We often hear of the power of stories, but sometimes it is good to see a specific example of how stories can help us make sense of what could be difficult to grasp in the abstract. They can also stimulate our imagination through their style, play on words, humor, cleverness, ambiguity, etc.

For this reason, I have often wondered what it would be like to transform Qohelet into a narrative. If you think that such a task is impossible or even ludicrous, the Rabbis didn’t think so. Let me show you an example. In chapter 3 Qohelet starts his “catalogue of times” and in verse 6 he says:

[a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away (ESV)]

Now, how would you turn that into a story or an anecdote?

First of all, one may ask what it means that there is a time to lose and cast away. Michael Fox says that Qohelet “begins with this postulate that there is a time for everything and applies this rule not only to clearly useful actions, but even to the ones that may seem useless and even deleterious (Fox, A Time to Tear Down, p. 208). He gives two possible examples of this: Qoh. Rabbah v. 6b and the disappearance of the asses of Saul’s father in 1 Samuel 9:3. Many may be familiar with Saul’s story, but most, including me, would not have a clue what Midrash Qohelet Rabbah has to say about it.
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One of the crucial considerations when reading Qohelet is whether or not one thinks that the frame narrator is fundamentally criticizing Qohelet and rejecting his arguments. If this is true, then many would say that the bulk of Qohelet should be understood as “life under the sun” and that we, as Christians, should have a heavenly (i. e. above the sun) perspective of life. Ecclesiastes then, for the most part, becomes a how-not-to book. This way, we fail to do what Murphy says we should do, that is, allow for tensions that would have existed within the author himself, and attempt to explain the book as it stands (Murphy, Tree of Life, 52).

However, reading Ecclesiastes as one piece doesn’t seem to be only a matter of allowing for the tensions within the book but also allowing the book to interpret itself. Sometimes this will yield surprising and insightful results.

This can be seen in Peter Enns’ article about our understanding of the phrase (usually rendered as “the whole duty of man”, NIV, ESV and KJV) in 12:13. My intention is not to reproduce the article here but to give you a taste of the main contours of his argument and offer some personal reflections. Read more »

In any discussion of Qohelet, one needs to quickly decide how the epilogue is to be understood because, in a way, this will inevitably drive the interpretation of the entire book. Because of the seemingly unorthodox character of Qohelet, many commentators have proposed the recognition of glosses that either contradict or soften his “unorthodoxy.” Murphy says that

the tendency today, however, is to recognize such a procedure [contradicting and sugar-coating glosses] as arbitrary; the “contradiction” may well lie in the interpreter’s understanding of the text, rather than with Qoheleth. Hence it seems better to take the book as all of one piece, despite the difficulties. This allows for tensions that would have existed within the author himself, and it attempts to explain the book as it stands (52).

I recently heard a preacher say that the end of Ecclesiastes is really all that matters. The implication is that most of the book contains little that will be of ultimate value. I have become quite intrigued by the difficulty that most of us have in reading Qohelet. But I have to admit that part of the problem is the interpretation of the book and that this interpretation, as Murphy says, “began with the editing of the book itself” (59). Read more »

I am finding Roland to be a quite thought-provoking writer. This has been especially true of his chapter on Job. He says that “while the Book of Job can comfortably be classified within wisdom literature, it remains wisdom of an unusual kind. Scholars often speak of a crisis of wisdom in connection with Job and Ecclesiastes” (34). I think that sort of captures part of what makes the book of Job so fascinating. As Roland said, “the entire work is a sophisticated literary achievement” (35).

I especially liked his provocative discussion on the prologue, so I would like to focus this post on it. I had studied about the satan (adversary) before and it was apparent to me that our view of “Satan” today tends to influence our understanding of the way the satan figure is used in the OT. For one thing, it is not clear that the same being is in view every time the satan is mentioned. Quite intriguing is the role of the satan in the prologue of Job. It raises several questions to which I think most Christians tend to give simplistic answers. Roland says “from a perverse point of view, one might even say that Satan is concerned about God’s true glory and that God not be deceived by these humans whom Satan knows so well!” (36) Read more »

In chapter 2 “Proverbs – The Wisdom of Words,” Roland talks about the nature of the book of Proverbs and that “the true subtlety of the book is seldom recognized in its popular usage. A moral code undergirds it, but the real intent is to train a person, to form character, to show what life is really like and how best to cope with it” (15). One of the main things that Proverbs tries to do is persuade the reader. He looks at the first division, chapters 1-9, and considers verses 1:1-6 its hermeneutical key. Verse 1:7 is the motto of the book (with parallels in 9:10 and 31:30) and he quotes von Rad who said that this verse “contains in a nutshell the whole Israelite theory of knowledge” (16). I thought this was a very insightful way of understanding verse 7. I heard N. T. Wright once talk about being intrigued by the idea of love as a way of knowing. Here von Rad says that the fear of Yahweh is Israel’s epistemological center. I wonder how far we can take that idea. Read more »

The Tree of Life: An Examination of Biblical Wisdom Literature was written by Roland Murphy and seems to be highly recommended (with your usual caveats) as an introduction to wisdom literature. Part of the reason I wanted to read this book was because Murphy also covers Ben Sira and Wisdom of Solomon, and I wanted to sink my teeth into these books (I plan to read them when I get to chapters 5 and 6). Read more »