NOTES for Ecc 5:2-20
Ecclesiastes examines the human idea of happiness to see whether anything can quench the thirst for eternity that God has placed in his heart. Yet what he sees in the world first and foremost is suffering. Life appears to him as a succession of pointless labours accompanied by many injustices. Envy and loneliness, deceit and oppression poison the lives of rich and poor alike, king and commoner. And this suffering is as meaningless as the abundance and contentment Ecclesiastes experienced in chapter 2. A person's earthly lot stands in striking contrast to the gift of eternity received from God. Yet all that remains is to accept what has fallen to one's lot and try to rejoice in it.
The words about worshipping God with which Ecclesiastes opens chapter five occupy a special place in it. ‘Be readier to listen than to offer sacrifice,’ he instructs the reader, contrary to the common ideas of his time. Like the prophet Samuel, who told King Saul that ‘obedience is better than sacrifice, and heeding than the fat of rams’ (1 Sam. 15:22), Ecclesiastes sees the meaning of faith and worship in remembering God and obeying his voice. Later, the book's editor will repeat this thought in the closing verses of the final chapter. Here, however, in the context of the book, what is most striking is that Ecclesiastes' thoughts on knowing and worshipping God go no further. He understands listening to God, which could wholly transform the vanity of earthly life, merely as obedience to the Law and fulfilment of the commandments. In Ecclesiastes' spiritual experience, this alone does not yet bring the fullness of communion with God. This is one reason why Ecclesiastes may be called the last book before the New Testament.
There is no comforter in suffering, God is far from humanity, and everything else is vanity. This is what brings Ecclesiastes to the thought that concludes chapter five: a person can only be content with the little good God grants in this life. In the next chapter, however, Ecclesiastes' straightforward and honest mind challenges this thesis.