The Superabundance of Impermanence
Ecclesiastes 1:1-11, 8:14-9:10
Our readings come from the Wisdom tradition of the Hebrew Bible. In the Hebrew bible three books are considered wisdom literature,1 Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes. There are also psalms that celebrate wisdom, such as Psalm 1.
We know of many other collections of Jewish wisdom sayings. In fact, in Catholic and Orthodox Christian traditions some of those books are canonical and are included in their bibles—Sirach (also known as Ecclesiasticus or Ben Sira) and the Wisdom of Solomon. Still others have been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls.2
Wisdom literature was very popular in the ancient world. Significant parallels to the Jewish Wisdom Texts are found throughout the ancient near east especially in very old Egyptian sources. Egypt’s reputation for wisdom is well attested as in the scene where God grants Solomon’s request for wisdom (1 Kings 4:29-30):
“God gave Solomon very great wisdom, discernment, and breadth of understanding as vast as the sand on the seashore, so that Solomon’s wisdom surpassed the wisdom of all the people of the east, and all the wisdom of Egypt.”
The parallels between one ancient Egyptian text—Amenemope—and the biblical book of Proverbs is so striking that many scholars are convinced the authors of Proverbs used Amenemope as a source.3
Many of the texts associated with the “wisdom tradition” in the ancient near east are set in the context of the royal court. The teacher of wisdom is often portrayed as a counselor to the king. Even in the biblical tradition, a prevalent tradition associates “wisdom” with the royal court, especially with King Solomon. So, for example, the Book of Proverbs is traditionally attributed to Solomon and the character of the “teacher” in Ecclesiastes (1:12) is portrayed as “king over Israel in Jerusalem.” There are many references to a seemingly specific class of people—colloquially “wiseones” or “sages.” The writers of the introduction to the book of Proverbs identify the authors of the sayings collected in Proverbs as “sages, a social class that served as counselors, bureaucrats, and teachers during the Divided Kingdom and as preservers of tradition in the later periods.”4
Wisdom should not be confined to the academy or the royal court. Many of the Proverbs originated within the context of families as the instructions taught by parents or elders to child. So Proverbs 1:8-9: “Hear, my child, your father’s instruction, and do not reject your mother’s teaching; for they are a fair garland for your head, and pendants for your neck.”5
Wisdom sayings are very this-worldly; the sayings seek to express almost timeless truths about the way things are, about what life is like. Lessons are learned by looking around at the way the world works, determining cause and effect. Of particular concern are human relationships, between the rich and the poor, between men and women.
Look at nature to understand how the world works. So, for example, Proverbs 6:6 enjoins, “Go to the ant…consider its ways, and be wise. Without having any chief or officer or ruler [or senior pastor], it prepares its food in summer, and gathers its sustenance in harvest.”
When College students—who are typically not morning people—ask me if the Bible is true, I point them to Proverbs 27:14: “Whoever blesses a neighbor with a loud voice, rising early in the morning, will be counted as cursing.” (I never did like the hymn “Morning has Broken”). They experientially know that passage is true.
And while many of the wisdom sayings may seem to us as very mundane, Proverbs as a whole is framed theologically. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Proverbs 1:7a). This notion of “fear of the LORD” introduces us to the collection of proverbs and is repeated frequently throughout the book.6 “Fear of the LORD” characterizes the wise person’s relationship with God and in fact is source of a person’s wisdom (see Proverbs 2:6-11).
The rhetoric and claims of authority of the wisdom writers is different from other books of the Bible. While wisdom is described as a gift from God, wisdom is not communicated through revelatory experiences of God such as the Moses is said to have experienced at the burning bush or on Mount Sinai; nor are there bold booming assertions of the prophets “Thus saith the Lord.” Instead, wisdom is derived from observing the natural phenomena, by looking at the world around us, figuring out how things work. By canonizing the wisdom texts, the Early Jewish Communities and the later Christian Communities validate ancient scientific approaches and academic inquiry—the nascent disciplines that would become philosophy, political science, economics, and sociology. The modern conflicts that some churches create between faith and science, religion and academics, are just that, modern creations of those churches.
