Ecclesiastes 1:11 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Ecclesiastes 1:11

Comments

What is a life worth if there is no remembrance of that person after they have passed from the earth? How transient life is, measured by what we leave behind when we are gone. Maybe a man gains some fame from his accomplishments during his life, perhaps through his writings, or his ideas, or his influence on his contemporaries, and hopes that these will outlast him. We hear it said of celebrities that we will never forget them, but never is a big word, and the truth is their memory does not last very long at all. Few attain fame in this world and fewer still attain lasting fame. Some imagine that they will live on in some way through their children; they pass on as much of themselves as they can to their children in the form of their ideas and opinions, their tastes and perspectives, but the son does not really live life for his father – he has his own life to live. To console ourselves with the thought that we will be remembered after we are gone is vanity for we are remembered by only a few select individuals who were close to us and not for very long. Do you know much about the people who were living in your house before you? What about the people before them? Most of us have to say that we know very little about those who lived in the past, yet when they were alive they were just as real as we are, and their fears, hopes, delights were just as important to them as ours are to us. Where has all that gone? We have replaced them on earth, perhaps occupying their houses, their land, their jobs, but are we not completely different individuals to them, and didn’t they have their own experiences which are not transferable to us?

Application

What is the remembrance of former things? We find it hard to conceive of a time when we will be gone from the earth, except in a very theoretical way. Men and women, knowing that they cannot stay alive indefinitely, hope somehow to be preserved in other people’s memories, but most feel no obligation to keep alive those memories and what good would it do anyway? Vast numbers of lives have disappeared; the self-important are now totally unknown, the achievements of the proud have been lost, the anxieties of the fearful are of no consequence. Earth has been wiped clean, like a beach by the incoming tide; the tide goes out and leaves a new blank tableau for the next generation to start again. Life is therefore worth nothing if it is measured by what is remembered. But what else does the unbeliever have since he is convinced there is no afterlife, no God, no world to come? Such vain things as the memories of the next generation are all they have left to console themselves with.

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Ecclesiastes 1:11 Commentary and Bible Study