The book of Ecclesiastes might not be high on readers’ desert island list, but if it were the only book of the Bible available, a reader could stay occupied mining its mysteries for many years. Not only is it chock full of puzzling paradox, but it is deeply theological, and always rewards study with new insight into the attributes of our infinite God. Life “under the sun” provides a thorough contrast with the God who is above and beyond this world; for example, God is eternal (Eccl 3:11), creative (Eccl 11:5), sovereign (Eccl 7:14), generous (Eccl 5:19), holy (Eccl 5:2), and just (Eccl 3:17).
Reading Ecclesiastes without the counter-melody of the New Testament offers only enough information that we might dare to hope. It gives enough salt to make us thirsty, but not enough water to slake our thirst. If the Bible were a hymn book, Ecclesiastes would be “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel:”
O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free
Thine own from Satan's tyranny;
From depths of hell Thy people save,
And give them victory o'er the grave…
O come, Thou Day-Spring, come and cheer,
Our Spirits by Thine Advent here;
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
And death's dark shadows put to flight.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.
Without Christ, we are all too familiar with death’s dark shadows and the gloomy clouds of night. Aware of our need, we call out for salvation.
Yet woven throughout Ecclesiastes there is a golden thread of joy. Seven “carpe diem” passages are scattered among Qoheleth’s gloomier reflections, and escalate in urgency. They begin with some restraint: there’s nothing better than joy (2:24); you really should enjoy stuff (3:13); joy is the proper response (5:18). But Qoheleth gains force as he goes—“I commend joy” (8:15)—and eventually reframes his observation as a command: “Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart” (9:7). The final joyful interlude (11:7-10) is the first with a caveat. Be joyful, but. The “but” in this case points directly to another incommunicable attribute of God—his omniscience.
We stand, always, before the God who sees.
Unlike us, God sees all of time, and possesses exhaustive knowledge of the present. He sees behind locked doors and into silent hearts, and perceives the limitless web of cause-and-effect unleashed by every event in history. This truth is both comforting and cautionary. Because God sees the future, we can have peace over paralysis.
Because he is able to see in the darkness, we can have hope. But because our holy God sees the thoughts and intentions of the heart, we must temper our freedom with fear.
Tension in the Text
Paradoxically, even as Qoheleth urges us to have joy, he reminds us that God is watching: “Rejoice, O young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes. But know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment” (Eccl 11:9). There is a strong whiff of liberty in these words, followed immediately by a warning: God sees you. It’s as if the first half of the verse was written by a progressive theology committee and the second half by a dour Pharisee. Well, which is it? The syllogism seems fatally flawed: 1) Follow your heart and be happy. 2) A holy, omniscient judge is watching. 3) You will be judged. Yay.
This tension is deliberate; like so many other paradoxical statements in the book, it invites us to wrestle. Qoheleth’s epistemological search propels the book forward: what do we know? how do we know it? what can we learn? how can we test it? When this quest bumps into the omniscience of God, our limitations become exceedingly clear, while his transcendence shines.
Limited Humans, Limitless God
Ecclesiastes 11:6 says, “In the morning sow your seed, and at evening withhold not your hand, for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good.” Herein lies one of our primary human limitations—the inability to see the future. We see this idea pop up often in Ecclesiastes: for example, in 2:18-19, we cannot know what our heirs will do with our hard-earned money or our painstakingly constructed work. In 8:6-7, we read that “man’s trouble lies heavy on him. For he does not know what is to be, for who can tell him how it will be?” Our ignorance is maddening, and sharpened by the looming shadow of our own mortality. We know that we will die, we just don’t know when. For the secularist, the end of these reflections is either despondent fatalism or the willful pretense that nothing matters. For the theist, it is cause to marvel at the eternal omniscience of God.
Whether we are considering a big financial investment or weighing a career move, we can be frozen with indecision, what behavioral scientists call “choice overload” or “decision fatigue.” As 11:4 puts it, “He who observes the wind will not sow, and he who regards the clouds will not reap.” A farmer who is waiting for the perfect weather may never get on with planting his crops or harvesting them. What if it is too windy? What if it pours down rain? The atheist may well despair.
As many people have pointed out, saying yes to one thing usually means saying no to another. However, most of us like to keep our options open. Since we have no way of knowing where the dominos will fall, we hesitate to push one over. The very idea that we might have chosen something different gives us anxiety. (It also gives us a sub-genre of movies built around the myth of an alternate reality. See the Marvel franchise for a prime example.) What if we could go back in time and make a different decision? What would change? If our choices are arbitrary, and ultimately dependent on things outside of our control, it’s slightly terrifying.
Choice can be framed as a position of power—I get to choose, and I have the ability to make a strong, intelligent choice that I won’t later regret. As William Ernest Henley famously wrote, “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul!” But what if I choose wrong?
On the other hand, we can admit that we can’t see around the bend. We don’t know what’s coming, whether the season is favorable for planting crops or not, whether our investments will prosper or not. Rather than be paralyzed by doubt and indecision, we can simply surrender. The fact that a loving, omniscient God has a perfect, infallible plan offers great peace. Because God knows the future, we can have peace over paralysis.
Ecclesiastes 3:10-13 says,
I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God's gift to man.
