Ecclesiastes 3:20 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

Navigator

Ecclesiastes 3:20

Comments

Some interpreters have found this and the surrounding verses difficult, because they appear to teach things that are so much at odds with the rest of the Bible. Surely there is a difference between man and the animals in their death and in their prospects in the afterlife. Surely Scripture is crystal clear that man has an eternal soul and the animals do not; that man must face judgment for the deeds done in the body and spend eternity either in heaven or in hell, but the animals, not being moral agents, are not morally accountable and do not have any abiding existence. How can this passage then appear to teach the opposite: that there is no difference at all between them? The answer of course is that Solomon, as so often in this book, is arguing from the perspective of the natural man. He is describing the world as it appears to man under the sun, man who walks by sight not by faith, man who does not believe God’s revelation and therefore knows only what he can learn from darkened reason and from his five senses. To such a one, death is apparently the end, for he cannot see beyond the physical fact of death and all creatures appear to share a common fate.

Application

The bodies of both the animals and of man are made of the same basic materials, the same chemicals that are the stuff of all life. Man is specifically said to have been formed by God from the dust of the earth. His earthiness forbids him to aspire to another higher realm, for flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven, and, although the natural man would not express it in this way, he sees what happens to animal bodies and knows that his body will also decay, and the weight of these realisations effectively crushes his hope. What is the difference between the dust into which an animal’s body decays and that into which he will decay? Death is like a vice which crushes his hope and its strength is too great to resist. How many lessons God has put in place to wake us up and bring us to our senses! But man is stubborn beyond words and refuses both mercy and severity.

Questions

Outline

Purpose

Introduction

Ecclesiastes 3:20 Commentary and Bible Study