And moreover I saw under the sun, that in the place of judgment, wickedness was there; and in the place of righteousness, wickedness was there.
Solomon looks at the one place on earth built to set wrong right — the courtroom — and finds wrong sitting on the bench. What can anyone do with that discovery? Seeing the evil gives no power to stop it.
This corruption was not a problem of distant nations. It sat among the people God had chosen and taught. Commentators note that Christian countries have carried the same thing on.
What a vivid picture God's revelation drew even then! Only the first man stands before us — not, as now, the Second man, Christ risen and glorified. The world was not so old in wickedness when the wise king reigned and preached; and he was not speaking only about the pagan nations, but about God's own favoured people too. Sadly, Christendom has only added more cunning to its ungodliness and unrighteousness, in everyone who claims the name of Christ but is not born anew.
From this verse on, the argument turns. The Preacher does not explain the disorder away. He leaves it standing until God settles it.
From verse 16 the Preacher shows that God's judgment is the key to all the present confusion. So it is for man, until the Son of God came and brought in grace and truth, which gives the light of God fully.
Wisdom lifts a man's sight without lifting his strength.
When he turns to study what men do, he learns the evils done under the sun: the crying injustice, the lawlessness, the frauds, and the many acts of oppression practised among men. He sees them all, and finds he has no power to stop them. Only another arm can restrain the lawless. Only another mind can find the remedy — no mind among Adam's fallen descendants. The day of the Son of man must dawn before One is found on earth able to put things straight. How often justice is now perverted! The righteous suffer, and the guilty go free.
The same writer traces the trap back to the serpent's first offer.
To know good and evil was the bait the serpent held out — to be just like God. The wise man sees the evil clearly, knows what ought to be, but learns he cannot do it.
One trial matched this verse exactly. The judge declared the prisoner innocent, then handed Him over to be crucified.
So the very one who should have carried out justice in the earth delivers up Christ to be crucified, though he knew Him to be innocent. He said, "Take Him yourselves and crucify Him, for I find no fault in Him." So that word is fulfilled: "in the place of justice, even there was wickedness, and in the place of righteousness, even there was wickedness." What comes then? The solemn sentence falls — the world is condemned: "Now is the judgment of this world." The death of Christ closed the scene. Then the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The very thing that brought out the judgment revealed a heavenly salvation, which the veil had hidden before.
Kelly describes the same courtroom, and names what was missing on both sides of the room:
It was the place of justice, but wickedness was there. And there was not one spark of conscience in the judge, any more than in the accusers, or in the crowd, now completely swept along.
The Preacher reaches the right conclusion: God will judge. But he works it out for himself instead of hearing it from God, and he cannot hold on to the light.
The thought of judgment expressed in verse 15 is now taken up more fully. It seems as if a ray of light now breaks in. Light must come from the side of God's judgment. Then the Preacher said in his heart, "God shall judge the righteous and the wicked." He draws the conclusion that the present injustice must be dealt with by God. But here he stops short. He may surmise, but he certainly does not know. Instead of moving forward in his search, he comes back, as a natural man does, to his old cry that everything is vanity.
- The place. The wrong sits in the seat of justice, not just on the streets. And it sits among the people who had God's law, not only among strangers to Him.
- The pain. Wisdom shows the injustice but gives no power to end it. The wise man knows what ought to be, and learns he cannot do it.
- The proof. The verse reached its darkest point when a judge said "I find no fault in Him" and sentenced Christ anyway. That act condemned the world — and tore open the way to a heavenly salvation.
- The key. From this verse on, God's judgment is the answer to the confusion. Not until the day of the Son of man will anyone on earth be able to put things straight.
- The limit. The Preacher reasons his way to "God will judge," then falls back into vanity. The full light he reached for came only with the Son of God, who brought grace and truth.
I said in my heart, God will judge the righteous and the wicked; for there is a time there for every purpose and for every work.
