Study 1 – The Book of Ecclesiastes by Neville Clark, ‘The Vanity of Life’

These studies on Ecclesiastes were given in 2009 by Neville Clark

Study 1 – The Book of Ecclesiastes by Neville Clark, ‘The Vanity of Life’

http://www.livoniatapes.com/…/Neville%20Clark%20-%20Ecclesi…

The book of Ecclesiastes is different to Proverbs. Proverbs is a very diverse book, whereas the book of Ecclesiastes is very focused. It begins by stating its objective. It moves through experiences observations, deductions, and then arrives at an overwhelming conclusion a the end in ECC Ch 12. It is an enticing book. It addresses the answer to the question of humanity, why we are here and how we can obtain ultimate fulfilment in life. Believers or unbelievers alike, consciously or sub-consciously as themselves “how can they obtain ultimate fulfilment in life?”

I am attached to this book myself, personally. I was not brought up in the Truth, and as a result, I never really read the Bible until I was in my early 20s. It was Ecclesiastes that demonstrated to me most powerfully that there could be no other course in life than a life of discipleship.

Back in 1986, I was back in my summer holidays, and I had come in contact with the Truth in Christchurch, but all the CDs were at Summer School and I had the summer vacation at home, off work. I sat down to read the Bible and I read right from the beginning, from Gen 1, to find out what are all these stories I had heard about in my childhood. My mother had recently given me a copy of the NIV which hadn’t been published very long before that, so I was reading a modern version and it was quite easy to read, and I distinctly remember the day I turned the page to Ecclesiastes Ch. 1. I was lying on the Lilo in the swimming pool, sunglasses, with a Bible, reading the Bible and trying yo get a sun tan. I turned to ECC Ch 1 and this is what I saw in the NIV.

The first words of ECC 1 “the words of the Teacher, Son of David, King in Jerusalem. Meaningless, meaningless, utterly meaningless, everything is meaningless.” I just about dropped the Bible in the water. At that verse, I just read the whole book right through. I ran straight inside and it was about 5.00. pm at night and Mum was peeling potatoes over the sink, and I said, “Mum, this is the purpose of life! Listen to this” and I started reading different pieces out of it. “That’s interesting,” Mum said, “that’s interesting,” she said. I knew immediately, brothers and sisters, that if the Bible answered these kinds of questions then it could answer any question, any question in the world, if it could answer those sorts of questions.

You know, when I was young, a lot younger, and maybe this happened to you, I would think a thought, any thought, a trivial thought, and I might say to myself, “I wonder if anyone in the world, ever in history, has ever thought that particular thought. I wondered if my thought was, perhaps, in some way, unique, and I read Ecc 1:9 “The thing which has been is that which shall be, and that which is done, is that which shall be done, there is no new thing under the sun.” Yes, they’ve thought that precise though before.

I was at University at the time when I was reading Ecclesiastes, and I suppose, when you finish your education, you wonder what you are going yo do. I didn’t know what I was going to do for a job, I didn’t know where life would take me and I remember wondering at the time, what life would hold. Perhaps I would get a job that would make me famous somehow. Perhaps I would publish something and be distinguished in some way. Then I read v 11. “There is no remembrance of former things neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come, with those that shall come after.” No, you won’t be famous, and if you are, it will be for a generation. Most things are irrelevant. And there were other verses that I had the precise experience of in my life as there is no doubt you will if you read these verses carefully, and relate the precise experiences in your life to these verses. But the point that really struck me, brothers and sisters, as I was sitting in the swimming pool that afternoon, was that not only has somebody already done these things, and analysed the consequences of them, but they did it 3,000 years ago. They did all this 3000 years ago. They duplicated my thought, they wondered what life would bring them 3,000 years ago. You see, the book of Ecclesiastes was written by Solomon 1,000 BC, brothers and sisters, that’s pre-historic, and what that tells you immediately, you see, is that nothing has changed, at least in the last 3,000 years. Man has not answered any serious question, man has not solved any serious problem in the last 3,000 years at least since this was written, because this could be written tomorrow, and not a word would change. It is a riveting argument isn’t it? It is a riveting argument, the argument of Ecclesiastes. It doesn’t leave a stone unturned and analyses ever aspect of life in a deeply practical manner and it’s conclusion is absolutely irresistible, it is water tight, by the time you get to Ch 12.

