May 20 Daily Devotional

Scripture for Day 20—Ecclesiastes 7:1–6

¹A good name is better than precious ointment,
     and the day of death than the day of birth.
²It is better to go to the house of mourning
     than to go to the house of feasting,
for this is the end of all mankind,
     and the living will lay it to heart.
³Sorrow is better than laughter,
     for by sadness of face the heart is made glad.
⁴The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning,
     but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.
⁵It is better for a man to hear the rebuke of the wise
     than to hear the song of fools.
⁶ For as the crackling of thorns under a pot,
     so is the laughter of the fools;
     this also is vanity.

Devotional:

With the end of ch.6, Ecclesiastes has reached a turning point. The only consistently positive refrain in these six chapters was to enjoy the simple pleasures in life. But in light of the overall gloomy assessment of life and its vagaries, as well as the haunting summary question of, "What advantage is there to man?" (6:11), the reader senses that "Be happy anyway!" can hardly be the only motto that Qoheleth has to offer. Something more useful helping us gauge the issue of "How then shall we live?" is called for, or else the book stands in danger of becoming redundant in its blunt realism which at times leads us to the edge of nihilism and chaos.

But the author is not a nihilist, and his advice is not to throw in the towel before our time is up. Tough it out! The much anticipated break in the book does in fact occur with the beginning of ch.7. A couple of textual tendencies converge in the second half of the work which combine to make its message decidedly less dark than it seems from chs. 1-6. We find a much higher density of proverbial instruction in chs.7-11, designed to help us navigate the dangerous currents of life under the sun. The proverbs have an unmistakably constructive function and serve to pull us back from the edge of despair, where Qoheleth has held us captive for much of what we have read so far.

The book is thus like an artistic balancing act on a high wire. The tension is immense, as we walk the grade between despondency and happiness. Although the general verdict of vanity and futility will not be rescinded, the very use of the term "vanity" and its semantic relatives, so heavily employed in the first part of the book, notably drops down to a far more comfortable frequency in the second half of the work. We are lifted from the dungeon of despair.

6:12 raised the question, "What is good for man in his life?" Now 7:1-6 picks up the notion in conspicuously echoing the Hebrew root for "good" in the opening verses of the chapter (i.e., in the English translation the word "good" will predominantly show in the comparative degree, "better"). The root is used no fewer than six times in these verses. It is as though the author says, "So, you want answers as to what is good for man?—Well, here are some…."

Still, the author's tendency towards cynicism and irony is hard to kill, and it continues to inject the element of the unexpected in what is otherwise useful advice. Listen to this shocking statement: "A good name is better than precious ointment, and the day of death than the day of birth" (7:1). He goes on to say that it is better to attend a funeral than to go to a banquet. As provocative as these words are, the author is not merely on a collision course with the politically correct. The message that emerges from 7:1-6 is that it is better for you to live in full view of life's brevity and certain termination than to continue in blissful denial of the inevitable.

Ps. 90:12 confirms Qoheleth’s sentiment in the form of a prayer: "So teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom" (cf. also Ps. 39:4). What will my life look like when all is said and done? The words of the one who knows better come to mind, too: "It is hard for you to kick against the goads" (Acts 9:5).

The author of these devotionals, the Rev. Martin Emmrich, is an ordained OPC minister (Westminster OPC, Corvallis, Oregon) as well as the author of Pneumatological Concepts in the Epistle to the Hebrews, a book on the teaching of Hebrews on the Holy Spirit. We are happy to make these devotionals on Ecclesiastes and other passages of Scripture available to you.