Who is qoheleth in the bible

Riches and pleasures do not avail. Existence is monotonous, enjoyment fleeing and vain; darkness quickly follows. Life, then, is an enigma beyond human ability to solve. Sounds like a really bad day to me. Where is the wisdom of this?

The first answer is that Qoheleth Ecclesiastes makes you stop and think. From the middle of the second century AD, some have questioned the authority of the book and therefore also its canonical status. Initial objections from the rabbinic school of Shammai and others are cited in the Talmud but were never sufficient to cause serious doubt.

Like several of the other poetic books, Ecclesiastes contains a number of literary genres. It makes use of allegories, sayings, metaphors, proverbs, and other forms. Beyond genre identifications there are a number of literary works known from the ancient Near East that address situations in which conventional wisdom is viewed as inconsistent with reality or experience.

Certainly this was the case in Job and its ancient Near Eastern counterparts. While this literature does not reject wisdom, it shows its limitations and insufficiency. In Mesopotamian literature an example would be the work known as the Dialogue of Pessimism. In each case the man then changes his mind and decides not to pursue the stated course of action. This decision is likewise affirmed in each case by the slave with a wisdom-style observation.

The conclusion one would draw is that wisdom sayings can be used to rationalize any given course of action. In Egyptian literature there is a piece in which a man considering suicide discusses various frustrations of life and his failure to find satisfaction.

In this respect it has some similarity to Ecclesiastes. These, however, seem to suggest a life of pleasure that is rejected by Qoheleth :.

Even if some level of fulfillment or self-satisfaction were achieved, death is waiting at the end. Frustration and adversity are unavoidable, and answers to the hard questions of life are not forthcoming. On these terms the book confronts the crookedness and uncertainty of life and shows, probably unconsciously, the need for a concept of resurrection to bring harmony out of the discord of reality. The message of Ecclesiastes is that the course of life to be pursued is a God-centered life.

The pleasures of life are not intrinsically fulfilling and cannot offer lasting satisfaction, but they can be enjoyed as gifts from God.

Life offers good times and bad and follows no pattern such as that proposed by the retribution principle. But all comes from the hand of God:. When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider this: God has made the one as well as the other.

Therefore, no one can discover anything about their future. This is a matter of some controversy among the interpreters of Ecclesiastes, because many scholars have found in its pages only pessimism or cynicism. As we look at the colophon, however, the summary offered in verses 13—14 is simply a restatement of what Qoheleth is saying all through the book. We should not look for principles of organization such as might be found in philosophical treatises of Western civilization.

Everything is meaningless. What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises. The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course. All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again.

All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time. No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them. Once Qoheleth has considered the potential sources of fulfillment and has rejected them, he offers an alternate perspective on life. In —15 he advises a moderate course of action:. There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.

What do workers gain from their toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. He has made everything beautiful in its time.

He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh. The end of the matter; all has been heard.

Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil. Longman is reading between the lines as if this were a letter of recommendation and he were trying to discern the truth about a candidate.

Note that it does not clearly say that he authored any new proverbs. Longman then says that the evaluation turned to the conclusions of Qoheleth with Ecclesiastes However, Longman disagrees. He interprets the goads and nails as negative since they both would sting.

With such a reading one wonders why Longman spent so much time writing a commentary that includes careful reflection on the fictional autobiography with its heterodox theology. There is clearly something worthwhile his readers are expected to discern. The book of Qoheleth is the climax of the Writings. There are two important observations to make in this light. The first has to do with the association of Qoheleth with Solomon.

Longman appears to be right about the reasons for adopting the Solomonic persona. Solomon shows wisdom at its height and shows us how wisdom falls short. Since the Writings contain a great many books considered wisdom literature, this book, which is making that very point is a fitting climax.

Qoheleth and Job have this in common. Longman would say that they also have in common speeches that are wrong. Yes, Qoheleth is not entirely right. At his disposal are supreme wisdom, a supply of resources, and the luxury of time.

No one else is so equipped to carry out so thorough and searching a critique of the human predicament. This is a fitting climax to the pursuit of wisdom and the writing of wisdom literature. But then for the second point about this as the climax to the writings.