Ecclesiastes and the human condition

Christian responses to the book of Ecclesiastes (Qoheleth or the "Preacher") usually fall into two categories. The modern response tends to identify the text as thoroughly non-Christian, pessimistic, and included in the canon of scripture only by virtue of being considered one of the ancient "wisdom" texts. (Similar statements are often made in the case of the Song of Songs, pegged as an erotic poem and thoroughly secular in its intended meaning.) A more ancient response is offered by the patristic tradition of the early church: to see the enjoyment of life's good things as an allegory for the soul's delight in spiritual matters, so that the bread and wine of Ecclesiastes 9:7, for example, prefigure the Christian's bliss in partaking of the Eucharist. (Likewise, one traditional patristic response to the Song of Songs has been to interpret it as an allegory of the passionate love between God the Lover and the soul as the Beloved.)

I think we can read Ecclesiastes in another way as well, however. Its wisdom lies not in giving sage advice, or in simply being another collection of quaint ancient Near Eastern sayings, but rather in its painfully accurate description of the human condition. As revelation, scripture reveals, and in this case, reveals facets of human nature that ring all too true for any person having lived on this earth for more than a few years: the ultimate futility of work, pleasure, ambition, endeavor, all of which will be annihilated by death (Eccles 6:1-6); the lack of any certainty of ultimate justice (3:16-22); the nagging, bitter conviction that, inevitably, "things fall apart" according to inexorable cosmic laws that seem intentionally designed to frustrate any human efforts to establish a lasting dignity for oneself (12:1-8). In short, Ecclesiastes describes, often with haunting beauty, the brokenness that every human being without exception must experience. In this, the words of "the Preacher" point to the Incarnation: Jesus himself would labor under the burdens of this nature, would experience to the full its sorrows and frustrations, would face--in Gethsemane and on the cross--the almost certain conviction that "all is vanity," emptiness, loss, pointlessness. Yes, the cross is victory, but at the price of Jesus' experience of an emptiness so complete that he could express it only by that piercing cry of horror that must echo until the end of time: Eli, eli lama sabachthani?