The Preacher has just looked at the courts. In the one place where justice should be safe, he found wickedness on the bench. His answer is not reform. It is a conviction he speaks inside himself: God will judge both sides, because every purpose and every work has its appointed time.
Verse 16 leaves the courts corrupt and the reader waiting. One writer marks how long that wait ran, and what ended it.
From verse 16 the Preacher shows that God's judgment is the key to all the present confusion. So it is for man, until the Son of God came and brought in grace and truth, which gives the light of God fully.
Not every writer treats this as a burst of revelation. Another sees light break in, then a man who stops at what he can work out for himself.
It seems as if a ray of light now breaks in… Then he said in his heart, "God will judge the righteous and the wicked." He concludes that God must deal with the present injustice. But here he stops short.
Commentators differ on how much light to grant the words. Kelly calls them the key to all present confusion. Others read them as the furthest a man can reach without revelation.
That standpoint explains why parts of the book sound bleak, even faithless, and why this verse feels like a lone shaft of light in the middle of them.
This book gives us the experience of man, and the reasonings of man, about everything that happens under the sun. Remember that, and the passages that look like unbelief raise no difficulty. Man's experience is bound to be unbelieving. He admits his ignorance, because experience can know nothing beyond what he sees. But the solution of all moral problems is above and beyond what he sees… The only rule of life then is to fear the God who orders our life, who judges every action all the days of the life of our vanity.
The verse gives a reason: there is a time for every matter. The chapter's opening has already put two clocks side by side.
Everything under the sun is measured by "times." No matter what purpose the sons of men take in hand under heaven, each has its time, but only its "time." It is not "for ever." Its time passes on and is gone. … But beneath the exercises of these times there is a "work that God makes from the beginning to the end"… and this work, done in ways of infinite wisdom, is "for ever." … Man cannot find out this work, because his sight reaches no further than the horizon of time.
One writer sets the verse next to the limit of man's knowledge. God's end outlasts man's lifetime; man's own view does not reach past death.
God is working out His own end during this time state: man lives in time, but what God does shall be for ever. God will judge the righteous and the wicked, but as far as man's real knowledge extends he dies as the beast dies. This is only man's conclusion drawn from what takes place under the sun.
The appointed time is real, but still ahead. Until it arrives, evil keeps its success and God's government works without an open verdict.
Evil abounds and flourishes until the Lord comes. Yet the moral government of God just as surely secures good to those who fear before Him, and retribution to those who do not fear Him… God is not mocked, nor man overlooked. But it is not yet the day when righteous power permits no evil and good openly triumphs. This is reserved for the kingdom.
- The courtroom. Wickedness sat where justice belonged. This verse is the Preacher's reply: not reform, but God's judgment, the key to all present confusion.
- The conviction. He reaches it by reasoning, not revelation. He concludes that God must deal with injustice, then stops short.
- The clock. Every purpose under heaven has a time — but only a time. God's own work runs beneath them all, and it is for ever.
- The limit. Man's sight reaches no further than the horizon of time. The solution to moral problems lies past it. His rule meanwhile is to fear the God who judges every action.
- The day. Evil still flourishes because the appointed time has not come. The open triumph of good waits for the kingdom. Even so, God is not mocked.
I said in my heart, It is thus with the children of men, that God may prove them, and that they should see that they themselves are but beasts.
The Preacher turns his eye on humanity and reaches a bleak verdict: measured by what he can see, people are no better than animals. Two questions decide how we read this — whose voice is speaking, God's or a man's, and what does the testing prove?
The book keeps repeating one phrase: "under the sun." That phrase sets the angle of everything in this verse.
This expression "under the sun" occurs no less than twenty-eight times in the twelve chapters, and gives the character of the book. It describes life "in Adam," and seeks an answer to the questions, What is best for man? How should he spend his life to be happy on earth? The writer speaks as a human philosopher in his wanderings. Sometimes he gets near the truth, but at other times he is far removed from it. So some passages state man's false conclusions: compare for example Ecclesiastes 3:18-22; 7:16-17; 8:15.