Now we said that Ecclesiastes was recording the words of Solomon. Why do we say it is recording the words of Solomon? You will be aware that it never actually tells us Solomon is the one who wrote the book. It introduces the book in a Title verse in Ch 1:1 as “The words of the preacher, the son of David, the king in Jerusalem.” It just says (in the NIV) “the teacher,” but when you look at the credentials of the author as he begins to describe himself, in his fittedness in investigating the quest in this book, frankly, there can be no doubt whatsoever that it is Solomon. V1 Tells us, that it is the “Son of David.” The critics argue that “the son of David” simply means “descendant of David,” and while Solomon might have been the most preeminent son of David, this verse really means nothing more than that Solomon is one possibility, but that any son of David would do.

But the verse goes on in v 1, – I’ve got about 8 overheads I will put up tonight. “King in Jerusalem,” it tells us he was, so now we are talking about a Royal descendant of David, not just any son, but of course, I could still refer to any king of Judah, couldn’t it? It tells us in v 12 of Ch 1, that this preacher was “the King over Israel, in Jerusalem.” That is over all twelve tribes. Well the only descendants of David that did that were Solomon and Rehoboam, until of course divisions in the kingdom in Rehoboam’s reign. We’ve narrowed the field pretty substantially down to two men, but, the critics argue again that perhaps after the northern tribes went into captivity the word “Israel” could be used just to describe the southern tribes, and perhaps Hezekiah or someone could be said to be “king over Israel,” because it was only Judah that was “Israel” at that time. Well, by the time you get to v 16 you really run out of options in deciding who this might be.

“I communed with my own heart,” says the Preacher, saying “Lo I am come to great estate and have gotten more wisdom than all they that have been before me in Jerusalem, Yea, my heart had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.” And now, we are really only talking about one person. 1 Kgs 3:12 says, that “God gave Solomon a wise and understanding heart.” Solomon of all men of Scripture, apart from the Lord Jesus Christ, is the man pre-eminently associated with the subject of “Wisdom.” There is really no doubt at this point, is there, who the writer is? The Lord Jesus Christ himself in Matt 12:42, even the Lord Jesus Christ recognised Solomon and his calibre of wisdom. This preacher is renowned for great building works and Ch 2 is full of it, and when you read 1 Kgs 9, you read the kinds of things Solomon built in his life. He built the House of Yahweh for example, that is the Temple, he built the Kings house, the palace. He built Millo, the retaining wall on the east side of Jerusalem.He built the walls of Jerusalem themselves, he built the cities of Hazor and Megiddo, of Gera, Bethhoran. He built storage cities, and all of this is in the King’s records you see.He built the house for Pharaoah’s daughter, he built the House of the Forests of Lebanon, the entrance up to the Temple, and besides a fleet of ships down a Ezion-Geber. He was a prolific builder. Ch 2:9 tells us that he was great and increased more than those who were before him in Jerusalem. 1 Kgs 3: 13 tells us that God specifically told Solomon that there should not be any among the kings like him in all his days. He would be a unique man especially blessed by God. Ecc 7:28 talks about finding one woman among a thousand, we know from 1 Kgs Ch 11 that Solomon had 1,000 women, so this statement means something in his life that it does not mean in the lives of others; 700 wives, 300 concubines, it tells us here, and perhaps the most compelling of all, in these verses of Ch 12, he taught knowledge, he wrote proverbs, he was the master of assemblies, that’s what it says of the Preacher, knowledge, proverbs, the Master of Assemblies at the dedication of the Temple, Solomon was renowned for his contribution to the wisdom literature of Israel. In 1 Kgs 4:32 it tells us that he spake 3000 Proverbs, and his songs were 1005. In Ch 8 of Kgs, he led the nation in worship as the Master of Assemblies at the dedication of the Temple.

The Preacher needed certain key credentials, didn’t he, if he was going to investigate the quest of the book of Ecclesiastes. He needed the power, the opportunities and the resources to undergo the tests that he was able to perform in his book. Solomon had all the money and power in the world, he was the king, and who could exceed the king? He needed the wisdom to be able to analyse the results. He had to have the intellect to marshal those facts to draw some sort of central conclusion. Then when you have that, you have got to be able to convey it. You have got to be able to teach others.

