NOTES for Ecc 4:1-5:1

Labor on earth is also vanity; it not only brings no joy, but is oppression, and success in affairs increases envy and enmity among people. All this is also meaningless, but for some reason Ecclesiastes does not want to confine himself in his reasoning to such conclusions, and he begins to reflect on two people for whom it is better than for one. And although a little later we again hear sorrowful sighs that everything is still vanity and vexation of spirit, it is impossible to get rid of the impression that Ecclesiastes is looking for something to hold on to, something that could refute him.

And indeed, he returns to the familiar refrain only after his thoughts have moved on to another subject of reflection. As for the discussion of two people supporting and warming one another, or of the strength of a threefold cord, Ecclesiastes sets nothing against it. Apparently, he does not want to...

Reading Ecclesiastes, one begins to understand that there is a deep truth in Buddhism. Though not in all its fullness. The truth of a world that does not know God's presence. A world without a messianic perspective, and therefore without the perspective of the Kingdom. Still, the Buddha himself may well have seen its glimmers, sensed its breath, still distant then. It is no accident that he did not want to speak about his experience under the banyan tree. Or could not express it in words. He spoke only of nirvana, of that silence behind which the inexpressible is hidden. But if this inexpressible is absent, if its presence, even distant, is not sensed, then nirvana becomes emptiness, and life becomes absurdity. And no religion, even the most correct, can change anything here. For meaning to appear, what is needed is not religion, but the living God.

The Kingdom is needed, even if only as a promise, as a glimmer, as a light breath. Speaking in Yahwist language, a messianic perspective is needed. A prophecy about the Messiah and the Kingdom. In the Book of Ecclesiastes this perspective is absent. Therefore there is no meaning in life either. Or, more precisely, there is, but as if somewhere in the distance. Outside time and space. At the boundary of the world and God's eternity. But there, at the boundary, there is only rest and silence, akin to those the Buddha experienced under the banyan tree. They do not penetrate the world, into the endless cycle of spaces and times. And therefore the world is unchanged and unfixable. And it is not worth living in it.

Not because it is unworthy of the righteousness of the righteous person, but because from the point of view of the righteous person and the path of righteousness it has no future if there is no Kingdom ahead and no Messiah who will make the world different. And man too: seen from rest and silence, all man's intentions and all his activity turn out to be only unnecessary and meaningless self-assertion; they only add vanity where there is already enough of it. Every intention, every purpose of man turns out to be meaningless; they do not give meaning to his life, but only reduce the chance of finding it. But then why live at all? What is the meaning of a person's being born into this world? What then is human birth: a foolish joke of God or an equally foolish accident unrelated to God?

Whatever the answer, it is clear that it is better not to live the life of this world at all than to live without meaning. The conclusion is quite Buddhist, and there is nothing strange in it: the issue is the objective laws of life, spiritual laws first of all, which do not depend on where a person was born or in what times he lived. But the experience reflected by Buddhism and by the Book of Ecclesiastes is not yet the last word. It is only the word of a person seeking God and the Kingdom. God has not yet spoken His word. It lies ahead.

How could it happen that a believing Yahwist became, spiritually speaking, almost a Buddhist? After all, Yahwism is much more definite spiritually than Buddhism: it has a personal God, conscious relationships with Him, and a view of the world as God's creation. But all this "works" on one indispensable condition: personal and conscious relationships with God. If they are absent, then everything else is absent too.

Or rather, it is present, but for a person who has no personal relationship with God, it changes nothing. If "God is in heaven and we are on earth," then the earth is hopeless. God is high above and the king is far away. Indeed, Ecclesiastes says something like this: over some officials stand others, hence the problems, and it is good if there is a king who thinks about his country and his people. It seems, however, that Ecclesiastes does not have much hope for the appearance of such a king: such a thing happens too rarely... But for Ecclesiastes God too is like a great superior, like a king, only higher.

With Him too one must be careful; one must look and think about how to approach Him, what to say to Him, what to promise, and what not to promise... Strange, it would seem, since this same Ecclesiastes knows from experience that spiritual reality is not like social reality. Just now this same Ecclesiastes, at the boundary of God's eternity, was listening to apophatic silence, sensing behind it a Presence that could bring meaning into his life. But... one's sense of the world does not change overnight. Ecclesiastes apparently brought his religiosity out of his former life. Out of the life when he was an important man and did not think too much about meaning.

Being religious then was accepted; it was normal and natural. If, of course, the religiosity itself was "normal." Simple, clear, without wanderings and searches. That, apparently, is what Ecclesiastes' religiosity was like until the question of meaning arose in all its sharpness. And certainly meaning could least of all be found in this "normal" religiosity. It was not developed in order to give meaning to an individual human life.

If it could give meaning to anything, it was only to the existence of society and the state in their existing condition. To make people honor God as a king, and the king as God. Or as a god; here the difference is no longer very great. If God becomes like an earthly king, the earthly king sooner or later will become like an earthly god; such a transformation is practically inevitable. Only all this was very far from the reality that had opened to Ecclesiastes at the boundary of the world and Eternity. As far as earth from heaven.

With the attitude toward life that Ecclesiastes expresses so clearly, even suicide would perhaps not have looked like something out of the ordinary. But the thought of it, clearly, does not occur to the author of the book at all. He apparently understood that suicide is one of the most terrible sins before God. And therefore Ecclesiastes goes on living. And life without God is unthinkable for him. Still, Ecclesiastes is very far from that clear hearing of God's voice which is so characteristic of the prophets. He undoubtedly believes in God's providence.

But he is not a prophet; he is cautious in everything that concerns the experience of direct revelation. It is not worth saying too much when standing before God, for the quality of prayer is not determined by the number of words the one praying speaks (vv. 1-3). It is not worth making careless vows, and those that have been made must be fulfilled quickly and exactly (vv. 4-5). And it is not worth denying the truth of a revelation received from God: perhaps completely unexpected for a person, it may prove genuine, although, of course, it is also not worth believing every dream indiscriminately (vv. 6-7).

Caution, restraint, and a certain critical spirit — this is how Ecclesiastes' attitude toward everything connected with spiritual and mystical experience could be defined. This is not surprising: for he expects no special, new revelations from God. Everything has already been said, opened, and created; new revelations may concern certain private questions of a particular human life, but no more than that. From God one can expect new instructions, but not a new revelation. Apparently, this frame of mind was generally characteristic of the era of Ecclesiastes, when the rabbinic tradition replaced the prophetic tradition.

But no revelation can change anything radically; a country and a people should rather hope for a good king than for a new revelation or for the coming of the Messiah (vv. 8-9). But even then, in the final analysis, all human labors and efforts remain meaningless, and Ecclesiastes again returns to the image of a person who has spent the best years of his life in hard labor that has brought him no benefit at all (vv. 10-16). Enjoyment of the few joys of life during the brief days allotted by God to a person — this is the only happiness still possible in this hopelessly spoiled and hostile world (vv. 19-20).