Ecclesiastes 8King James Version
A man's wisdom maketh his face to shine, and the boldness of his face shall be changed. I know that it shall be well with them that fear God. Yet the righteous sometimes perish, and the wicked sometimes prosper. Then I commended mirth, because a man hath no better thing under the sun than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry.
Qoheleth counsels submission to royal authority, acknowledges the limits of human power over life and death, and then confronts the deepest injustice: the wicked are buried with honor while the righteous are forgotten. He commends eating and drinking again, not as escapism but as the honest response to a world whose workings cannot be fully understood. No wise man can find out what God does from beginning to end.
Political power and divine providence both operate beyond what human wisdom can fully map, and accepting that limitation is itself a kind of wisdom.
15: "Then I commended mirth, because a man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry: for that shall abide with him of his labour the days of his life." Not hedonism, not escapism: the recognition that joy in simple things is one of the only goods that holds.
A royal court, or at least a man who has advised in one. The counsel to obey the king includes a note about timing and judgment, which suggests someone who has navigated power carefully. Late in life, reviewing what he has seen over decades of watching the powerful be buried with honor they did not earn.
Qoheleth, and the abstract figures of the king, the wicked man who is honored at death, and the righteous man who is forgotten. The king's commandment in verse 2 suggests a court setting, a man who knows how power works from the inside.
The observation about the wicked buried with honor has been cited in every era that has watched unjust people die in comfort while good people suffer. Qoheleth does not resolve it. He says God will deal with it and then admits he cannot see how. The honesty is the point.
For when justice seems permanently delayed and the wrong people keep winning. Qoheleth sees it clearly and does not offer a tidy resolution, which is more honest than most of what gets preached about this problem.
1Who is as the wise man? and who knoweth the interpretation of a thing? a man's wisdom maketh his face to shine, and the boldness of his face shall be changed.
2I counsel thee to keep the king's commandment, and that in regard of the oath of God.
3Be not hasty to go out of his sight: stand not in an evil thing; for he doeth whatsoever pleaseth him.
4Where the word of a king is, there is power: and who may say unto him, What doest thou?
5Whoso keepeth the commandment shall feel no evil thing: and a wise man's heart discerneth both time and judgment.
6Because to every purpose there is time and judgment, therefore the misery of man is great upon him.
7For he knoweth not that which shall be: for who can tell him when it shall be?
8There is no man that hath power over the spirit to retain the spirit; neither hath he power in the day of death: and there is no discharge in that war; neither shall wickedness deliver those that are given to it.
9All this have I seen, and applied my heart unto every work that is done under the sun: there is a time wherein one man ruleth over another to his own hurt.
10And so I saw the wicked buried, who had come and gone from the place of the holy, and they were forgotten in the city where they had so done: this is also vanity.
11Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.
12Though a sinner do evil an hundred times, and his days be prolonged, yet surely I know that it shall be well with them that fear God, which fear before him:
13But it shall not be well with the wicked, neither shall he prolong his days, which are as a shadow; because he feareth not before God.
14There is a vanity which is done upon the earth; that there be just men, unto whom it happeneth according to the work of the wicked; again, there be wicked men, to whom it happeneth according to the work of the righteous: I said that this also is vanity.
15Then I commended mirth, because a man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry: for that shall abide with him of his labour the days of his life, which God giveth him under the sun.
16When I applied mine heart to know wisdom, and to see the business that is done upon the earth: (for also there is that neither day nor night seeth sleep with his eyes:)
17Then I beheld all the work of God, that a man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun: because though a man labour to seek it out, yet he shall not find it; yea further; though a wise man think to know it, yet shall he not be able to find it.