We Cannot Go Above The Sun, Praise God! Tips to understand Ecclesiastes By Eric Karloski & Stephen Fields
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We Cannot Go Above the Sun, Praise God!
Have you ever heard the expression “This is like herding cats?” The ironic phrase communicates an impossible task. Life can be filled with moments that feel like herding cats. How does the Bible speak about the seemingly overwhelming emptiness of life? What comfort or hope is there when all we do seems to end with roadblocks or leave us feeling hopeless? Ecclesiastes speaks with words that echo our experiences, and provide a hope beyond all that incessant chasing. In fact, a main refrain in the book is that life feels like we are “shepherding wind”. However, the preacher’s iconic and ironic phrase runs even deeper than just the way we feel about life. It speaks to the very heart of why life is so often “like herding cats”, or “shepherding wind”.
In this article we will give three tools to understand Ecclesiastes and aid in comprehending this OT sermon as you study and read it: 1.) How the Preacher combines multiple word meanings into a single word to craft a relevant theological truth about common ordinary life, 2.) We will then show how the Preacher utilizes the common (in the ancient world) metaphor of “shepherd” to expose a deeper truth about our inability to find meaning in this life “under the sun”. Lastly, 3.) We will show why our search for meaning in life “under the sun” is utter futility and blinds us to the good and ordinary gifts of God, which include eating, drinking, and being merry, when it is done apart from the one good shepherd.
A Shepherding of the Wind
The imagery of a shepherd is prevalent throughout agrarian/farming cultures. So it would not surprise anyone that we find a handful of words in the Old Testament which directly and indirectly relate to such a vivid and common metaphor. One of the wordsmiths who uses this shepherd metaphor is the author of Ecclesiastes, the Preacher, who often likes to combine two or three meanings into a single word.
In Ecclesiastes 1:14, the Preacher says, “I have seen all the works that have been done under the sun, and indeed right now: Everything is hevel – like shepherding the wind!” (1:14). Hevel itself is the most used term in Ecclesiastes. The plain meaning of hevel is something like a breath, vapor, smoke, something transient or impermanent, futility. The prophets loved to use hevel when referring to the practice of idol worship (See 2 Kings 17:15 & Zechariah 10:2). In fact, in Jeremiah 14:22, the prophet calls the idols themselves “hevel”;
“Are there any among the vanities (idols) of the Gentiles that can cause rain? or can the heavens give showers? art not thou he, O LORD our God? therefore we will wait upon thee: for thou hast made all these things.”
Why are idols “futile, " or like “smoke”, and why is worship of them purposeless? The psalmist writes in Psalm 115:4-8 a clear answer to this question:
“4 But their idols are silver and gold made by human hands. 5 They (idols) have mouths, but cannot speak, eyes, but cannot see. 6 They (idols) have ears, but cannot hear, noses, but cannot smell. 7 They (idols) have hands, but cannot feel, feet, but cannot walk, nor can they (idols) utter a sound with their throats.8 Those who make them will be like them, and so will all who trust in them.”
How foolish and utterly futile it is to worship and rely on an object that is devoid of every sensory function! Such worship is hevel! Such idols are hevel!
The word hevel is also the name of Abel in Genesis 4. A mature reader of Scripture might ask if the Preacher in Ecclesiastes is connecting the narrative meaning from the Abel and Cain story to impart additional meaning into the word hevel in this new wisdom context. Lastly, the word hevel has a numerical value of 37, the exact amount of times the term is used in the book. Was the author trying to stun us with a simple mathematical trick, or was he trying to show the pronouncement that “all is hevel” is complete and without rival? These layers of meaning are all packed tightly to emphasize and underscore the Preacher’s point. Life under the sun is hevel.
Hevel is not the only word packed with layers of meaning in Ecclesiastes. The verb “to shepherd” in Biblical Hebrew is most complex. Most translations typically choose to render the Hebrew (ra’ah) into English as longing, grasping, chasing, striving, or desiring because the word does indeed mean those things depending on the context. However, the Preacher of Ecclesiastes wants to pack more meaning into the word, which has its roots in the verb “pasture, graze, tend” and is often rendered as the verb “shepherd.” Grasping or chasing the wind and “shepherding the wind” have conceptual similarities. Both are intentional actions attempting to do something of substance to “wind” which itself is without substance. Of course this means you’re trying with all your skill and ability and talent to accomplish an impossible task, because the wind cannot be captured, nor be shepherded, no matter how hard you try. Indeed, the author’s main point throughout the whole book is exactly this; your striving under the sun gives you no ultimate answer. One could paraphrase 1:14 as “everything is purposeless, like doing something purposeless.” However, adding the additional shepherding metaphor allows the author to make a more dynamic point. Every man, woman, and child observing and living under the sun cannot see the world from God’s perspective. Our perspective “all the way down here” represents a deeply flat, subjective, one-sided mortal perspective. We as humans are limited in sight which only allows us to see that everything is hevel. Everything is shepherding the wind. We are given the miserable and unrewarding task of shepherding something un-shepherdable.
