CRITICAL NOTES.—
Ecclesiastes 9:2. One event.] An equal chance or happening—the wisest and best having no special destiny (chap. Ecclesiastes 2:14-15, and Ecclesiastes 3:19). Chance, in this use of the word, is not opposed to Providence, but is a term employed to signify the impotence of all human effort to secure any certain result. He that sweareth, as he that feareth an oath.] The profane and frivolous swearer as well as he who respects the sacredness of an oath.
Ecclesiastes 9:6. Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy is now perished.] The author keeps before him, for his present purpose, those gloomy views of the state of the dead belonging to the earlier revelation. The souls that are detained in the prison-house of death are regarded as having but a quasi existence, in which all thought and feeling have become so inert as to be scarcely perceptible. A loftier conception of the destiny of the human spirit after death is given in chap Ecclesiastes 12:7.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Ecclesiastes 9:1-6
THE SEEMING IMPERFECTION OF GOD’S MORAL GOVERNMENT
By imperfection, as applied to God’s Moral Government, we may understand either that it has some fault or fatal defect; or else that it lacks completeness, and is still but rudimentary. It is only in this latter sense that the system of God’s dealings with men can be charged with imperfection. This view, however, is not insisted upon here. The writer sets aside, for the moment, the future world. Viewed merely from this life, the action of Providence over human affairs seems to be defective. How does such an idea arise?
I. It is suggested by the fact that the Righteous and the Wicked are Subjected to an Equal Fate. (Ecclesiastes 9:2-3.)
1. In regard to the events and experiences of life. Some appear to be the favourites of fortune. But in this distribution of the world’s goods we fail to discern, in every case, the rewards of virtue. The richest gifts the world can afford often fall to the lot of the most unworthy. The righteous are sometimes prosperous, but so are the wicked. The pure and holy share the same earthly lot with the defiled. The despisers of religion have quite as good a portion in this life as those who revere God’s holy law. The profane are not frowned upon by Providence: those who reverence God are not outwardly distinguished by any special regard. Take the whole variety of human experience—joys and sorrows, prosperity and adversity, success, disappointment, and failure, health and sickness—they come alike to all. The righteous are not distinguished by any special fate. It would seem as if the fortunes of men were assigned to them by a blind chance, or by some reckless Power.
2. In regard to the expectation from life. No man can have any ground to expect that his portion in the time that remains to him will compensate for the evils of the past. Time brings no power to adjust the unequal distribution of good and evil. “No man knoweth either love or hatred by all that is before them.” No man can assure himself of a prosperous future on the ground of his moral excellence. He does not know in advance whether God will grant him love or hatred; whether his life will be cheered by the one, or vexed and tormented by the other.
3. In regard to the necessity of death. Righteousness does not deliver from death. The quickening of the soul by the infusion of spiritual life does not preserve the body from decay, or purchase exemption from the dishonour of the grave. “The body is dead because of sin” is a stern decree which even the closest union with Christ cannot set aside. There are times when the shadow of this terrible necessity darkens and troubles lives in which immortal hope is strong. The wisest and purest must pay the debt of nature alike with the ungodly and the fool. Death to our human eye, uninformed by a better light, seems to level all moral distinctions and to destroy the hope of righteous reward.
II. This has a Morally Injurious Effect upon Some. (Verse
Ecclesiastes 9:3.) The apparent disregard of Providence to moral distinctions of character causes some to rush upon courses of evil. This may arise,
1. From the loss of faith in God’s rectitude. Those who stumble against appearances in the moral world easily resign themselves to the belief, either that God is altogether absent from this scene of man, or quite indifferent to the conduct of His creatures. A man may brood over the moral difficulties of our present state until God vanishes from his view. Even where the truth of God’s existence cannot be wholly erased from the mind, the consciousness of his rectitude is so faintly marked that men indulge in sin without restraint. Goodness can stand any test so long as it retains the conviction that “the Judge of all the earth will do right.” When this conviction is gone, what is there left to make virtue worth a sacrifice?
2. From the weakening of the motives of moral conduct. There are some who admit a Providence, and that there is a tendency discoverable in the present state of things towards perfection. This belief, however, is so feeble that it has scarcely any perceptible influence upon the conduct. Practically, they are without faith in God. They hold no belief that is effective as a restraint in the ways of wickedness. The strange folly of their lives is so manifest that it may be charged with madness. The end of this scene is as melancholy as its course was sad and unprofitable. “After that, they go to the dead.”
III. In spite of this Imperfection, Men prefer the Present Life to the seeming Extinction of Existence in the Grave. (Ecclesiastes 9:4-6.) The dead appear to be at rest. In poetic moods, men may long for the quiet of the grave. But in the calm deliberation of thought they shrink from the idea of oblivion rushing upon their souls. They prefer life with all its disadvantages to that vague uncertainty which belongs to the state of the dead.