Many readers take the next verse as God's own verdict on man. One writer answers with a question: does it sound like God speaking?
We can go further, and admit that the whole book of Ecclesiastes speaks from the standpoint of earthly wisdom. In it we see the struggles of a mind looking closely at life, without the help of revelation. He says many wise things, many true things, but all is, as I said, from the standpoint of sight, of earth. For instance, could we quote a statement like this as divine truth? "As the one dies so dies the other; yes, they have all one breath; so that a man has no pre-eminence above a beast: for all is vanity" (Ecclesiastes 3:19). Is this the language of God — of faith? Surely not.
This verse does not stand alone. From verse 16 the Preacher has been facing the confusion around him.
From verse 16 the Preacher shows that God's judgment is the key to all the present confusion. So it is for man, until the Son of God came and brought in grace and truth, which gives the light of God fully.
The verse says God tests people so that they may see something. One writer explains who such testing is really for.
Temptations are therefore good and necessary. Their purpose is not that God may find out what is in man's heart. To Him the hidden things of the heart are open, and whatever comes out of it does not increase His knowledge. Their purpose is that man may learn to know himself.
What the Preacher sees is true as far as sight goes. He has one fact in front of him that no one escapes.
Whatever his position on earth, everyone goes at last to one place: the rich, the poor, the wise, the fool, the righteous, the wicked. And death, the great leveller of all ranks, reduces man to a level below himself, even to that of the beasts.
If death does not mark the difference between a man and an animal, what does? One writer starts from what every relationship carries with it.
I know no relationship which does not carry responsibilities. Has man no relationship with God? If not, he is nothing but a beast. He may be the cleverest beast there is, but he is nothing more if he has no link with God. What lifts man above the animals is his link with God. Put aside the idea of accountability to God, and you have degraded him to the level of the animals. His cleverness does not give him any moral pre-eminence.
The Preacher ends with a question he cannot settle. God has since answered it.
Outwardly, and this is what he speaks of here, the same end of death awaits men and beasts. By his own admission, he is speaking only of what can be seen under the sun. The veil is not removed. Yet he takes care to raise the question: who knows the spirit of the sons of men that goes upward, and the spirit of the beast that goes downward to the earth? Man does not know with certainty, and so is prone to pointless argument. God not only knows; He has revealed it by and in our Lord Jesus, who brought life and incorruption to light through the gospel. If man is bad, and he surely is, God is good beyond all creature measure.
- Under the sun. The book is written from ground level. The writer records what he "said in his heart" — sometimes near the truth, sometimes far from it.
- Test. God's testing is not for His information; it is so that a person may learn what he himself is.
- Sight. What the Preacher sees is death, the great leveller, which reduces man to the level of the animals.
- Danger. Man's real pre-eminence is his link with God. Drop accountability, and cleverness alone leaves him a beast.
- Light. Ecclesiastes leaves the veil down. The gospel lifts it: God has revealed in Christ what man could only ask about.
For what befalleth the children of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them as the one dieth, so dieth the other, and they have all one breath; and man hath no pre-eminence above the beast for all is vanity.
Solomon looks at one fact that flattens every distinction: men and animals die the same death. To the eye, nothing is left to tell them apart. Is this God's verdict on human nature, or one man's honest report of what he could see?
Ecclesiastes views life from one fixed standpoint. A reference work counts the phrase that marks it, and lists this passage among the book's false conclusions.
This expression "under the sun" occurs no fewer than twenty-eight times in the twelve chapters. It gives the character of the book. It describes life "in Adam," and it looks for an answer to the questions: What is best for man? How should he spend his life to be happy on earth? The writer speaks as a human philosopher in his wanderings. Sometimes he gets near the truth, but at other times he is far removed from it. So some passages state man's false conclusions — compare, for example, Ecclesiastes 3:18-22.
