but wise, and he saved the city by his wisdom. But nobody remembered that poor man.
A poor man but wise. Literally, “a man, a poor, wise one.”
Saved. Compare 2 Sam. 20:13–22, where a city was saved by a wise woman.
Nobody remembered.
When the crisis was past, the deliverer was ignored and forgotten. Compare Joseph’s experience (Gen. 40:23). Public acclaim is fickle and unreliable. This poor wise man was allowed to sink back into obscurity.
Ecc 9:16 So I said, “Wisdom is better than strength.” But the poor man’s wisdom is despised, and his words are no longer heeded.
Despised. This poor man’s wisdom was not spurned in the sense of being ignored, but he himself was despised and pushed to one side once his service had been rendered.
His words. He had demonstrated sound judgment; but additional words of counsel, perhaps unwelcome, were not accepted.
Ecc 9:17 The quiet words of the wise are more to be heeded than the shouts of a ruler of fools.
In a time of excitement an agitator may be followed, to the nation’s great loss.
Ecc 9:18 Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner destroys much good.
Weapons of war.
The world today needs divine wisdom more than it does a stockpile of atomic and hydrogen bombs.
Destroys. One man may bring great loss upon a nation.