Far As The Curse Is Found: Ecclesiastes and the Man of Sorrows

By Dale W. Tomich

Daniel Boorstin said, "We risk being the first people in history to have been able to make their illusions so vivid, so persuasive, so 'realistic' that they can live in them." All creation wears a veneer of our making. We have "paved paradise," wall-papered nature with our designs and patterns, our wants and wishes. Walter Cronkite closed his news hour with the phrase, "And that's the way it is." But now, all men and women see not what is but what is built. The constructions of our culture hide the permanent things. Even worse, the virtual world (what does that mean anyway?) supplants the real—the only—world with the sad consequence that we reckon reality infinitely malleable in servitude to our desires.

Today more than ever, we need to see the world not as we wish it were, not as our cultural narratives would have it, but as it is, unclad under the sun. We need a perspective that we cannot attain on our own, free from mythmaking, nostalgia, and the lying promises of the goddess Progress. How do we go around, behind, and under the claptrap of culture to see the bones of creation? How can we grasp our human condition apart from illusion and wishing-it-so?

We could go back to a time before the internet, before Facebook, before television, before movies, even before novels and ask for wisdom. Let us go back to the Iron Age in the Middle East. Let us ask King Solomon, "What is this world all about? Hold no punches. Tell us the truth."

His answer would be Ecclesiastes.

Ecclesiastes paints a bleak and barren landscape. On its dusty plain generations come and generations go. They leave not memory, only dust. The sun rises and sets and counts out the days of man's short life. The wind blows on its circuit—and man chases it. He labors his life long but grasps little that endures. Ecclesiastes is a picture of creation under curse, subject to futility, painted with a broad brush. Solomon's book is an assault on our senses. It describes a world we would not choose, a dying world, fallen from paradise, a creation in the clutches of the curse. Were we to write Ecclesiastes, our description of this world would likely be more sanguine with fewer hard edges. But would it be real?

Into this world of curse came the Man of Sorrows. He did not come to impart wisdom, though wisdom he is. He did not come to merely observe, though his knowledge of our state was complete. He came to experience in full the futility and death and dust of Solomon's world, to bear the curse in its fullness, and to do so for us. He came to make all things new.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 14, 2020
• ISBN: 9781098349974

Dale W. Tomich

Dale W. Tomich is professor emeritus of sociology at Binghamton University.

Book preview

OF ALL I HAVE EVER SEEN OR LEARNED, THAT BOOK SEEMS TO ME THE NOBLEST, THE WISEST, AND THE MOST POWERFUL EXPRESSION OF MAN’S LIFE UPON THIS EARTH—AND ALSO THE HIGHEST FLOWER OF POETRY, ELOQUENCE, AND TRUTH. I AM NOT GIVEN TO DOGMATIC JUDGMENTS IN THE MATTER OF LITERARY CREATION, BUT IF I HAD TO MAKE ONE I COULD SAY THAT ECCLESIASTES IS THE GREATEST SINGLE PIECE OF WRITING I HAVE EVER KNOWN, AND THE WISDOM EXPRESSED IN IT THE MOST LASTING AND PROFOUND.

—THOMAS WOLFE—

Jesus shall reign where’er the sun

Does his successive journeys run;

His kingdom stretch from shore to shore,

Till moons shall wax and wane no more.

Where He displays His healing power,

Death and the curse are known no more:

In Him the tribes of Adam boast

More blessings than their father lost.

—Isaac Watts

Figure 1. Mosaic: Christos Pantocrator, Hagia Sophia (1261)

Title

Copyright © 2020 William Price

ISBN: 978-1-09-834997-4

All quotations from the Bible are taken from the King James Version of the Bible unless otherwise indicated.