1. Life always affords room for hope. (Ecclesiastes 9:4.) While life remains, men may always look for a better state of things. They derive some satisfaction from resigning the rectification of their fortunes into the hands of time. The sick man hopes for recovery, though hard against the warrant of appearances, and stays himself upon that hope until the end. Mankind have felt that the light of life, even when but glimmering in the socket, lends a ray to hope. This has passed into a proverb. The meanest thing that lives is better than the noblest when dead. The poorest and most forlorn living man has no cause to envy the most wealthy and renowned when he is laid in the grave.
2. The present life has the advantage of certainty. That which is remote from us in space or future time makes but a languid impression. We may contemplate the darkness that rests upon the state of man beyond the grave until the mind is overshadowed with gloom and belief dies. Even the Royal Preacher, for the moment, resigns himself to the dreariest view of the destiny of man. Life has many advantages.
(1.) There is the fact of consciousness. “The living know that they shall die.” This is but a melancholy knowledge, yet the consciousness of possessing it yields some satisfaction. Man shrinks from the very idea of his thought and feeling being quenched in eternal midnight. To all outward appearance, the dead are for ever still—stripped of all that distinguishes and adorns life. They know nothing. The consciousness of knowing the facts of life, though some of them are painful, we cherish as a pure enjoyment; and the thought of letting it go disturbs us. While we are alive, it is possible to feel and know that we are dealt with by some Superior Power; but the dead appear to have completely done with a retributive Providence.
(2.) There is the fact of possessing a recognised place among the living. While we are numbered with the inhabitants of this world we have our circle of influence, be it great or small. The most insignificant must occupy some place in the thoughts and feelings of others, and act, and be acted upon, in turns. But the presence of the dead is removed from us, they soon cease to affect us, and at length slip entirely from the remembrance of the living.
(3.) There is the conscious play of the passions and emotions. (Ecclesiastes 9:6.) Love, hatred, and envy, with the mixture of joy and pain they involve, afford evidence of conscious life. Whether for good or baneful influence, they minister to the luxury of feeling. But, to all appearance, no emotion heaves the bosom of the dead. They seem powerless to awaken any response to love, they are conscious of no affront to stir the rage of hatred, or of rivalry to kindle the fires of envy. They are deaf alike to the voice of censure and of fame.
“Can honour’s voice provoke the silent dust,
Or flattery soothe the dull cold ear of death!”
IV. This Imperfection should not be an Insurmountable Obstacle to Faith. (Ecclesiastes 9:1.) It may be admitted that, in the scheme of Providence, there is much to try our faith. There are times in the lives of most believers when the darkest doubts take possession of the soul. Witness John the Baptist in prison, who after the clearest evidence of the Messiah’s claims, was yet disturbed by doubt, and sent two of his disciples for fresh and surer evidence. (Matthew 11:2-6.) Still, though the darkness that lies over the future, and the oppression of life’s mystery, try faith severely, yet God granted to men, even in times of imperfect revelation, firm supports for faith to lean upon. “The righteous, and the wise, and their works, are in the hands of God.” Therefore they can afford calmly to wait. He will not disappoint their hope, nor quench in the long silence of the grave their yearnings for eternal life. The strong faith that we are in the hands of God can clear the barriers of the tomb, and find beyond them a sure place whereon to rest for ever. We have our truest refuge in the character of God. If we cherish the belief in His goodness; no difficulties, no evils, nor even the shadow of death, can affright us.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Ecclesiastes 9:1. The hand of God is not the symbol of mere power, but of power subdued and controlled by infinite wisdom and goodness. It is a hand that will gather the righteous to the bosom of their Father. When God holds us by His right hand, we may well cherish the blessed confidence that he will “afterwards receive us to glory.” (Psalms 73:24.)
Not only the works of the righteous, but themselves, are in the hands of God. Much of their work may perish, as being valueless and not able to endure the final test, but they themselves shall abide for ever.
The solemn committal of the spirit into the hands of God is the last pious duty alive.
The fact that we are in the hands of God, as controlled by the Supreme Power, is one thing, but the felt conviction of it is another. When we awake to the consciousness that we have a living Director, we can pass through the most troubled darkness without fear.
Though His Providence does present a mystery to our limited faculties, yet He is not forgetful of those who fear Him. They and their works are neither unknown, nor unregarded: and He will one day make it fully manifest that His whole procedure has perfectly accorded with His character [Wardlaw].
They are kept safe in the hand of God; and that hand which now keepeth them, will at last reach forth a glorious reward unto them [Jermin].
The highest moral excellence cannot assure its possessor of human regard and love. Even the flower of humanity was constrained to say, “They hated me without a cause.”
Ecclesiastes 9:2. The true moral worth of men must not be estimated by the light of their outward fate.