So the words are recorded, but they are not God's own testimony. One commentator puts it as a test question.
We can go further and freely admit it: earthly wisdom is the standpoint of the whole book of Ecclesiastes. In it we see the struggles of a mind looking closely at life without the help of revelation. He says many wise things, many true things, but all of it, as I said, comes from the standpoint of sight, of earth. For instance, could we quote a statement like this as divine truth? "As one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity." Is this the language of God — of faith? Surely not.
In this book death is not a doctrine to explain. It is a fact that spoils everything the Preacher has gathered.
Death is the wages of sin, but it is not viewed in that light in Ecclesiastes. Solomon does not dwell on the reason it entered the world, but on its presence here as a worm at the root of the tree of pleasure. It spoils pleasure and chills enjoyment. It cuts a man off just when he would sit down after years of work to enjoy the fruit of his labour. What takes place after death is another matter; other Scriptures set that out. This book looks at death from this side of the grave.
The Hebrew word behind "breath" in this verse is ruach. One commentator traces how Scripture uses it.
Ruach, spirit, is that by which man or beast breathes. It is the life that expresses itself in breathing. The word is also used for the Spirit of God, for a wind or another spirit, for the spirit of man, and even of a beast in Ecclesiastes.
Verse 19 is often quoted alone. The same passage goes on to draw a line that observation could not draw.
Scripture teaches man's pre-eminence over other animals. It does not lie in death, for all alike die. It lies, among other things, in the nature of his soul and spirit. No book likens man and beast more closely than Ecclesiastes (Ecclesiastes 3:19-20), yet the same passage points out their all-important distinctness (Ecclesiastes 3:21). Man, in virtue of his soul and spirit — man alone of the animals — is responsible to God. His spirit goes upward, not downward to the earth like a beast's. God made man's body from the dust of the ground, and in that respect he has nothing to boast of over a beast or a bird.
Solomon does not leave the question hanging. He answers it at the end of the book.
It is by the Spirit that we are given this history of human searching after wisdom and after good. But the lesson is that by human searching he could reach neither the one nor the other. He has something to say now about his earlier thoughts. He says finally and conclusively that the spirit of man does not "go downward to the earth": "the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it."
The Preacher leaves the question open. God has since answered it.
Outwardly — and this is what he speaks of here — the same end of death awaits men and beasts. The veil is not removed. Yet he takes care to raise the question. Who knows the spirit of the sons of men, which goes upward, and the spirit of the beast, which goes downward to the earth? Man does not know with certainty, and so he is prone to pointless argument. God not only knows; He has revealed the answer fully by and in our Lord Jesus, who brought life and incorruption to light through the gospel.
- Standpoint. The verse speaks from "under the sun" — life seen without revelation. Commentators place 3:18-22 among the book's false conclusions.
- Sight. Solomon reports what sight can check: the same death, the same breath, the same dust.
- Limit. Sight cannot reach past the grave. Death is the wages of sin, but this book shows it only as the worm at the root of every pleasure.
- Distinction. The same passage breaks the likeness. Man's pre-eminence lies not in death but in soul and spirit, and in being responsible to God.
- Answer. Solomon ends where observation could not. The spirit returns to God who gave it, and Christ has brought life and incorruption to light.
All go unto one place all are of the dust, and all return to dust.
The Preacher watches life under the sun and reaches a blunt conclusion: people and animals share one exit and one end. Two questions follow — is death the last word about a person, and is this God's verdict or one man's reasoning without light?
No rank survives the grave. Commentators read the line as death flattening every human distinction — and doing worse than that.
And whatever his position on earth, all go to one place at last. The rich, the poor, the wise, the fool, the righteous, the wicked all end up with the stillborn child that never saw the sun. And death, the great leveller of all ranks, reduces man to a level below himself, even to that of the beasts.