Scripture quotations marked ESV are taken from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NASB are taken from the New American Standard Bible® (NASB), Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation Used by permission. www.Lockman.org

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version® NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Images

Mosaic: Christos Pantocrator, Hagia Sophia. By Dianelos Georgoudis - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33098123

Albrecht Dürer, The Fall of Man. National Gallery of Art, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24076202

Rembrandt, Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee. www.gardnermuseum.org, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6812612

Rembrandt, Old Man in Red. Hermitage, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7293727

Hopper, Gas. Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69614455

Rembrandt, Two old men disputing - www.ngv.vic.gov.au Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22954229

Processional Icon of the Man of Sorrows. https://www.nga.gov/content/dam/ngaweb/features/exhibitions/Byzantium/Icon-man-of-sorrows-cat52.jpg https://images.nga.gov/en/page/openaccess.html

Rembrandt, Christ with Two Disciples. Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20452692

Jean Francois Millet, L’Angélus. Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=155680

Contents

Figures

Tables

Preface

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I. THE STORM

CHAPTER II. KINDRED VOICES

CHAPTER III: AMERICAN DREAMS

CHAPTER IV: INTERPRETIVE OPTIONS

CHAPTER V: CHRISTMAS DAWNING

CHAPTER VI: HOPE OUT OF ASHES

CHAPTER VII: COMMON GROUND

EPILOGUE

APPENDIX A: On Receiving an Ancient Biblical Text

APPENDIX B: Author and Date of Ecclesiastes

APPENDIX C: The Structure of Ecclesiastes

Bibliography

Figures

Figure 1. Mosaic: Christos Pantocrator, Hagia Sophia (1261)

Figure 2. Albrecht Dürer, The Fall (1509)

Figure 3. Rembrandt, Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee (1633)

Figure 4. Rembrandt, Old Man in Red (1654)

Figure 5. Hopper, Gas (1940)

Figure 6. Rembrandt, Two Old Men Disputing (1628)

Figure 7. Processional icon of the Man of Sorrows, last quarter of the twelfth century, Byzantine Museum, Kastoria

Figure 8. Rembrandt, Christ with Two Disciples (1655)

Figure 9. Jean François Millet, L’Angelus (1859)

Figure 10. Elements of Ecclesiastes

Tables

Table 1. Making words in Ecclesiastes and Genesis

Table 2. The Ties Between the Two Poems

TO THE KING!¹

Preface

I have lived long enough to see several stages of our American civilization. I grew up in the 1950s—a golden time due to a happy childhood, a prosperous small-town culture, and the glow of post-war optimism. It was, in David Martin’s phrase, a conservative plateau.

I remember newsreels celebrating the Century of Progress. One about steel production still lives in my memory. Documentaries on the space race fueled my desire to be an engineer. I spotted Sputnik in the evening sky with a vague sense that we had enemies, and they were watching us. The Cold War and its ever-present nuclear threat clouded our horizon. Civil defense exercises in school scared me.

Then came the 1960s: the Viet Nam war, protests, riots, assassinations. My generation loosened the ties that bind. Woodstock, drugs, free love (what a cheapening term!) left the Greatest Generation bereft of her children. It felt like a gut-punch to me, and I recoiled. I am still recoiling.

But there were bright spots: the civil rights movement and the space race, the one to redress past sins and the other to flex scientific and industrial muscle. The 1980s brought an expansion of defense might that hastened the fall of the Soviet empire only to see China emerge as an equal threat.

In all, our strenuous efforts forward yielded mixed results and unintended consequences. Today my generation, once young and bright and hopeful, stands at the abyss. Darkness is descending—not the darkness of a night but perhaps of an age. Rod Dreher and others have warned us that a new dark age is upon us. But like all ages, it will be seen clearly only in the rearview mirror. Now we need a clear-eyed view of the world around us, or we will be overtaken like the foolish virgins, benighted and unprepared.

More than ever, we need to see the world not as we wish it were, not as our cultural narratives would have it, but as it is, unclad under the sun. We need a perspective that we cannot attain on our own, free from mythmaking, nostalgia, and the lying promises of the goddess Progress.

Daniel Boorstin said, We risk being the first people in history to have been able to make their illusions so vivid, so persuasive, so ‘realistic’ that they can live in them.² All creation wears a veneer of our making. We have paved paradise, wall-papered nature with our designs and patterns, our wants and wishes.

