Dealing With the Awkward Cousin (Meditations on Ecclesiastes)

Solomon must have been an interesting guy. Of the 3 Old Testament books attributed to him, there's exactly 1 we're all pretty comfortable with... Proverbs, brilliant book of timeless wisdom and insight into human life and nature. But then there are those other two, the ones about which we may be tempted to wonder how they ever made it into the Bible. We've got Song of Solomon on the one hand, a very personal poem about love, sex and physical beauty. And then on the other hand, there's Ecclesiastes, a book about the apparent meaninglessness of life. At face value, it's an pretty pessimistic look at reality, and one that for most of my life, I have to admit, I've always been a little puzzled by. In fact, while it's certainly not universal (my husband and brother-in-law both count Ecclesiastes as very instrumental in their coming to follow Jesus), my guess is that many of us struggle with the existence of this little book. Maybe it's because there are parts of it that seem to contradict other parts of the Bible. Maybe it's because of the continual refrain that everything under the sun is futile, which seems just a little negative for a book inspired by God. For me, I think the most troubling thing about the thoughts in Ecclesiastes is that there are so many questions in it that really resonate with me when life is difficult, and this makes me exceedingly uncomfortable because these are very questions I feel guilty about asking, the ones I would never dare to approach God with.

But whatever I may feel about it, Ecclesiastes IS part of God's holy word, so I can't just ignore it. If this book belongs to God's revelation of himself to us, than I cannot just shut it up in the closet, like that awkward cousin at the family reunion that everyone just pretends doesn't exist. If it is God's word to me, than it has important things to say, and I shut my ears at my own peril.

So, all that being said, I recently decided it was time to really dig into this book, even if it makes me squirm. And what I'm finding as I read and study it is that, just as in all Scripture, there is much wealth to be mined here, things I wish I had had a better grasp of long before now. So over the next few weeks, I plan to post a few meditations on this troubling, puzzling, abundantly rich Old Testament book. If you want to study further, there are some good commentaries out there. The main ones I'm using are both accessible to lay people:

The Message of Ecclesiastes by Derek Kidner (not technical at all)
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon by Duane A. Garrett (more detailed, technicalities mostly limited to footnotes)

These commentaries come to the book from slightly different points of view, so they are helpful together.

Stay tuned to help me deal with that awkward cousin!