Main news for 21 November 2024

The conclusion that righteous and wise deeds do not depend on human will but are in the hand of God prompts the thought that human deeds become meaningless and vain when a person tries to do something contrary to His will. Meanwhile in everyday life, though people do not renounce Him in theory, they too often build their lives as if He did not exist.

If both the wicked and the good await one fate, then the greatest possible way out of such a situation is to live and rejoice while one is alive and can use what one has. Ecclesiastes has spoken of this more than once already, though here this conclusion is given by him in greater detail. Only he cannot manage to stop at such a conclusion; again and again Ecclesiastes returns to the question of the injustice reigning in the world.

The example that follows, of undeserved inattention to the wisdom of a poor man, could serve as a vivid image of the absurdity reigning in the world. But the very fact that one can raise the question of injustice permitted toward a person, without limiting oneself to acknowledging that everything is absurd, shows that deep in his soul the one reflecting does not intend to reduce everything to the formula "all is vanity."