Of course, academics is not the same as wisdom. I work at a college where there are a lot of highly educated people and some of the brightest students in the world. We have experts in a wide range of fields. Professors are very knowledgeable about their disciplines. But being knowledgeable does not make one wise.
As Thomas à Kempis teaches us: “Indeed it is not learning that makes a [person] holy and just, but a virtuous life makes [one] pleasing to God. I would rather feel contrition than know how to define it. For what would it profit us to know the whole Bible by heart and the principles of all the philosophers if we live without grace and the love of God?”7
Indeed, being knowledgeable does not make us wise.
So how does observing nature lead to divine wisdom? Proverbs bridges this gap by grounding itself in a creation theology—that is to say, the natural world is the creation of God; because God created the world, the world is governed by the wisdom of the creator. So in Proverbs 8:22-36, the personified Wisdom is God’s companion and co-worker in creating the world.
Just as the prophets would ground God’s sovereignty over the political world in the act of creation, Proverbs similarly grounds wisdom’s governance over the natural world of everyday life in creation.
In contrast to the prophets, however, who were addressing specific historical political situations–the threat of invasion from Assyria, coming to terms with living in exile in Babylon, the anticipation of redemption by the military success of King Cyrus of Persia—Proverbs describes wisdom’s ordering of everyday events and interpersonal relationships articulating seemingly timeless truths.
In Proverbs, the cosmos is a very orderly place with easily discernible causes and effects. In this orderly world, the wise and the diligent prosper while the foolish and lazy fail. Many of the individual proverbs exemplify this principle—“A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich” (Prov 10:4). According to Bruce Springsteen, it is true! .“Quitters never win and winners never quit…and all the rest of that [stuff].”8 That is all good advice. In a sense this principle is similar to that which we see in the Pentateuch and in the Deuteronomistic History of rewards and punishments—the LORD rewards those who keep the commandments and punish those who break them. So in Proverbs, “The fear of the LORD prolongs life, but the years of the wicked will be short” (Prov 10:27).
But we also know that things don’t always work that way.
“‘Vanity of Vanities’ says the Teacher, “vanity of vanities! All is vanity” (Ecclesiastes 1:2; note the inclusio with 12:8, which ends the body of the book).9 The Hebrew word translated as “vanity” is lbh, which literally means “vapor, or breath.” So when you hear “vanity,” don’t think about Carly Simon, think emptiness, vapor. All that we do is “in vain.” Utter futility. “There is nothing new under the sun.” “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done.” We can’t make a difference. “It is chasing after wind.” Nothing in this world, nothing that we do is ultimately permanent. All is impermanence.10
Quoting Ecclesiastes: “What do people gain from all the toil at which they toil under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and sun goes down, and hurries to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south, and goes around to the north; round and round goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns. All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they continue to flow. All things are wearisome; more than one can express” (Ecclesiastes 1:3-8a).
It is disturbing to the Teacher that the world is not as orderly and just as Proverbs would make it out to be.
“There is a vanity that takes place on earth, that there are righteous people who are treated according to the conduct of the wicked, and there are wicked people who are treated according to the conduct of the righteous. I said that this also is vanity.” (Ecclesiastes 8:14).
Even more troubling to the Teacher is that all will die—righteous and the hardworking along with the wicked.
“Everything that confronts them is vanity, since the same fate comes to all, to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil, to the clean and the unclean, to those who sacrifice and those who do not sacrifice. As are the good, so are the sinners; those who swear are like those who shun the oath. This is an evil in all that happens under the sun, that the same fate comes to everyone.” (Ecclesiastes 9:1b-3a).