1 Kgs 10:24 tells us “that all the earth sought to Solomon to hear his wisdom that God had put in his heart. Solomon wrote ecclesiastes and most people today do not debate this.

Well, the question emerges as to when this book might have been written? We said 1000 BC, well Solomon really ruled from 970BC to about 930 BC and reading the book of Ecclesiastes, it would seem that the words written here were written late in Solomon’s life. It obviously took some time to complete the quest that he planned to do in this book, but in Ch 12 particularly, we have the record of the frailty of age recorded in the earlier verses of Ch 12 which would be written most appropriately by an older person. So let’s say the last 5 years or something like that of Solomon’s life we are talking approximately 935, 930 BC, the book of ecclesiastes was written.

Well the next question that emerges is If Solomon is the Author of the book of Ecclesiastes and it is so easy to identify him his as the author, why does he keep it a secret? Why doesn’t it say “The words of Solomon, the son of David, the King in Jerusalem?” Why does he bother to use this nome de plume and simply call himself “The Preacher?” The reason for that, I believe is that these words are in fact an indictment of the life of Solomon. The conclusions that Solomon draws in this book about faithfulness before God are not the conclusions that for the most part he drew in his life. Solomon had many excursions into apostasy that are not in harmony with the words we read here, in fact, I will go so far as to say that this forms somewhat of a confession of Solomon written at the end of his life which is to say, “Do the things I say but don’t do the things I do.” The message is too important to be compromised by having his name attached to it, else the reader says, “Oh physician heal thyself” and disregards the message, which in itself is a very powerful message.

Why do we call it the “Book of Ecclesiastes?” We look at the Title, before v1 you have a title which says “Ecclesiastes” or “the Preacher.” Now the word “Preacher” in the Heb is the word

qôheleth

ko-heh’-leth

Feminine of active participle from H6950; a (female) assembler (that is, lecturer); abstractly preaching (used as a ‘nom de plume’, Koheleth): – preacher.

Total KJV occurrences: 7

and this means “one who assembles things,” “one who collects.” The Greek word for “Preacher” in the Septuagint version, is the word ekklesiaston from which we get by transliteration, Ecclesiastes.
So It is merely the Greek translation of the English word “Preacher.” These are the words of the Preacher, the words of the Ecclesiasik. The book of Ecclesiastes.

Now When we say the Preacher assembles things, the Hebrew word qohehleth means to assemble things, assemble what? Assemble people? Assemble knowledge? Assemble what? Come across to Ch 12, we’ve got the meaning of the word “preacher” defined for us here, in Ecc 12:10. “The preacher, the qohehleth, sought to find out acceptable words and that which was written was upright, even words of truth. The preacher is looking for acceptable words. Here is somebody who assembles knowledge, someone who collects the fruits of experience, who arranges them as words of wisdom and then teaches those things to other people.

That leads us then to the purpose of the book of Ecclesiastes, doesn’t it? Ecc 6 to answer the burning question, “How can we attain ultimate fulfilment in this life?” HP Mansfield called Ecclesiastes “the quest for the greatest good.” That is exactly what the book of Ecclesiastes is, it is a quest, it is an experiment. Solomon sets out to go on a voyage of discovery to find out what will give him ultimate pleasure, and abiding happiness, if he simply lived life as an end in itself, what would you do that would completely satisfy you and overcome all the vagaries and uncertainties that might come upon you. Not that Solomon ignores God, if you come to Ch 1, by no means is God left out of the picture. Ch 1:13 God is mentioned. “This sore travail has God given to the sons of men to exercise therewith.” He is a believer at the beginning but he has to try and work out the conundrums of life. The best way to see the value of religion, is to try to address the important questions of life without religion, that is how Ecclesiastes begins. He tries to answer the questions of life, the unfairness, the ambiguities of life without recourse to religion, to see what an unbeliever will make of life, what eternal good an unbeliever can possibly derive. And that is where he begins. What should man do to attain ultimate fulfilment?

