Bible Study Solomon's Pessimism

[Beetow]

.
Hello;

Winter holidays probably aren't the best time of year for going thru the book of
Ecclesiastes but hey, it's actually a fun book (though a bit on the down side)
because it's chock full of rational thinking instead of heavenly revelations.
Ecclesiastes requires very little interpretation as anybody who's been around the
block a time or two can easily relate to it.

Solomon composed his comments in this book from the perspective of a
philosophical man whose understanding of life and the hereafter is moderated by
empirical evidence and the normal round of human experience. It's a handy book of
the Bible for showing that not all religious people are kooks with their heads in the
clouds and unable to see things as they are through the eyes of normal people.

Buen Camino (Pleasant Journey)
_

 

[Beetow]

.
● Ecc 1:1 . .The words of Koheleth son of David, king in Jerusalem.

Koheleth is apparently a transliteration rather than a translation. The Hebrew word
basically pertains to an assembly gatherer (i.e. a lecturer) viz: someone who
assembles groups together for a speech, a seminar, or a sermon.

Christ was a koheleth. Just about everywhere he went, Jesus set up a soap box and
drew crowds.

The lecturer obviously isn't female because Koheleth was a son of David and a king
in Jerusalem. Sons and kings are eo ipso male.

Tradition accredits Ecclesiastes to David's son Solomon, the brightest intellectual of
his day because of the abundance of his God-given wisdom. None of the other
descendants of David ever matched Solomon's intellect. He may not have been
much of a soldier, but Solomon had no equals in matters of scholarship.

"The Lord endowed Solomon with wisdom and discernment in great measure, with
understanding as vast as the sands on the seashore. Solomon's wisdom was
greater than the wisdom of all the Kedemites and than all the wisdom of the
Egyptians. He was the wisest of all men: [wiser] than Ethan the Ezrahite, and
Heman, Chalkol, and Darda the sons of Mahol. His fame spread among all the
surrounding nations.

. . He composed three thousand proverbs, and his songs numbered one thousand
and five. He discoursed about trees, from the cedar in Lebanon to the hyssop that
grows out of the wall; and he discoursed about beasts, birds, creeping things, and
fishes. Men of all peoples came to hear Solomon's wisdom, [sent] by all the kings
of the earth who had heard of his wisdom." (1Kgs 5:9-14)

Solomon's education would most likely be categorized as Liberal Arts in our day;
which is a pretty broad field of study consisting of a variety of subjects.

● Ecc 1:2-3 . . Utter futility!-- said Koheleth --Utter futility! All is futile! What real
value is there for a man in all the gains he makes beneath the sun?

He has a point. What does it benefit people "beneath the sun" (viz: in this world of
ours) to amass a fortune, build an empire, accumulate knowledge, possessions,
education, accolades, achievements, and experience when they're only going to die
and lose every last bit of it?

Approaching the end of his life; actor Burt Reynolds once remarked that the only
thing he regretted was not spending more of his money.

Here's a humorous epitaph that quite says it all:

Here lies John Racket,
In his wooden jacket.
He kept neither horses nor mules.
He lived like a hog,
And died like a dog;
And left his money to fools.
_

 

[Beetow]

.
● Ecc 1:4 . . One generation goes, another comes, but the Earth remains the same
forever.

It's kinda humiliating to realize that a mindless lump of granite with an IQ of zero,
and whose personal accomplishments amount to absolutely nothing, will easily
outlive the finest minds and the most energetic movers and shakers who ever
existed.

The rock of Gibraltar, for example, was here before Plato, Alexander the Great,
Darwin, Beethoven, Einstein, Eli Whitney, Edwin Hubble, Jonas Salk, and Steve
Jobs; and the rock of Gibraltar was still be here after they all died. It will still be
here after you and I are dead too. Shakespeare once said all the world's a stage.
He was so right. Actors come and go, but the stage is always there; ready for a
new cast.

It's just not fair. People are much smarter, more sophisticated, and far more
valuable than anything on the planet. But the planet itself-- mute, ignorant, and
impersonal --endures forever; while its superiors die and drop off at the rate of +/-
7,000 every twenty-four hours just in the USA alone.

In the grand scheme of things, Man's tenure on the planet is but for a fleeting
moment; then he's gone and forgotten; washed away. For the vast majority of
people, it will be as though they were never here at all.

● Ecc 1:5 . .The sun rises, and the sun sets-- and glides back to where it rises.

Sounds like Orphan Annie-- "The Sun-ull come owwwwt too-maw-row. Betcher
bottum doll-ler that too-maw-rohhhhh, thair-ull be Sun." (chuckle) Annie has it
pegged. Maybe clouds block the Sun from view now and then, but the clouds can
never stop the Sun from coming up; nor stop it from going down either. The Sun
always comes up, and it always goes down-- there's always day, and there's always
night

● Ecc 1:6 . . Southward blowing, turning northward, ever turning blows the wind;
on its rounds the wind returns.

Solomon perceived that winds are cyclonic; and he's right. The Earth's air currents
don't move straight ahead like waves roaring in on the beach. No, they circulate.
High pressure areas move air into low pressure areas. And the winds never blow
just once. They keep coming back to blow all over again.

● Ecc 1:7 . . All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full; to the place
[from] which they flow the streams flow back again.

Solomon was pretty doggone savvy about hydrology. It's true. All streams flow
towards the sea (duh! gravity makes water flow downhill, and most landmasses are
above the level of the sea), but the water doesn't stay there. It returns to the land
masses again via evaporation, snow, rain, and hail, in a perpetual cycle.

● Ecc 1:8 . . All such things are wearisome: no man can ever state them; the eye
never has enough of seeing, nor the ear enough of hearing.

Science is fun. But there is just too much for one man to learn in his lifetime. Even
those who specialize in only one branch, like astronomy, or biology, or chemistry,
never really get it all. They are ever grasping for more knowledge, but it eludes
them. Then they die and someone else comes along to pick up where they left off
and continue the search.

A new 9.7 billion-dollar space telescope, said to be many times more powerful than
the Hubble, dubbed the James Webb Space Telescope (a.k.a. JWSP) was launched
in 2021. What for? Only because Man's eyes never have enough seeing, and his
ears never have enough hearing. He presses on for more and more knowledge
because he just has to know. The quest for knowledge becomes the entire reason
and motivation for missions like the JWSP. It was being built and launched simply
for the purpose of discovery.

Nobel Prize winner, author of several best-selling books, and recipient of at least a
dozen honorary degrees, physicist Steven Weinberg (who views religion as an
enemy of science) in his book "The First Three Minutes" wrote:

"The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless. But if
there is no solace in the fruits of our research, there is at least some consolation in
the research itself . .The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few
things that lifts human life a little above the level of a farce and gives it some of the
grace of tragedy."
_