CRITICAL NOTES.—
Ecclesiastes 8:9. There is a time when one man ruleth over another to his own hurt.] This was the definite direction of the Preacher’s observations. He tried to discover what were the prevailing disorders of the time, and he beheld a whole epoch filled with examples of tyranny.
Ecclesiastes 8:10. The place of the holy.] Some understand the place of judgment. Others, the place of honourable burial, where men came and went in funeral procession. But it is more in accordance with the sense of the passage to understand it of the sanctuary, or the community of the righteous. These wicked men concealed their true character beneath the outward forms and proprieties of religion.
Ecclesiastes 8:12. And his days be prolonged]—i.e., in sinning.
Ecclesiastes 8:13. Neither shall he prolong his days.] Vice being unfavourable to long life; though, as in Ecclesiastes 8:12, the time spent in sin, undisturbed by any seeming interference of Providence, may be considerable.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Ecclesiastes 8:9-13
THE DELAY OF DIVINE JUSTICE
The Royal Preacher often insists upon the truth that God rules over man with an inflexible justice. Yet that justice does not act swiftly, but seems, for a time, to be suspended. We have here three facts regarding this delay of the Divine Justice.
I. That it Continues, though the Worst Forms of Iniquity Prevail. In every age there are prevailing sins whose enormity is so great that they may be said to provoke the Divine Justice. They cry to heaven for vengeance and retribution, yet that cry seems to be unheeded. Some of these sins are mentioned here.
1. Tyranny and oppression. (Ecclesiastes 8:9.) Man is enslaved to man. Those who have the power rule with a rod of iron, oppressing the poor and the defenceless. Cruelty, in some form, exists under every condition of society. The wrongs that men inflict upon one another are amongst the most terrible forms of human suffering. The permission of such evils in the moral government of God is a source of perplexity. It would seem as if heaven heeded not the groanings of the innocent, yet unavenged.
2. Hypocrisy. (Ecclesiastes 8:10.) These tyrants disguised their wickedness under the cloak of religion. They went continually to the “place of the holy”—the Sanctuary of God—the assembly of the righteous. They dared to insult God in His own house. And yet this hypocrisy was suffered to continue, justice not interfering to cast forth these audacious men from the place which they had profaned. And not only during life, but even in death itself, did men attempt to hide these hollow pretences beneath the outward signs of reverence due to real worth. These wicked men were “buried” with all the pomp and circumstance of woe. Yet, with all the advantage of these external appearances, carried on even to the grave, they failed to deceive either God or man. “They were forgotten in the city where they had so done.” Men soon recovered from any infatuation which their outward splendour might have produced. No deeds of love and kindness made them dear to memory, and the world soon consented to let their names die. The wickedness of those men was so manifest that they were hypocrites without deceiving. Posterity covered them with shame and disgrace.
II. That it Continues, though Some thereby are Emboldened to Sin. (Ecclesiastes 8:11.) In the moral government of God, as it is carried on in the present world, punishment does not fall upon the sinner speedily. Even that penalty with which some sins are visited in this life is often long delayed. It would seem as if sin was not interfered with—that there are in the world no sufficient tokens that the Divine Justice is likely to be exact and rigorous. This long-suffering of God, the design of which is to lead men to penitence, is perverted by some into a privilege to sin. The reason of this perversion is not hard to find.
1. There is a feeling that God is indifferent to human conduct. While justice delays, and the course of life seems to run smoothly, the sinner begins to imagine that the moral government of God is, after all, but an empty phrase. The weakness of our moral nature will take advantage of the most slender excuses to continue in a course of sin. Even good men are staggered by the delay of Divine justice to inflict penalty for the crying sins of mankind. In this painful perplexity, they can only find relief in faith, and present comfort in the patience of hope. The long-suffering of God is their salvation (2 Peter 3:15); but with the sinner, it only serves to wear down all moral distinctions, and to blunt the feeling of retribution.
2. There is the excitement of success. The schemes of those “wicked” men had prospered. They gained the object of their ambition. There is a powerful excitement in success. The world worships it, and few men have strength enough to withstand the infatuation. In the intoxication of success, the distinct colours of good and evil fade. Men become the slaves of the unreal. They heed not the solemn and sober facts of human destiny.
III. That it will have an End in Just Retribution. (Ecclesiastes 8:12-13.) The penalty which God’s law attaches to sin is not an empty threat, a vain terror held over the human race. A just retribution will come to all at last.
“The mill of God grinds slowly,
But it grinds exceedingly small.”
There will be just retribution.
1. For the sinner. The most successful course of sin will have an end, when reckoning will have to be made with Divine justice. “It shall not be well with the wicked.” He cannot have any final success. Sin must lead to unhappiness. God will banish it from His sight, and all what is banished from Him is bereft of peace and joy.
2. For the righteous. “It shall be well with them that fear God, which fear before Him.” To “fear God” is the O.T. expression for the state and character of piety. He who is righteous before God does not pervert His kindness, in delaying to inflict the penalties of sin, into license for iniquity. Divine justice may be long delayed; in the meantime, the foulest sins grow rank; and even the good have painful moments of darkness, when faith is difficult; still, in the end, it must be well with the righteous, for God will honour and reward all who have meekly toiled that they might be partakers of the Divine nature.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Ecclesiastes 8:9. He who studies the moral condition of man in the world will find many stumbling blocks to his faith.