Righteousness can deliver no one from the necessity of enduring the sad variety of human experience.
This life is not the last act in the great drama of human history. It is not here and now that men are receiving the due reward of their deeds. After that curtain shall have fallen that is destined to cover up and close the latest of the shifting scenes of time, it will rise once more to bring into view a vaster, grander, and more awful stage than time ever displayed [Buchanan].
Ecclesiastes 9:3. Those stern outward conditions in which all men are bound, irrespective of character, furnish a proof of some present disorder, and raise in pious souls the expectation of Divine interference to restore to goodness true place and reward.
A wise man does not hesitate to recognise obvious evils. He feels the oppression of life’s strange mystery, as the same has been felt by such saints as Job and Asaph. He is not driven to melancholy and despair, for he is sustained by a better hope. He is not driven to mad rebellion, for he fears God.
The moral mystery of our present life is a trial which God has appointed for man. If we endure it wisely and well, He rewards our faith with plentiful consolation, giving us peace in the depths of our soul. If we fail herein, we are either driven to despair or to the wildest courses of sin.
The heart distributes the power of sin within us, by which it corrupts the life and fills the world with evils.
The moral madness of sinners shows itself in foolish and impossible thoughts of God and His ways, and in foolish contrivances for their own deliverance.
Every act of sin, being an act of rebellion against the infinite God, is an act of madness; of infatuated, and impotent, and self-destroying frenzy. All worldliness of spirit, being a preference in affection and pursuit of temporal to eternal things, is madness; far beyond the derangement of the maniac who throws away gold for stones, and prefers straw to pearls and jewels [Wardlaw].
Repining against God and his Providence, because they cannot longer enjoy their sinful pleasures, they carry their sins with them to the very gates of death [Nisbet].
Ecclesiastes 9:4. While life remains, for the sinner there is the hope of amendment and restoration—for the exiles of fortunes, the hope of returning. To living man there is no gloom so oppressive but that some ray of hope may struggle through.
Life suggests the idea of liberty, of some large space to move and work in. While it is continued, the range of possibilities for us is wide. We think of death as putting an arrest upon our liberty—in some sense a prison for man.
The meanest living man possesses a superiority over the mightiest dead, in having life itself, and power, and consciousness, and feeling, and enjoyment; which with regard to the dead, viewed in their relation to this world, are all at an end; and equally at an end, whatever their power and eminence while they lived [Wardlaw].
The superior value and importance of life may be regarded either as the justification of a course of self-indulgence and pleasurable sin, or as a motive for diligence in that work which can only be done in this world. There is a mean and also a noble view of man’s existence; and as we take one or the other, so the significance of this proverb may be determined.
Ecclesiastes 9:5. The consciousness of existence is a necessary truth—the surest and most intimate knowledge we possess. This one fact gives importance and value to all others.
Existence, though it implies the knowledge of the saddest facts, is yet a positive good when compared with the total loss of conscious being.
To the eye of sense the dead seem bereft of all thought, feeling, and motion. There are appearances enough—for those who are under the tyranny of them—to justify the darkest scepticism and boldest defiance of future retribution.
As far as the opportunities, duties, and experiences of this life are concerned, the dead are completely severed from us. Even the poetical existence which memory gives them at length fades away.
Limited as is the view here given of the change death makes in the condition of those who have lived and died without God—for it is of them, as the context plainly implies, that Solomon is speaking—it is sufficiently humbling and awful. From the moment they die, their connection with this world is at an end. This world was their all, and they have lost it. They know nothing of it now. Its rewards cannot reach them in the grave. Their very name and memory soon pass away out of the world altogether [Buchanan].
Ecclesiastes 9:6. They are utterly impotent; they have no power whatever remaining, either to profit or to hurt, and are neither courted for the one, nor feared for the other. Their power to benefit and to injure is alike gone. The objects of their love can derive from it no advantage, nor can the victims of their hatred and envy sustain from them any damage. While they lived, their favour might be courted, and its effects desired; their displeasure deprecated, their hatred and envy dreaded, and the consequences of them anxiously shunned. But their mere names have no charm, either of blessing or of curse. The ashes of the grave can do neither evil nor good.… Their portion of enjoyment is gone for ever. Death is not a temporary absence, but an eternal adieu [Wardlaw].
How little have we to fear from the rage of human passions which, so far as they can affect us, are totally extinguished in the grave.
Man is destined to a continuity of existence, but in his progress through it, as one door is opened before him, another closes behind. Whatever awaits man in the future world, the severance from this world is most complete.
These gloomy views of the state of the dead are modified by the later Revelation—their sadness relieved by Christian hope; yet death, in some sense, does reign over all until the resurrection. When “this mortal puts on immortality,” only then is the victory of man over the grave complete.