Ecclesiastes does not stop to explain where death came from. It looks at what death does to a life spent chasing enjoyment.
Death is the wages of sin, but Ecclesiastes does not look at it that way. Solomon does not dwell on the reason death entered the world. He dwells on its presence here, as a worm at the root of the tree of pleasure. It spoils pleasure and chills enjoyment. It cuts a man off just when he would sit down after years of work to reap the fruit of his labour... This book looks at death from this side of the grave.
The verse ends in dust. In Scripture, that word already carries a history.
Dust is often connected in Scripture with death — "the dust of death." "Dust to dust" was the original verdict that stamped man with vanity. The book of Ecclesiastes shows us death as the great tormentor of man. It levels him, with all his wisdom and his pride, to the beast.
Who is speaking here changes how the verse should be read. Commentators say it records a man's honest search, not God's verdict on human nature.
We can go further, and freely admit that the entire book of Ecclesiastes is written from the standpoint of earthly wisdom. In it we see the struggles of a mind looking closely at life, without the help of revelation. He says many wise things, many true things, but all is, as I said, from the standpoint of sight, of earth.
Gaebelein reads the same section this way. He shows what a man is left with when observation is all he has:
It shows that when it comes to life beyond the present, all is darkness for man. He may have "eternity set in his heart," but he has no light. Death comes alike to man and beast. They die and are gone. So the conclusion is, "man has no pre-eminence above the beast." But man has, as the revelation of God teaches. But here we are not listening to God's revelation, but only to the searchings and observations of man.
Verse 20 does not stand alone. The next verse asks where the spirit of man goes.
Scripture teaches man's pre-eminence over other animals, not in death (for all alike die), but, among other things, in the nature of his soul and spirit. Even Ecclesiastes, which likens them most closely, points out in the same passage how vital their difference is. Because of his soul and spirit, man — alone among animals — is responsible to God. His spirit goes upward, not downward to the earth like a beast's. His body, though, was made of the dust of the ground, and in that respect he has nothing to boast over a beast or a bird.
The Preacher himself resolves the doubt before the book ends.
But he has something to say now about his former thoughts. He says, finally and conclusively, that the spirit of man does not "go downward to the earth": "And the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it."
Kelly weighs the Preacher's view against what God has since made known.
Outwardly — and this is what he speaks of here — the same end of death awaits men and beasts. It is admittedly only what is under the sun. The veil is not removed. Yet he takes care to raise the question... Man does not know for certain, and so is prone to empty argument. But God not only knows — He has revealed it fully by and in our Lord Jesus, who brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.
- One place. Death takes rich and poor, wise and foolish to the same ground. Every earthly rank ends there.
- One dust. The word echoes the original verdict on man: where the body came from is where it returns.
- One viewpoint. This is life measured "under the sun": one man's honest search without revelation, not God's last word.
- One question. The next verse asks where the spirit goes. There man is marked off from the beast: he alone is responsible to God.
- One answer. Solomon ends by saying the spirit returns to God. The full light comes in Christ, who brought life and immortality to light.
Who knoweth the spirit of the children of men? Doth it go upwards? and the spirit of the beasts, doth it go downwards to the earth?
Solomon has just watched men and animals share one breath and one grave. Now he asks the question that matters most: does anything survive the dust? Commentators read his question in two ways. Some hear an admission of ignorance. Others hear a quiet statement that man's spirit and the beast's go opposite ways.
Readers have long disputed the wording of this verse. One writer compared the older English wording with versions that read "who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward." He found both defensible, once you see what Ecclesiastes is measuring:
While I prefer the English Bible, I think it would go too far to deny that the words can bear the suggested rendering. The Septuagint and Vulgate translators — who made the old Greek and Latin versions — certainly seem to have understood them that way, and so do excellent modern versions. The difficulty here, like many others, seems to come from misunderstanding God's purpose in the book. The book discusses "what is under the sun" — not the revelation of what is above and beyond it. So here the verse gives only the result of human experience, and human experience knows nothing after death. The solution of all moral perplexities is found only in the unseen — in the Word of God, not in the world as it now is.