THE GOOD SHEPHERD
The Preacher, in his prophetic office, sets his aged, dim eyes on the intransient reality of the One good Shepherd. The Old Testament employs the metaphor of a shepherd over 50 times, from “The Lord is my Shepherd” in Psalms 23:1, to Ezekiel 34:11-12:
For thus says the Yahweh God: I myself, right now(!) will search for my sheep and will seek them out. As a shepherd seeks out his flock when he is among his sheep that have been scattered, so will I seek out my sheep, and I will rescue them from all places where they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness.
Notice the verbs in this text. A shepherd’s job is to search, seek out (x3), and rescue his flock. The preacher of Ecclesiastes is directing us to switch our focus from ourselves (the Law) to our God (the Gospel) because God is all sufficient to supply our needs, even in this graciously ordinary world. Left on our own, we cannot shepherd the wind, it is beyond our ability to provide meaning and purpose under the sun. What we’ve been trying to accomplish ourselves for so long is and will only end in frustration and despair. In contrast, God has provided the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has known from all eternity that we could never go above the sun. In the good wisdom of Jesus Christ, the wisdom of God (I Cor. 1:24), He had to come down to us in the incarnation. God himself stooped his knee and forever took on a human nature in order that we can ultimately derive meaning under the sun. Now the act of shepherding the wind has been given to the Son of God, who shepherds us. We are no longer bound to our feeble attempts to harness and control the endless cycles of nature as seen in Ecclesiastes 2.
Ecclesiastes highlights this stark contrast between attempting to shepherd the wind ourselves, striving and grasping after purpose, meaning, relevance, and legacy - and trusting the One who is the good shepherd who gives and blesses us with those things. When we work to gain significance for our lives “under the sun”, and to obtain a relationship with our Creator through our own abilities and talents we have seen it leads to “hevel”, or “vapor”, and it produces the purposeless activity of “shepherding the wind”. The Law of God through the Mosaic covenant, and the Preacher-King of Ecclesiastes is teaching us how to know our own misery (Law), and here has tried to prophetically show us our task is to serve and follow the one good Shepherd who is to come. Our attempts to use the Law of God to find ultimate meaning have produced a life of chasing our tails and grasping for meaning in ourselves. The rebellion of our first parents (Adam and Eve) has produced progeny with the same fruitless desires. In the US, we call this “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” No one is to get in our way of this pursuit, and if they do our culture cancels them. The preacher of Ecclesiastes and our Good Shepherd are emphasizing this signpost over and over (37x) in order for us stubborn and stiff-necked sheep to trust in our Creator, Shepherd to guide us instead of relying on our own efforts!
Jesus declares in John 10:11, “I am the good Shepherd, the good Shepherd gives his life for his sheep.” We have a good Shepherd who gives up His own life voluntarily for the salvation of His rebellious creatures. If we try to give ourselves or our labors to achieve life then we end up “shepherding wind”. Since the good Shepherd gave His sinless, good life for us, He secures for His sheep life, rest, and security in Him, beginning even in the present life “under the sun”.
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. (1 Corinthians 15:56-58 ESV)
Paul seems in some way to be echoing the preacher in Ecclesiastes in I Corinthians 15. He says that because of sin everything “under the sun” has become temporal, and “shepherding wind”. If we continue to strive in our own abilities to obtain forgiveness and acceptance with God, we labor in vain. However, notice in I Cor. 15:57: “Thanks be to GOD! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” NOT YOU! It is God who works in you His redemption and gives you the motivation and desire to pursue His work (Phil. 2:13). If it is God who is working in you through His Holy Spirit, then 15:58b: “...you know your labor will not be in vain”. This is the only way to live in such a way that is meaningful, purposeful, and lasting - to live forsaking your own striving as a means to lasting satisfaction and instead live trusting that He has secured for His sheep in the person and work of Jesus Christ our redemption and ultimately rest and peace with our Creator.
We present you with a simple and yet workable liturgy you can present to God as an acceptable and worthy act of family worship with your families.
The One Good Shepherd Family Liturgy
Reading of Scripture: Psalm 49 & Ecclesiastes 3 & 5
Questions for reflecting on the reading:
#1: What are some identical themes between Psalms 49 and chapters 3 and 5 of Ecclesiastes?
#2: Why would the righteous and the wicked and the beasts of the field all have the same end to their lives?
Responsive prayers of reflections: pray each line responsively in succession one after the other!
Father: O God, you are our One good shepherd.
Mother: May you protect us from all evil.
Children: May you guide us to streams of living water.
Father: May you feed us with the help of the wind of your Holy Spirit and let us rest in the spiritual food of your word.
Mother: May you continually herd your flock with your rod and staff, so we do not go wayward, because we would be lousy sheep always straying. We want to safely reside in your pasture under the sun and fully rest in your good pleasure.
Children: May we respond to the sound of the preacher’s harp and pipe as we are called each Sunday with the assembly to gather in the merriment of our Good Shepherd’s feast.
Song: O God, They Constant Care & Love Psalter Hymnal (Grey), 592
Father: May we detest our sin and fall face down at your feet knowing that through our own actions we should not look to our own achievements, ending in futility and frustration.
Mother: Instead, let us who are under the sun gather close to the One above the sun who holds the office of Prophet, Priest, and King, so we can eat, drink, and be merry as we feast on the sovereign promises of God.
All: Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. (Hebrews 13:20-21 ESV)
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