Power is a dangerous possession unless it is regulated by goodness.
Of this fact the system of slavery is still a conspicuous and terrible proof. That system involves, indeed, many and most formidable evils to its unhappy victims; and yet, enormous and intolerable as these evils are, they are exceeded by those which the system entails upon the men by whom it is administered and maintained. They, most emphatically, rule over others to their own hurt. Their moral sense is blunted, and all the better feelings of their nature depraved by the sights which the system compels them to witness, and by the deeds which it requires, or at least tempts them to do [Buchanan].
As the Lord doth for wise ends permit wicked men to come to authority over others in the world, so hath He the time when they shall come to it fixed, and how long they shall have it. For it is clear by the consequence of this ruling, to the person who hath it, that he speaks of wicked men, and the word time signifies a set and fixed season, wherein “one man rules over another” [Nisbet].
Ecclesiastes 8:10. Death often solves the perplexities of the distressed. The oppressors of mankind are made to yield to the resistless stroke of fate, and so they “cease from troubling.”
There is a form of hypocrisy which springs from ignorance. Men deceive themselves. But there is an hypocrisy which hides great depravity of soul beneath the appearance of goodness.
“I saw the wicked who had come and gone from the place of the holy”—who had attended the sanctuary, joined in the worship of God, and cloaked their unrighteousness and oppression under the garb of external piety—who had “come and gone,” continuing their hypocritical career in safety, no marks of Divine vengeance visiting them for their awful profanation and odious dissembling. I saw them buried,—the victims of mortality equally with others, having no power more than they in the day of death. I saw them buried, carried in affecting humiliation and impotence, to “the house appointed for all living.” … They had sought after, and expected perpetual fame; but men had no pleasure in remembering them; when out of sight, they were out of mind; their name and memory rotted with their carcases in the dust [Wardlaw].
It has often happened that when the grave has closed upon great oppressors, that men have hasted to abolish their laws, and to sweep away all traces of their ambition and pride. In the better state of things which has succeeded, men have been glad to forget the tyrant’s name.
“This also is vanity;” this, to make the inward substance of virtue a shadow of outward beauty. This, to have an opinion of holiness, and to be praised for it, but not to deserve it. This, to be flattered or feared being alive, to be hated being dead. This, being present to be remembered, being absent to be forgotten. This, to be Church Christians, the guests of hell in life and conversation. This, for a while to rule in pride and oppression, and for ever to be slaves to misery and torments [Jermin].
Ecclesiastes 8:11. Whatever lies remote from us, in time, fails to affect the mind, or at best affects it but languidly. The delay of the inflictions of Divine justice thus becomes an occasion of indulging in a false security.
That which men wish to be true, they are naturally prone to believe. They are fond of thinking that sin will not expose them to such irremediable vengeance as the Bible threatens. They are willing to be persuaded of this; and they flatter themselves into the persuasion by the wiles of a thousand sophistries. At first, it may be, they commit sin with a timid heart and a trembling hand. They hesitate long. But at length, though with irresolute tremor, it is done. No harm comes to them. No indications of the anger of heaven follow the deed. They feel themselves safe. And having tasted of the sin, it is sweet; and they desire it again [Wardlaw].
It is the proper mark of an unregenerate man, void of saving knowledge and grace, to have his heart fully set in him, without reluctancy or remorse, to do evil. The regenerate have another principle within them, opposing their sinful motions (Galatians 5:17), checking and wounding them, and bringing them to remorse for sin (Romans 7:24) [Nisbet].
Ecclesiastes 8:12. Sin becomes easier the more it is indulged. Fixed and intensified by the power of habit, it comes at length to be almost as strong as fate.
The sinner, in the long security which is permitted to him, may even seem to have Providence on his side.
The frequent success of the ungodly, and their apparent immunity from evil, may be a sore perplexity to the weak who suffer. Yet, if these look to the end, they will see that the good alone triumph.
There are great fundamental truths—moral axioms, which cannot be set aside by any difficulties of speculation. In the midst of mystery and apparent confusion they shine out clearly.
It is not a bare conjecture, or mere probability, that the godly have of their future happiness, but it is a certainty, and a firm persuasion wrought in their hearts by the Spirit of God, making them to rest confidently upon His faithful word, and helping them to believe by giving them the first-fruits thereof in hand [Nisbet].
Ecclesiastes 8:13. “But it shall not be well with the wicked.” Not while he lives, for even when he prospers it is ill with him: the curse of heaven is upon his tabernacle, and it secretly mingles itself with all his enjoyments. Not when he dies, for he has then nothing before him but “a fearful looking for of judgment.” Not when he appears before the Judgment Seat, for “the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous” [Wardlaw].
God’s judgments come suddenly. Men who have not faith see no signs of their approach. The prosperity and security of the wicked are but that strange and unnatural calm before a storm.
The triumphing of the wicked, at best, is but short. Their prosperity has in it no element of solid worth—nothing that will abide through the untried scenes and changes which await them. Their glory passes away as a shadow, completely dispersed by the light of eternity.
When God enters into judgment with the sinner, the vain show of his worldly life disappears.