That principle keeps the book from sounding like unbelief. It records what a man can find out by looking around him, and no more:
This book gives us the experience of man, and the reasonings of man, about everything that happens under the sun. Remember that, and the passages that look like unbelief cause no difficulty. The experience of man is necessarily unbelieving. He admits his ignorance, because beyond what is seen, experience can know nothing.
Some read the verse as the honest failure of the wisest man, not as doctrine. Solomon labels this whole section as something he said in his own heart:
The whole passage is what Solomon tells us he "said in his heart" at a certain time (v. 18). It is not divine revelation, but human doubt. It is the questioning of man's mind as it speculates on the mystery of existence: "who knows the spirit of man?" ... A man searching things out by human wisdom finds that the grave all go into stays a closed mystery. Men die as the beast dies. They have one breath, one ruach, and they go to the dust alike. As to what lies beyond, human knowledge on its own cannot reach it. The word ruach can mean breath or spirit, and that range fits the doubting question of the passage well.
On this reading, that failure is the point of the book. The wisest man reaches the grave and can go no further by "human wisdom."
Others hold that even inside the question a real distinction is asserted. The Hebrew, closely read, still separates the two destinations:
It is a sad ignorance, no doubt, but it states very distinctly that man's spirit goes up, while the beast's goes downward to the earth, lost in the material creation in a way unknown to us. He does not know what becomes of man's spirit either, but it does go up, to what is outside of and above the earth.
The direction itself carries the argument. The body goes down; if the spirit of man goes the other way, something outlasts the body:
At death the body goes down to the earth. If the spirit of the beast also goes down to the earth, then that spirit dies with the body, and the beast ceases to exist. But why should the spirit of man go upward? Surely this implies that the spirit of man lives on after the body dies.
The verse also speaks of the spirit of the beast. One writer explains what soul and spirit mean in each creature:
Here we also hear of the "spirit of the beast," for the beast has soul and spirit suited to its nature. The soul is the seat of will for every living creature; the spirit is its capacity. But for the beast everything goes "downward to the earth" — not the body only, but soul and spirit too. As to man, his spirit (and of course his soul with it) "goes upward"; "the spirit returns to God who gave it." When other animals were made, they breathed the breath of life. But God formed man outwardly, like clay shaped by a potter, and man did not breathe until God gave him His own breath, directly and personally. So he alone on earth became a living soul... And so man alone among earthly beings is responsible to God.
Solomon raises the question, but he does not close it. God has since given the answer:
Outwardly — and this is what he speaks of here — the same end of death waits for men and beasts. He is speaking only of what is under the sun, and he says so openly. The veil is not lifted. Yet he takes care to raise the question... Man does not know for certain, and so he is prone to endless argument. But God knows, and He has revealed the answer fully by and in our Lord Jesus, who brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.
- Vantage point. The verse speaks from "under the sun." It reports what human experience can observe, and that knows nothing after death.
- Human doubt. The words belong to what Solomon "said in his heart." Here the wisest man fails at the grave; he is not teaching doctrine.
- Two directions. Even so, the words split the two paths: the beast's spirit goes down into the earth, and man's spirit goes upward.
- Two natures. The beast has soul and spirit fitted to it, and all of it returns to dust. Man received God's own breath, and so man alone is responsible to God.
- The veil lifted. What no human wisdom could reach, God has now revealed in Christ, who brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.
And I have seen that there is nothing better than that man should rejoice in his own works; for that is his portion; for who shall bring him to see what shall be after him?
Solomon closes this chapter with a quiet verdict: enjoy the work in front of you, because no one can show you what comes after you. On its own it sounds thin. Is this God's counsel to man, or the best guess of a man who can see no further than the grave?