Our lives, orchestrated by God, will become beautiful in time, even if we can’t imagine that future amid present wreckage. Trusting him with that redemption project is the key to enjoying life.
It is equally true that because God sees every detail of the present, we can have hope in days of darkness. Ecclesiastes 11:1-8 remarks,
Light is sweet, and it is pleasant for the eyes to see the sun. So if a person lives many years, let him rejoice in them all; but let him remember that the days of darkness will be many. All that comes is vanity.
Qoheleth strikes an optimistic note. “Light is sweet.” When life is sunny and warm, rejoice! That is a gift from our good God. But in the eventual “dark night of the soul,” there is a house of mourning that most will visit (Eccl 7:2). There are times of weeping, times of breaking down. How can we have hope?
One comfort is found in the knowledge that God sees us right here, right now, no matter what we are going through. He is not only able to foresee the future, but he has exhaustive insight into the present. He sees inside hearts and minds; he sees the elaborate, interconnected cause-and-effect of every single thought, action, and event happening simultaneously all around the world. Ecclesiastes 11:5 says: “As you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything….”
God sees the invisible, the moment a new human soul is born, the DNA combination of every parent and child. David explores this idea thoroughly in Psalm 139, writing that God knows when we sit, when we rise, when we go out, when we lie down, when we speak. He knew us before we were born and he knows our inward parts. He adds: “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,’ even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you” (Ps 139:11-12)
God sees us in the darkness. We are never alone! What’s more, as day follows night, light follows darkness. Recall Ecclesiastes 1:5, “The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises.” If you find yourself in a dark place now, remember that the sun will rise again—even if that day is far in the future.
Finally, although God sees the past, there is grace over guilt. In the Old Testament, atonement was purchased year after year by the sacrificial system set up in the Torah. But when Emmanuel came at last, God’s grace was displayed on the cross, forever changing the script. As Tim Keller used to say, the good news is that we are both fully known and fully loved. Because of Christ, we can be completely forgiven. Yet our freedom must always be tempered with fear.
The book of Hebrews juxtaposes those two ideas nicely. Hebrews 4:13-16 says:
And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
Because Jesus was tempted in every respect, he holds out infinite mercy and compassion towards us. He knows what it is to be a human being, because he put on flesh and lived among us—Emmanuel, God with us. He advocates for us unceasingly in heaven. Yes, he sees our sin, our regrettable pasts and our current struggles. But grace wins over guilt. He took the punishment we deserved so that we could approach the throne of grace with confidence.
Faith Over Fear
The word “faith” does not appear in Ecclesiastes, but the joyful interludes present a picture of it. When Qoheleth says that he “commends” joy, he is advocating a happiness rooted in faith. It’s because we entrust God with our up-and-down circumstances that we can experience a life of joy.
In the New Testament, faith is described as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb 11:1). Likewise, Paul says that “we walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor 5:7). So faith is choosing to believe God in spite of what we can see (which is usually not much).
Faith is trusting in God’s eyes to guide us when we are blindfolded. Faith is expecting our Good Shepherd to lead us right through the valley of the shadow of death and out to the other side, to green pastures and quiet waters. Faith is closely tied to hope, and finally to love. The apostle John tells us this:
By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment… There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. (I John 4:17-18)
Love casts out fear. In faith, we know that we will one day stand before God, not as convicts heading to the gallows, but as his precious, adopted children, fully known and fully loved.
In the NASB, Ecclesiastes 11:10 reads, “So remove sorrow from your heart and keep pain away from your body, because childhood and the prime of life are fleeting.” This is childlike faith, the carefree, joyful life we can have with God.
How can we navigate a world of unending choices? How can we deal with decision fatigue? How can we avoid worry and vexation, when we don’t know what’s up ahead and we can’t control tomorrow? How can we have hope in seasons of darkness that seem to drag on and on? How can we not live in shame for all of the wrong turns we’ve taken and the truly mortifying things we’ve done?
Because God couples unlimited knowledge with deep love, we can put away fear, worry, vexation and sorrow and live as carefree children before the throne of grace.
Confident Children
Perhaps you have seen the image of a young JFK, Jr. playing beneath his father’s Oval Office desk. Little John had no fear, no guilt, and no hesitation in approaching this seat of power, because the leader of the free world was his dad. We likewise can approach the King of Kings, seated on the throne of grace, with confidence. As we often sing:
No guilt in life, no fear in death
This is the power of Christ in me.
From life's first cry to final breath
Jesus commands my destiny.
No power of hell, no scheme of man
Can ever pluck me from His hand;
Till He returns or calls me home
Here in the power of Christ I'll stand.
The God Who Sees is not our adversary, but our loving Savior. To live our lives coram deo (before the face of God) is an invitation to great joy, secure in the knowledge that we cannot bungle the perfect plans of our sovereign Lord, nor can our sins ever separate us from his love.
Catherine Morgan serves as Director of Communications at Tennent, and the editor of Light & Heat. She lives with her husband Michael under the shadow of Pike's Peak, where every glance through the window is a reminder of the majesty of God. She has served in inner-city and prison ministry, and is the author of Thirty Thousand Days and Sparrow: Cultivating a Sabbatical Heart.