Ecclesiastes Alludes to the Covenant Meal
Ecclesiastes Verses
2:24 שֶׁיֹּאכַ֣ל וְשָׁתָ֔ה וְהֶרְאָ֧ה אֶת־נַפְשֹׁ֛ו טֹ֖וב בַּעֲמָלֹ֑ו (1)(
“There is nothing better for people than to eat and drink, and to find enjoyment in their work.”
3:13 כָּל-הָאָדָם שֶׁיֹּאכַל וְשָׁתָה, וְרָאָה טוֹב בְּכָל-עֲמָלוֹ
“...all adams (2) [everyone] should eat and drink, and find enjoyment in all his toil”
5:18 הִנֵּה אֲשֶׁר-רָאִיתִי אָנִי, טוֹב אֲשֶׁר-יָפֶה לֶאֱכוֹל-וְלִשְׁתּוֹת וְלִרְאוֹת טוֹבָה בְּכָל-עֲמָלוֹ שֶׁיַּעֲמֹל תַּחַת-הַשֶּׁמֶשׁ
“Right now, immediately [behold!]I have seen what is the only beneficial and appropriate course of action for people: to eat and drink, and find enjoyment in all their hard work under the sun…”
8:15
אֵין-טוֹב לָאָדָם תַּחַת הַשֶּׁמֶשׁ, כִּי אִם-לֶאֱכֹל וְלִשְׁתּוֹת וְלִשְׂמוֹחַ; וְהוּא יִלְוֶנּוּ בַעֲמָלוֹ
“for there is nothing better under the sun for adam [everyone] to do except to eat, drink, and enjoy life.”
9:7 יֵינֶ֑ךָ בְלֶב־טֹ֖וב וּֽשֲׁתֵ֥ה לַחְמֶ֔ךָ בְּשִׂמְחָה֙ אֱכֹ֤ל לֵ֣ךְ
“Go, eat your food with joy, and drink your wine with a happy heart,”
10:19 לִשְׂחוֹק עֹשִׂים לֶחֶם, וְיַיִן יְשַׂמַּח
“A feast [bread] is made for laughter, and wine makes life merry,”
Ecclesiastes Connects to Three Covenant Meals
Many scholars and laypeople believe Ecclesiastes is not, and cannot be, connected with any of the books of the Bible. Yet, in our hearts, we know this must not be true. When people do try to fit it into the rest of Scripture, they will typically try to connect it in one of two ways. 1.) Ecclesiastes is responding/reacting to the entrenched teaching, “If you do this, this will happen” of Proverbs.” and 2.) Ecclesiastes shows us our need for God by the Solomonic Preacher giving us a life lesson in what not to do.
We believe this book is much more connected to the whole story of Scripture than people frequently assume. This essay will give you one really deeply connected example of how Ecclesiastes is saturated with the whole story of Scripture, and how the message of Ecclesiastes is deeply connected to the life of the church and our public worship. We believe Ecclesiastes connects the goodness that God instituted at creation (Gen.1:31, etc.) to three covenant meals. Those meals are the covenantal meal of redemption (as referenced in Exodus 24 at Sinai), the covenantal meal of communion, or the Lord’s supper, instituted by our Lord Jesus Christ as one of the signs of the New Covenant, and the covenantal meal at the consummation of all things as described in Isaiah 25:6 and Revelation 19:6-9. The ideas expressed in the beginning verses of this article are a series of ideas seen through the historical-redemptive lens of scripture. This lens is also called biblical theology.
