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Ecclesiastes, part 14, Consequences of Mortality

Koheleth now turns from time and mortality to the consequences of life under the sun since Adam was sentenced to death (mortality) for his sin. Ecclesiastes 4:1 says,

¹ Then I looked again at all the acts of oppression which were being done under the sun. And behold I saw the tears of the oppressed and that they had no one to comfort [menachem] them; and on the side of their oppressors was power, but they had no one to comfort [menachem] them.

Koheleth begins with a grim observation: “I have seen …” The oppression is systemic, not exceptional; victims weep, but have no comforter; power consistently lies with the oppressors. The repetition of “no comforter” emphasizes not just suffering, but abandonment. Justice delayed (3:16–17) is justice denied in their lifetime “under the sun.” Governments are supposed to protect the oppressed and give justice to victims of crime (sin), but corruption is rampant, bribes bring favor to the rich, and the average person must fight in wars to protect ungodliness.

A menachem is one who nachams. In modern English, comfort is emotional soothing, but in Scripture, comfort is judicial relief, restored standing, and vindication in a court of law. We see many examples of this in the book of Isaiah. (For example, Isaiah 40:1, “Comfort My people.”) The Septuagint translates this into Greek as parakalōn, “one who calls alongside, exhorts, pleads, intercedes.” It is an advocate (defense attorney) in a court of law.

So Koheleth was saying that justice was denied to the oppressed people, and no one was available or willing to defend their rights in a court of law. No one pleads their case. No one advocates for them. If guilty, they had no one to give counsel to show them how to obtain mercy or justification.

On a deeper level, Koheleth was lamenting that the Holy Spirit, known as the “Comforter” (Parakletos), was not yet present to reveal the path of justification. Mercy was built into the law, but it was obscure and required New Covenant revelation to understand it well enough to use it as one’s defense.

The oppression itself is a consequence of Adam’s sin. When Adam sinned, he was sentenced to death, but God’s mercy postponed it for 930 years (Genesis 5:5). Hence, death was modified (by time) to mortality in order to allow them to reproduce and not see extinction. Yet mortality cut them off from the Tree of Life and made mankind corruptible—hence, the oppression. The age-old question, then, was how to regain right standing (“righteousness”) before the law, how to find justification in the divine court, and how to regain immortality that Adam lost.

The role of the divine Comforter is crucial. Without the advocacy of the Holy Spirit as our Defense Council, how could we know how to answer the great Accuser of the brethren? The Accuser is the Prosecuting Attorney in the divine court. He is empowered by the law on account of man’s sin, because God will not acquit the guilty apart from the prescribed solution. That solution is rooted in the fact that Christ gave His life to pay for the sin of the world. 1 John 2:1, 2 says,

¹ My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; ² and He Himself is the propitiation [expiation] for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.

Those who appeal to the Judge on those grounds (faith in Christ and His payment on debt) may claim that their Redeemer has paid the debt already. So if the Judge has not received that payment, he must deal with the Redeemer who is now responsible for that debt. This is the secret that our Defense Council has revealed to us clearly in the New Testament.

Congratulating the Dead

Ecclesiastes 4:2, 3 says,

² So I congratulated the dead who are already dead more than the living who are still living. ³ But better off than both of them is the one who has never existed, who has never seen the evil activity that is done under the sun.

Koheleth shocks the reader. The dead are better off than the living; the unborn are better than both. This is not suicidal theology, but a lament. It is not actual truth, but apparent truth. Koheleth is saying that a world that crushes the powerless is so broken that non-existence appears preferable. This is a lament, not a doctrine.

The main reason for this pessimism is given in Ecclesiastes 4:4,

⁴ I have seen that every labor and every skill which is done is the result of rivalry [qinʾāh] between a man and his neighbor. This too is vanity and striving after wind.

This noun means zeal, jealousy, envy, fierce passion. In verse 4 the underlying sense is envy-driven competition. People try to gain an advantage over their neighbors in order to increase their market share and their wealth, even if it destroys their neighbors. Their labor is not love-based.

Koheleth has just described oppression (4:1–3) and systemic injustice. Now he exposes what drives labor under such systems. Work is not primarily for provision or service, but for outdoing the neighbor. Thus, labor becomes comparative and success breeds resentment, yet achievement yields no yitrôn (lasting surplus), because it is “vanity” (temporary, like a puff of wind). This explains why toil feels hollow even when successful.

Qin’ah and Cana

For an example of qin’ah being used as a positive motive in one’s labor, see how Jesus cleansed the temple of its merchandise in John 2:14-22. Verses 16 and 17 read,

¹⁶ and to those who were selling the doves He said, “Take these things away; stop making My Father’s house a place of business.” ¹⁷ His disciples remembered that it was written [in Psalm 69:9], “Zeal for Your house will consume Me.”

There was certainly a passionate “rivalry” (or competition) between Jesus and the temple priests in regard to their manner of “business.” Each side, of course, believed his own business practice was righteous. The difference was that the priests were desecrating the temple in order to raise funds, whereas Jesus’ motive was to make the temple holy.

This incident is of particular interest, because it illustrated what had just occurred earlier in the second chapter of John, when Jesus turned the water into wine at the marriage in Cana (Kanā). The name is probably not derived directly from qin’ah but from qāneh, “a reed.” Nonetheless, Scripture often uses homonyms as a theological wordplay.

For example, Matthew 2:23 says,

²³ and came and lived in a city called Nazareth. This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophets: “He shall be called a Nazarene.”

No single prophet was being quoted here, because there is no Old Testament reference being quoted specifically. Instead, Matthew was using a wordplay on the Hebrew word nezer, “branch,” as in Isaiah 11:1,

¹ Then a shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse, and a branch [nezer] from his roots will bear fruit.”

Nazareth probably means “Branch Town.” It was part of the radical settler movement in those days, where Jews settled on a hilltop in Samaria. It is possible they were trying to legitimize their town by referring to it as a “branch” of Judea itself. But according to Matthew, the town was named prophetically to fulfill messianic prophecies. Hence, Jesus was said to be the fulfillment of the “branch” on the family tree of Jesse and his son, King David.

The Labor of Fools

Ecclesiastes 4:5, 6 says,

⁵ The fool folds his hands and consumes his own flesh. ⁶ One hand full of rest [naḥat, “quietness, restfulness, contentment”] is better than two fists full of labor and striving after wind.

The fool folds his hands is a Hebrew idiom for refusing responsibility. If labor is all based on rivalry and envy-driven competition, should we decide not to work at all? The one who does this “consumes his own flesh,” an idiom for self-destruction idleness. Koheleth says that escaping rivalry by doing nothing is not wisdom. It is slow self-harm.

Koheleth then offers a third path, neither rivalry nor resignation but “one handful of rest.” It shows sufficiency, not excess. This is not laziness, but measured labor free from envy. By contrast, “two fists full of labor” suggests grasping everything one can in the competition. The the wise counsel of Koheleth is to labor without envy and without harming one’s neighbor, even knowing that any profit that is made cannot endure beyond one’s death.