Ecclesiastes 3:19 Commentary and Bible Study

When God spoke to Adam in the garden of Eden, he warned him of the consequences of disobedience. Adam knew that in the day that he ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil he would surely die, and death would become the pattern for all human existence. Though Adam understood this he chose to sin against God and death entered the world through sin, and, in this way, death came upon all men. Moreover, God subjected the whole creation including the animal kingdom to futility and as a result death rules over all creatures. This was not done for the animals’ sake as if they were themselves guilty of disobedience, for they are not moral creatures and are not capable of good or evil. They were subjected for man’s sake that he should see the enormity of what he had done: that he had ruined not only his own soul but the whole of the creation which had been made for him and in which God had placed him. He was forced to look upon a world that is nowhere free from the corruption that has affected his own heart. Therefore, although he has eternity within him so that this short life can never satisfy his hunger for life, and although he was created to know God and have fellowship with him, to explore the wonders of God’s works and trace God’s thoughts after him, God has punished him by reducing him to the level of an animal. Death reigns in the animal kingdom, and we note the indignity of life’s end on multitudes of creatures. We ask ourselves, are we no different? Certainly, we feel that we should be and so we bury our dead and try to honour them as best we can, as much for our own sake as for theirs. But we cannot stop the decay of the body and we are deeply disturbed by death. The animals kill and consume each other and there is a fearful brutality and cruelty in nature which we only begin to grasp. Though there is evidence of care and compassion in the higher animals so that they nurture and protect their young and even grieve in some way at the loss of mates, there is endless savagery and apparent waste of life. Must man who has the gift of reason, of language, of creativity, who studies the world and learns to subdue it, who is able to obey God’s commandments and worship him; must he be reduced to the same state as the animals, as if he were no different from them? Solomon does not mean that there is no difference between man and animals; he has been describing those respects in which man is high above the animals. What he means is that God has troubled men and women by sending death into the world in order to undermine and contradict our very natures. Death makes no distinction between man and the beasts, and so God seems to ignore those special gifts that ought to single us out. To those without faith this is how things seem to be in this world, and any attempt to make sense of it causes the heart to ache.Psalm 49:20 Man that is in honour, and understandeth not, is like the beasts that perish.