Biblical Theology
Biblical theology approaches the Bible with two things in primary focus. First, it emphasizes the whole biblical storyline. This emphasis looks for continuity, tracing how each book uniquely contributes to the whole of the Bible. Second, biblical theology views each individual book of the bible in the light of the immediate context. This emphasis examines and highlights the special contribution of each individual book within the Bible and that book’s own historical setting. These two points of emphasis allow for biblical theology to study the unique details, features, and themes of individual books while appreciating the continuity of the whole of the Bible. Biblical theology asks of each book, “How does the book fit into or contribute to the covenantal, historical-redemptive theme of scripture?” Of all the themes in scripture, the covenant is one of the repeated overarching themes of scripture, running through every book, revealing how God forms a relationship with His people. The most important element in covenantal, historical, or biblical theology is the core teaching of scriptures, God’s redemption of His creation. (3)
Find Enjoyment, Take Pleasure, Be Joyful
The command to eat and drink and “find enjoyment” (Eccl 2:24) “take pleasure” (Eccl 3:13) or “be joyful” (Eccl 9:7) turns a life of toil and labor into a blessing. The joy of eating and drinking bloomed from the flower of creation when God established rest as an outpouring and reward for created life. The summons to “make your heart merry with strong drink” is often coupled with the delights of eating and drinking. In Genesis 2, God tells His newly created image bearer, Adam, that he may eat of ALL the produce in the garden (except one), and then God commands His image bearers to “have dominion and cultivate the earth.” Perhaps a paraphrase of this is “make it your own for my glory.”
Fermentation and the enjoyment of strong drinks can aid in making one's heart merry and glad. But the soon-felt effects of the fall in Genesis 3 moved God, in his infinite wisdom, to make a stronger connection between the strong drink and the redemption of all people. It is in Ecclesiastes that these phrases become allusions that point back to the covenant meal in Exodus and types pointing forward to the coming redemption of all things promised in Isaiah 25:6-8. These meals were previews of the fulfillment of the covenantal meal of the Lord’s Supper. It is no stretch to say that the Preacher (the author of Ecclesiastes) and the one good shepherd (Jesus Christ) are intentionally preaching the story of God to his congregation, and even though we don’t see it immediately, his intended listeners would have easily recognized those allusions due to their familiarity with God’s covenant.
Let’s see how these ideas of a covenant meal, joy, and strong drink play out in Scripture’s redemptive history. The passages to consider are Exodus 24:3-11 and Isaiah 25:6-8, in the communion meal of the church (instituted for us at the last supper), and lastly and ultimately at the banquet feast of the Lord in the final consummation of all things.
In Exodus 24, Israel has received the Law of God on Mount Sinai. To ceremonially enact the covenant, Yahweh allows the 70 elders, Moses and Aaron, and his sons who serve as priests, Nadab and Abihu, to climb the mountain and have a feast with their covenant LORD. It is here where they “beheld God,” then eat and drink together (have a feast):
Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the rules. And all the people answered with one voice and said, “All the words that the Lord has spoken we will do.” And Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord. He rose early in the morning and built an altar at the foot of the mountain, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel. And he sent young men of the people of Israel, who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to the Lord. And Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he threw against the altar. Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read it in the hearing of the people. And they said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.” And Moses took the blood and threw it on the people and said, “Behold the blood of the covenant (4) that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.” Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up, and they saw the God of Israel. There was under his feet as it were a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness. And he did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel; they beheld God, and ate and drank.” Exodus 24:3-11
This covenant meal is pivotal to Israel's faith in God and His people. The New Testament surely connects the significance of this meal to the New Covenant meal known as the Lord’s Supper. The covenant meal in Exodus 24 is an extension of the covenant at creation and begins with Israel agreeing to the conditions of the covenant. For it is here that God eats and drinks with Israel and reminds us of the gift of rest and marriage (feasting) instituted at creation. The covenant seal of approval is finalized by both parties with a partaking of a meal together. Such a meal represented the end of covenant negotiations and the approval of both covenant parties. To illustrate this with a culturally relevant example, in India a Christian wedding is finalized with several handshakes between the bride and groom, the wedding couple and the family, and a handshake and a final benediction between the pastor and the bride and groom. In an American wedding, there is a pronouncement that under God these two are now bound in a covenantal marriage relationship, and then a kiss. And in both American and Indian weddings a feast follows the wedding ceremony. Therefore the meal at Sinai must not be overlooked. This feast is significant because it reminds us that God’s blessing is upon this covenantal marriage. In our American context, the feast is a formality for celebration, but in the ANE (ancient Near Eastern) world a marriage feast is inextricably bound to the liturgy. The text itself says in 24:11 “They beheld (saw) God, and they ate and they drank.” It assumes Israel’s eating and drinking with Yahweh, now their covenant partner was the correct response to Yahweh’s appearance. He had promised to “be their God and they will be His people'' Leviticus 26:11-12.