One phrase governs Ecclesiastes: "under the sun." One survey of the book counts it and names this very passage among man's false conclusions:
This expression "under the sun" occurs no less than twenty-eight times in the twelve chapters. It gives the character of the book. It describes life "in Adam," and seeks an answer to the questions: What is best for man? How should he spend his life to be happy on earth? The writer speaks as a human philosopher in his wanderings. Sometimes he gets near the truth, but at other times he is far removed from it. So some passages state man's false conclusions: compare, for example, Ecclesiastes 3:18-22.
Who is the advice for? One writer reads it as counsel for a specific man in a specific fix:
Returning to the wise king with his search, in view of all this which he has brought out in this chapter, he gives his counsel as to what man is to do under these harassing circumstances. There is nothing better, he says, than that a man — the natural man — should rejoice in his own works, for that is his portion.
The chapter has just watched death fall on man and beast alike, and the reasoning goes no further than what the eye can verify.
It shows that as far as life beyond the present is concerned, all is darkness for man. He may have "eternity set in his heart," but he has no light. Death comes alike to man and beast; they die and are gone, hence the conclusion, "man has no pre-eminence above the beast." But man has, as the revelation of God teaches. Here we are not listening to God's revelation, but to the searchings and observations of man only.
If a man's whole portion is the work of his hands, death takes the portion. Ecclesiastes has its own way of looking at death:
Death is the wages of sin, but it is not viewed in this aspect in Ecclesiastes. Solomon does not dwell on the reason death entered the world. He dwells on its presence here, as a worm at the root of the tree of pleasure. It spoils pleasure and chills enjoyment. It cuts off man just when he would sit down after years of toil to reap the fruit of his labour... This book looks at death from this side of the grave. It shows how death separates man from the fruits of all his labour, just when he thinks he is about to reap them.
The closing question is a real one. It marks where human wisdom hits a wall — a wall the animals never feel:
The beast has no regrets and no sad fears of what is coming. He finds his place in a world of change, enjoying the present, never thinking of the future. But man, if he does not know, looks ahead and dreads. He cannot carry his everyday burden and lie down in quiet. Death levels all; and what lies beyond death? Who knows the spirit of man that goes upward? Yet the heart says, "God judges the righteous and the wicked." Here we stop. The one thing certain is our ignorance: eternity in the heart, and no sure outlook beyond time — unless God gives it.
That gap is not a flaw in the book. It follows from what the book set out to discuss:
The difficulty here, like so many others, seems to come from misunderstanding God's object in a book. The subject is what is "under the sun," not the revelation of what is above and beyond it. So here we get only the result of human experience, which knows nothing at all about what comes after death. The solution of all moral perplexities is found only in the unseen — in the Word of God, not in the world that now is.
The book stops at the grave. The gospel does not. The same writer who marks the limits of Ecclesiastes points to what God has since made known:
On the outside — and this is what he speaks of here — the same end of death awaits men and beasts. He says openly that this is only what is under the sun. The veil is not removed. Yet he takes care to raise the question. Who knows the spirit of the sons of men that goes upward, and the spirit of the beast that goes downward to the earth? Man does not know for certain, and so he easily falls into arguments that go nowhere. But God knows, and He has revealed it fully by and in our Lord Jesus, who brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.
- Under the sun — the book keeps to one horizon: life "in Adam." There the writer sometimes nears the truth and sometimes states man's false conclusions.
- A portion, not a hope — Solomon speaks to the natural man in harassing circumstances. His own work is the only share he can name.
- A portion death takes — death is the worm at the root of pleasure. It cuts man off just as he sits down to enjoy what he built.
- A question he cannot answer — the beast never dreads the future. Man does, and there he stops: eternity in his heart, no outlook beyond time unless God gives it.
- The answer God gave — this chapter never lifts the veil. God has, in the Lord Jesus, who brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.