Ecclesiastes 1:5 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Ecclesiastes 1:5

Comments

This passage is about the relentless predictability of life. We see the wonderful way the word of God belittles the idea that you can trust in all human wonders and achievements. Solomon draws our attention to what should be obvious – the relentless cycles that dominate our world. These cycles are very intimidating to mankind who wants to believe he can make his mark on the world and count for something. The sun rises bringing in the new day, the birds sing, the flowers open, and we get up; all is fresh and offers a new start. Yet time rushes on, the sun goes down, the day is over, and we go to bed again – a monotonous cycle. It all adds up to a powerful illustration. It is as if the sun is hurrying endlessly on and can never rest in one place. As soon as it has risen, it hurries to set again. The Hebrew verb translated ‘hastens’ means to pant or to gasp and expresses the idea that the sun is like a person who longs to reach his goal, in the same way that someone running a race is short of breath and struggles for air. No sooner has it set than it rises again and we are back to the start all over again, but what has been accomplished by all these convulsions?These conclusions are not peculiar to Solomon; they are not observations which nobody else could be expected to make, but they are the very lessons which God has placed in this fallen world and which he wants us all to note. Viewed from the perspective of man without God, nature too appears to be trapped in various endless cycles. Each cycle brings things back to the state in which they started and the huge amount of work done in the process has accomplished nothing, but must start all over again. Everything is so predictable. Nature goes through these cycles in apparent mockery of man who observes all these things and finds himself subject to the same sorts of endless repetition in his own life, repetition which he can never break out of and which makes all that he does meaningless.

Application

The preacher can amplify these pictures and show the mechanistic inevitability of our experience without life in the soul. You would never preach a sermon that was all illustrations. In using this passage, the preacher is required to do a kind of upside-down technique of exegesis, and turn the illustrations into principles of truth. If you live without God what is life worth? The sun does the same thing every day, from a human point of view. Indulge in a little gloomy thinking. How do we describe these cycles? Something ascending – childhood, growth, success? No, it is something that is going nowhere – we are born, we are cared for as children, we grow and develop as adults, we find work, buy a house, get married, have children of our own, grow old and die. How predictable! What have we accomplished of any lasting value? Like the sun we burst forth over the horizon full of expectancy and hope, only to rush towards our final goal driven by illusions which are doomed to disappoint us. This is a picture of the generations passing, it is a picture of an individual life, and it a picture of the plans and schemes that we devise in our lives. You are trying in a sermon that does not plunge people too low, to show the futility of life. Or ambition and achievement – desire, hard work, promotion, success, pride. How much we are victims to the simple cycles of life. Or a possession – I must have it – I work, I save, I buy, I enjoy, and then I grow bored. Is life really so wonderful? Is it so clever to reject God and focus only on this life? How much the television soaps play on this kind of outlook. Life is as petty and as small as that.

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Ecclesiastes 1:5 Commentary and Bible Study