Here is my structure of the book of Ecclesiastes. What we are looking at tonight is just the introduction to the quest. These sections have interspersed certain exhortations. Ecclesiastes is the most difficult book to get a structure on. I have about 8 different break ups of the book of Ecclesiastes on my desk at home, and this is not one of them, it is a compilation of different things, and result of discussions with other brethren. It was difficult because the nature of the quest began to change, it became apparent that Solomon could not quickly an simply answer the questions that he had. Look at Ch 1:8 for example, “All things are full of labour. He had a questions about the amount of toil that has to go on in life for apparently meaningless reasons, “everything is full of labor,” he says, and “man is never satisfied,” he says. He goes in in v 8, “and what’s more, there’s nothing new ,” v 11 “and nothing is remembered from one generation to another.” “So these are the problems,” Solomon says, “that I have to overcome in my quest. I will try to address those problems and answer them for all mankind.”

“But,” he says, “But,” Ch 1:18, “the more I have thought about it, the more upset I got.” “If I turn my hand to labor, I will go and labor harder hand anyone, I will build everything,” Ch 2:5, he said, “I made gardens, orchards, planted trees, pools of water, I created things and gave myself to labor to an enormous degree, but when I had finished, I wasn’t satisfied, I hadn’t solved anything,” he said. “All my labor was vain.” “None of my achievements was going to gain any real recognition by those who come after me, except maybe for the immediate succeeding generation. All I have done is build a whole lot of projects and got myself one step closer to death, I die. And, I leave all of this to somebody else, and what if that somebody else is a fool? What then?” Which of course, he was. “Where have we got to?” says Solomon, “Well, I’ve expended an enormous amount of energy, and all I have done, is make the quest bigger and now there are more problems to answer than I began with. So all the issues I began with in Ch 1 and Ch 2, I’m going to roll that problem now into Ecc Ch 3 and start to answer them there.” So you see, the problem for Solomon just gets bigger, and therefore the structure changes because all these other issues have to be combined and more and more things have to be answered, because as life goes on life gets more complicated, as at the outset he refuses to address it from the Divine point of view.

But he does land upon one thing. “One thing I will tell you is this,” v 13.” In all my investigation, I have found out one thing. I can’t tell you how to solve the problems of life, but I can tell you how not to make your situation worse.” Ch 2:13 “Then I saw that as much as wisdom upsets me, wisdom does excel folly as much as light excels day. The wise man’s eyes are in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. Yes, the fool and the wise both die, but even if you can’t solve the problems of life, you can at least keep your eyes in your head.” “If your solution to the problems of life,” he says, “is to pretend that they aren’t problems at all, you might not have solved anything by listening to me, but at least you can tread water while I keep investigating,” and that is probably the only helpful thing Solomon has found in his first three chapters.

When you come to the structure, the quest is getting bigger and the structure more difficult to establish. The structure seems to evolve as the book goes along. There are nevertheless some significant features in Ecclesiastes that do help with the problem of structure. E.g. Ch 2:1, “I said in my heart, I will prove thee with mirth, v 3, I sought in my heart, v 4 I made me v 5 I made me, v 6 I made me v 7 I got me. He is doing things, you see, this is going to be the personal experience of Solomon, his enormous activity. When you come to Ch 3, it changes, he is not active in the same way. Ch 3:10, I have seen travail, Ch 3:16 and moreover I saw under the sun. V 22. Wherefore I perceived. He is not building things any more now, he is observing. He is watching what happens about him. So what began as personal experience has now changed. Personal experience is not the answer and so Solomon starts collecting more data, general observation. Ch 4:1 I returned and considered. Ch 4:4, again I considered. Ch 4:7, then I returned and I saw, Ch 4:15, I considered. He is looking around and watching what happens so he can make deductions. And then in Ch 5 we’ve got another major change. Keep thy foot when thou goest into the house of God. V 2 be not rash with thy mouth, let not thine heart be hasty. The first four chapters are all recorded in the first persons. I did this, I did that, I built this, I buil that. Ch 5 all of a sudden changers to the second person. You should do this, you should do that. So you can see what we are doing. This is the basis of the structure we put together here. Not so much the subject matter that Solomon deals with but the approach that Solomon takes to the quest.

What approach does Solomon take to the quest? Therefore, we have got personal experience followed by observation, followed by reflection, and interspersed through all those sections, we’ve got exhortations to the believers about what he finds on the way that is helpful, even though he may not have solved all the problems at various stages that he began to try and solve in Ch 1:1.