Walter Cronkite closed his news hour with the phrase, And that’s the way it is. Now, all men and women see not what is but what is built. The constructions of our culture hide the permanent things. Even worse, the virtual world (what does that mean anyway?) supplants the real—the only—world with the sad consequence that we reckon reality infinitely malleable in servitude to our desires.

How do we go around, behind, and under the claptrap of culture to see the bones of creation? How can we grasp our human condition apart from illusion and wishing-it-so?

We could go back to a time before the internet, before Facebook, before television, before movies, even before novels and ask for wisdom. Let us go back to the Iron Age in the Middle East. Let us ask King Solomon, What is this world all about? Hold no punches. Tell us the truth.

His answer would be Ecclesiastes.

William Price

Tucson, Arizona

INTRODUCTION

Figure 2. Albrecht Dürer, The Fall (1509)

This world’s a wilderness of woe,

This world is not my home.

—Elizabeth King Mills³

Ecclesiastes is the orphan book of the Old Testament. The cry All is vanity! seems out of place with the holiness of the Law, the majesty of the Psalms, the grand vision of the Prophets, and the black-and-white maxims of Proverbs. While most books of the Old Testament canon sing in close harmony, Ecclesiastes introduces a dissonant tone, if not a dissenting voice. It feels hopeless and disconnected from the faith of God’s people. The author does not counsel despair, but neither does he inspire confidence; he leaves us puzzled, wishing for hope. Edward Plumptre long ago said of this book, It comes before us as the sphinx of Hebrew literature, with its unsolved riddles of history and life.⁴

Our first reaction to Ecclesiastes is profound discomfort. Out of that disquiet, strong objections to the book rise. We will touch on several before going any further.

Who Could Have Written Ecclesiastes?

Which of the biblical authors could have written this despondent work? Surely it could not be the confident Solomon of the Proverbs; or the tender, joyful Solomon of the Song of Songs. The tone and tenor of Ecclesiastes find no face among the biblical authors. Or do they? The author of A Grief Observed said this:

Talk to me about the truth of religion and I’ll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I’ll listen submissively. But don’t come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don’t understand.

Meanwhile, where is God? Go to him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become.⁵

Could this be the same C. S. Lewis, who wrote the Chronicles of Narnia,⁶ great stories with happy, hopeful endings? Is this the same confident apologist who wrote Mere Christianity?⁷ Is this the same buoyant biographer who wrote Surprised by Joy?⁸ Yes, the same. But how to account for the uncharacteristic dark mood? Do we chalk it up to the anguish of passing grief? Given time, would he be possessed of a better mind? It is possible. But the same man could write of joy and sorrow because God had knit both into his soul. We would be wrong to think that an author who had written something exuberant and joyful was incapable of writing something profoundly sad and sober.

The difference between A Grief Observed and Lewis’s other books is due, in part, to the different subject matter but more to his different purposes. In A Grief Observed, Lewis dealt with the darkest grief; how could the tone not be dour? More importantly, he described his experience as a profoundly grieving soul and a God who was neither absent nor distant, but silent.

Just so, Solomon could write the Proverbs, the Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes. Different purposes give rise to different voices.

Does Ecclesiastes Belong in the Bible?

You may be so taken aback by Ecclesiastes as to ask, Does this even belong in the Bible? You would not be the first. Among the Jewish rabbis of the first century, there was doubt that Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon should be considered Holy Scripture. Records of deliberations at the council of Jamnia in AD 90 tell us Ecclesiastes was in danger of being stored away since it fostered heretical ideas.⁹ The assembly ultimately affirmed Ecclesiastes’ place in the canon, but it was only after some participants voiced grave doubt.

The early church did not debate the issue, and Ecclesiastes appears in the original lists of canonical books. Some scholars believe its inclusion in the canon was mainly due to its association with Solomon, despite the content. Indeed, the allegorizing interpretations of the day dispensed quickly with all the Preacher’s hard sayings. Solomon’s promotion of eating and drinking, which those of another age would have seen as hedonism, was nicely interpreted by