We will all die. Good people suffer and die young. Wicked people prosper. It doesn’t matter whether we eat right, exercise. It doesn’t matter if we get all A’s or whether we graduate from college. We will all die. Despite all our efforts and intentions, the Teacher recognizes that we are not ultimately in control of our lives. As John Lennon sang, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”11
The Teacher does not defend against such disturbing thoughts—such injustice—by appealing to some otherworldly notion of life after death, resurrection or heaven. The Teacher truly is agnostic about such things: “the fate of humans is the same; as one dies, so dies the other….All go to one place; all are from dust, and to dust we shall return” (Ecclesiastes 3:19-20).
Life is a terminal condition. We are “only immortal for a limited time.”12
So what does the Teacher teach us? “Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has long ago approved what you do. Let your garments always be white; do not let oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the [partner] whom you love, all the days of your vain life that are given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do with might; for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Shē’ōl to which you are going.” (Ecclesiastes 9:7-10).
An abundance of divine gifts are to be found in the simple pleasures of eating, drinking, spending time with friends and loved ones, in working. “All blessings are mine and ten thousand beside”13 if I am open to sensing them. The Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel writes, “Just as clairvoyants may see the future, the religious [person] comes to sense the present moment. And this is an extreme achievement. For the present is the presence of God. Things have a past and a future, but only God is pure presence.”14
We may enjoy fond memories, we may imagine glorious futures—but living only happens in the present. The superabundance of life is only in the fleeting present.
So “go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has long ago approved what you do. Enjoy life with [those] whom you love.”
This piece formed the basis for a sermon preached at the Grinnell United Church of Christ, Congregational on July 28, 2013 (http://meetgrinnellucc.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/H-Rietz-sermon-July-28th.pdf).
Notes
1. For discussion of the genre of Wisdom literature, see John Collins who suggests that wisdom is a “macro-genre, in the sense that it holds together a cluster of related forms” and concludes that “wisdom is most satisfactorily defined as instructional material” (John Collins, “Wisdom Reconsidered in Light of the Scrolls,” Dead Sea Discoveries 4 [1997] 266, 281).
2. See, for example, John Kampen, Wisdom Literature; Eerdmans Commentaries on the Dead Sea Scrolls (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2011) and Daniel Harrington, Wisdom Texts from Qumran; Literature of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Routledge, 1996).
3. Compare Proverbs 22:17-24:22. For an accessible English translation, see Victor H. Matthews and Don C. Benjamin, Old Testament Parallels: Laws and Stories from the Ancient Near East, New Revised and Expanded Third Edition (Paulist Press, 2007). For a scholarly edition, see Vincent Pierre-Michel Laisney, L’Enseignement d’Amenemope, Studia Pohl 16 (Pontifical Biblical Institute, 2007).
4. Claudia V. Camp and Carole R. Fontaine, “Proverbs: Introduction”, in The HarperCollins Study Bible, edited by Wayne A. Meeks, et al. ()HarperCollins, 1993), p. 938.
5. In the ancient world three settings and social figures are discernible: 1) family and tribe: parents and elders; 2) government scribes; 3) interpreters of the Torah (Norman K. Gottwald, The Hebrew Bible: A Socio-Literary Introduction (Fortress Press, 2002, p. 569).
6. See 9:10, 15:33, 31:30).
7. Thomas à Kempis, “The Imitation of Christ,” book 1, chapter 1 (for an accessible translation, see http://www.ccel.org/ccel/kempis/imitation.all.html).
8. Bruce Springsteen, “My Best was Never Good Enough,” The Ghost of Tom Joad (1995).
9. Ecclesiastes 12:13b-end is not original to the book.
10. Note the parallels to the Buddhist notion of anicca.
11. John Lennon, “Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy),” Double Fantasy (1980).
12. Neil Peart of Rush, “Dreamline,” Roll the Bones (1991).
13. Thomas Chisholm, “Great is Thy Faithfulness” (1923).
14. Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism, (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1955), p. 142.