Now His people were sharing a covenantal meal with their God without fear of judgment, and this meal points to the final banquet when we will fellowship in like manner with our God without the restraints of living under the sun. The mountain place in Exodus is described with similar language to the place where we will feast with God in heaven. Compare Exodus 24:10 with Rev. 21:18-22:
There was under his feet as it were a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness…
Revelation 21:18-22:
The wall was built of jasper, while the city was pure gold, like clear glass. The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with every kind of jewel. The first was jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, the fifth onyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, the twelfth amethyst. And the twelve gates were twelve pearls, each of the gates made of a single pearl, and the street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass. And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.
Isaiah 25:6-8 is one of the richest text combining these ideas:
On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. And he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken.
When you eat with someone, you are expressing many things regarding your relationship with that person. If you eat with a business partner, the meal looks very different than if you eat with a close personal friend. Feasts are even more important. You rarely feast with someone you don’t like, and more importantly, you usually don’t feast with someone you disagree with unless you’re negotiating the terms of an agreement. So God enjoying a covenantal meal with Israel demonstrates God’s love, commitment, and approval of Israel herself. God’s people are called to prepare for the divine encounter. The closeness of God and His holiness demands special acts of symbolic and indeed, sacramental significance.
These passages in Exodus and Isaiah remind us of the motto and refrain of Ecclesiastes when the preacher says, “There is nothing better for a man than to eat, drink, and be merry.” The assertion that “everything is hevel (futility, see Romans 8:20)” is usually understood as a negative decree on the finiteness of man under the sun, for the Preacher repeatedly says, “What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun? The hevel which the Preacher describes is the very world in which he also experiences the sacramental significance of eating, drinking, and being merry.
Often a new experience is described with old words and phrases because we cannot comprehend what has happened or how we feel towards said experience. After the first atomic bomb was dropped near Los Alamos NM in 1945 Oppenheimer described himself as “Death, the destroyer of worlds” from the Hindu Bhagavad Gita. Oppenhiemer’s Sanskrit teacher Stephen Thompson said Oppenhiemer made sense of his actions with this phrase. A simpler example is the computer phrases we use to describe our brain, words like “memory storage” “downloading”, etc. We don’t know how it works so we bridge the gap with phrases that make sense to us. So how does this long-winded example help up with the Preacher's allusion to the covenant meal, and ultimately the Lord’s Supper? The Preacher doesn’t have the Greek (or Hebrew) words “sacrament” or “Lord’s Supper”. However, he does have the ideas of the Lord’s Supper and Sacrament. He knows that we are found “under the sun” and Yahweh is above the sun. He knows we can’t get above the sun with our own actions and our fallen state. (5) The Preacher also knows that Yahweh can't just make us right with his actions, but needs to intervene in a special way. This special way is through His actions alone and therefore they are especially gracious. Because this redemption is special, it also changes the way Yahweh’s people need to act.
In the second part, we will try to convince the church that the Lord’s Supper should be a hearty feasting meal, as we show Ecclesiastes’ “eating, drinking, and being merry” is a prophetic foretaste into the New Testament’s covenantal meal, the Lord’s Supper. As Christians, we can and should do better with the Lord's Supper because it is a window we look through to see the deeper reality of our fellowship with the Good Shepherd.
Footnotes:
1. We have included the Hebrew here with our own translation to ensure Hebrew readers we have done our homework. If you don’t know Hebrew, that’s ok. Just read the English.
2. We have chosen to keep the awkward transliteration of the Hebrew “adams” because we believe it was the author’s original intent for both meanings to take center stage. Hebrew words begin with a root meaning and add meanings onto the root depending on context and intention. “Adams” could be translated “ground, soil, Earth, land”. It is also used as a proper name “Adam” (Genesis 2:20). Here it is plural so it could be translated “all people” or “mankind” or literally “all descendants of Adam.”
3. See G.K.Beale’s A New Testament Biblical Theology: An Unfolding of the Old Testament in the New. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic. 2011.
4. Interestingly these bold words are the words of Christ when He is instituting the Lord’s supper in Matthew 26:28, “This is my blood of the covenant,...” We will be examining this text in more detail below.
5. We will soon be writing on the Ecclesiastes connections with the first few chapters of Genesis. Stay tuned!