There is one other thing I should tell you about the structure before we get into the subject, Ecclesiastes does have some key words. The first key words you should be aware of are the words “thee” and “thou.” The second person whenever Solomon uses the language “thee,” “thou,” “thy,” in Ecclesiastes, he is speaking to the ecclesia. It is a direct exhortation to the ecclesia by using this language. Everywhere else, it is “them.” “They” do this, “they” out there to that. I did this I do that, but you, when I speak to you, I am talking to you the ecclesia, and I use “thee” and “thou.”

The next key word is the phrase “under the sun,” you will see it in Ch 1:3; Ch 1:9, in fact the phrase “under the sun” occurs 29 times in the book of Ecclesiastes, and I reckon you need to colour it in. There is an equivalent phrase which occurs three times and that is “under the heaven.” “Under the sun,” and “under heaven” are critical phrases in the book of Ecclesiastes which speak about life in its natural state, life without God. It is talking about what happens in the natural world, viewed from a natural point of view. The important thing is, of course, if you colour in the “thee” and “thy,” you will find that wherever Solomon uses “thee” and “thy,” it never uses “under the sun.” When Solomon speaks to the ecclesia, he never speaks to them as being “under the sun,” except for one occasion in Ch 9 when he talks about death, because of course, whether you are a believer or an unbeliever, you die, and you are a subject of vanity in that sense. There is a contrast there and as soon as you colour it in, the whole book falls open and you can see who Solomon is addressing as his audience.

He does, however, mention the sun a couple of times to believers, for example in Ch 7:11, but he doesn’t tell them “under the sun.” What he does say, Ecc 7:11, “wisdom is good with an inheritance and by it there is profit to them that see the sun. He is speaking to the brethren, and they are not “under the sun,” they “see the sun.” A very important distinction you see.

The other key word is the word “vanity.” It appears a number of times in Ch. 1:2 – 40 times in all in the book of Ecclesiastes, speaking of the transient, the unfulfilled state of the world without God. Solomon is really addressing two issues in Ecclesiastes, life with, and life without God. Now that you understand that, you can probably solve this problem. Come to Ch 8. In Ch 8 there is a contradiction, Ch 8:12-13. “Though a sinner do evil an hundred times and his days be prolonged, yet surely I know that it will be well with them which fear God, which fear before him.” V 13, “But it shall not be well with the wicked, neither shall he prolong his days which dare as a shadow because he feareth not before God.”

You see the contradiction. This sort of contradiction occurs often in the book of Ecclesiastes, how do you solve it? Well, it is not too hard, is it? V 12. In this natural life, a sinner may very well live to a very old age, but in v 13, when judgment is in the earth, sinners will go like a shadow. These two verses are written from two different points of view, and there is a different frame of reference behind each of these verses.

I will show you another one, Ch 1:18. And these are the problems of Ecclesiastes where people tend to get stuck. Ecc 1:18 Solomon is running between opposites desperately trying to solve the problems he has begun with. Ecc 1:18 says, “For in much wisdom is much grief, and he that increases knowledge increase the sorrow.” The more you know, the more unhappy you become. Ch 2:26, “For God giveth to a man that is good in his sight wisdom and knowledge, and joy.” Now you have just read in Ch 1:18 that wisdom brings grief, and knowledge brings sorrow and here we have to the man who is good in His sight, God gives wisdom and knowledge and that’s meant to produce joy. It doesn’t produce joy at all in Ch 1, so what kind of a blessing is it in Ch 2? Here is a contradiction. What’s the answer? Well, it is simple. If you don’t have God in your life in Ecc Ch 1, then the more you know about the problems of the world, the more upset you become because they will not solve themselves. Nothing is moving to any sort of solution in this world. But if your wisdom is from above in Ch 2, if the wisdom you are gaining is Biblical wisdom, well then Psalm 119:130 says “that the entrance of the word giveth light.” It is an enormous blessing to have the wisdom of God in Ch 2. So it is two different types of wisdom, one accomplishes things and answers problems, but the other brings vexation of spirit. Solomon all the way through the book is looking at life from two different points of view to establish the value of religion, and just what a man ought to do in his life.

Transcript by Fay Berry 2016