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.