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NOTES for Ecc 5:1

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1 Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God, and be more ready to hear, than to give the sacrifice of fools: for they consider not that they do evil.
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How could it happen that a believing Yahwist became, spiritually speaking, almost a Buddhist? After all, Yahwism is much more definite spiritually than Buddhism: it has a personal God, conscious relationships with Him, and a view of the world as God's creation. But all this "works" on one indispensable condition: personal and conscious relationships with God. If they are absent, then everything else is absent too.

Or rather, it is present, but for a person who has no personal relationship with God, it changes nothing. If "God is in heaven and we are on earth," then the earth is hopeless. God is high above and the king is far away. Indeed, Ecclesiastes says something like this: over some officials stand others, hence the problems, and it is good if there is a king who thinks about his country and his people. It seems, however, that Ecclesiastes does not have much hope for the appearance of such a king: such a thing happens too rarely... But for Ecclesiastes God too is like a great superior, like a king, only higher.

With Him too one must be careful; one must look and think about how to approach Him, what to say to Him, what to promise, and what not to promise... Strange, it would seem, since this same Ecclesiastes knows from experience that spiritual reality is not like social reality. Just now this same Ecclesiastes, at the boundary of God's eternity, was listening to apophatic silence, sensing behind it a Presence that could bring meaning into his life. But... one's sense of the world does not change overnight. Ecclesiastes apparently brought his religiosity out of his former life. Out of the life when he was an important man and did not think too much about meaning.

Being religious then was accepted; it was normal and natural. If, of course, the religiosity itself was "normal." Simple, clear, without wanderings and searches. That, apparently, is what Ecclesiastes' religiosity was like until the question of meaning arose in all its sharpness. And certainly meaning could least of all be found in this "normal" religiosity. It was not developed in order to give meaning to an individual human life.

If it could give meaning to anything, it was only to the existence of society and the state in their existing condition. To make people honor God as a king, and the king as God. Or as a god; here the difference is no longer very great. If God becomes like an earthly king, the earthly king sooner or later will become like an earthly god; such a transformation is practically inevitable. Only all this was very far from the reality that had opened to Ecclesiastes at the boundary of the world and Eternity. As far as earth from heaven.

Other notes

 
For Ecc 5:1-19
1 Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God, and be more ready to hear, than to give the sacrifice of fools: for they consider not that they do evil.
2 Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter any thing before God: for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few.
3 For a dream cometh through the multitude of business; and a fool's voice is known by multitude of words.
4 When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it; for he hath no pleasure in fools: pay that which thou hast vowed.
5 Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay.
6 Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to sin; neither say thou before the angel, that it was an error: wherefore should God be angry at thy voice, and destroy the work of thine hands?
7 For in the multitude of dreams and many words there are also divers vanities: but fear thou God.
8 If thou seest the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting of judgment and justice in a province, marvel not at the matter: for he that is higher than the highest regardeth; and there be higher than they.
9 Moreover the profit of the earth is for all: the king himself is served by the field.
10 He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loveth abundance with increase: this is also vanity.
11 When goods increase, they are increased that eat them: and what good is there to the owners thereof, saving the beholding of them with their eyes?
12 The sleep of a labouring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much: but the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep.
13 There is a sore evil which I have seen under the sun, namely, riches kept for the owners thereof to their hurt.
14 But those riches perish by evil travail: and he begetteth a son, and there is nothing in his hand.
15 As he came forth of his mother's womb, naked shall he return to go as he came, and shall take nothing of his labour, which he may carry away in his hand.
16 And this also is a sore evil, that in all points as he came, so shall he go: and what profit hath he that hath laboured for the wind?
17 All his days also he eateth in darkness, and he hath much sorrow and wrath with his sickness.
18 Behold that which I have seen: it is good and comely for one to eat and to drink, and to enjoy the good of all his labour that he taketh under the sun all the days of his life, which God giveth him: for it is his portion.
19 Every man also to whom God hath given riches and wealth, and hath given him power to eat thereof, and to take his portion, and to rejoice in his labour; this is the gift of God.
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With the attitude toward life that Ecclesiastes expresses so clearly, even suicide would perhaps not have looked like...  Read more

With the attitude toward life that Ecclesiastes expresses so clearly, even suicide would perhaps not have looked like something out of the ordinary. But the thought of it, clearly, does not occur to the author of the book at all. He apparently understood that suicide is one of the most terrible sins before God. And therefore Ecclesiastes goes on living. And life without God is unthinkable for him. Still, Ecclesiastes is very far from that clear hearing of God's voice which is so characteristic of the prophets. He undoubtedly believes in God's providence.

But he is not a prophet; he is cautious in everything that concerns the experience of direct revelation. It is not worth saying too much when standing before God, for the quality of prayer is not determined by the number of words the one praying speaks (vv. 1-3). It is not worth making careless vows, and those that have been made must be fulfilled quickly and exactly (vv. 4-5). And it is not worth denying the truth of a revelation received from God: perhaps completely unexpected for a person, it may prove genuine, although, of course, it is also not worth believing every dream indiscriminately (vv. 6-7).

Caution, restraint, and a certain critical spirit — this is how Ecclesiastes' attitude toward everything connected with spiritual and mystical experience could be defined. This is not surprising: for he expects no special, new revelations from God. Everything has already been said, opened, and created; new revelations may concern certain private questions of a particular human life, but no more than that. From God one can expect new instructions, but not a new revelation. Apparently, this frame of mind was generally characteristic of the era of Ecclesiastes, when the rabbinic tradition replaced the prophetic tradition.

But no revelation can change anything radically; a country and a people should rather hope for a good king than for a new revelation or for the coming of the Messiah (vv. 8-9). But even then, in the final analysis, all human labors and efforts remain meaningless, and Ecclesiastes again returns to the image of a person who has spent the best years of his life in hard labor that has brought him no benefit at all (vv. 10-16). Enjoyment of the few joys of life during the brief days allotted by God to a person — this is the only happiness still possible in this hopelessly spoiled and hostile world (vv. 19-20).

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For Ecc 5:1-19
1 Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God, and be more ready to hear, than to give the sacrifice of fools: for they consider not that they do evil.
2 Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter any thing before God: for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few.
3 For a dream cometh through the multitude of business; and a fool's voice is known by multitude of words.
4 When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it; for he hath no pleasure in fools: pay that which thou hast vowed.
5 Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay.
6 Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to sin; neither say thou before the angel, that it was an error: wherefore should God be angry at thy voice, and destroy the work of thine hands?
7 For in the multitude of dreams and many words there are also divers vanities: but fear thou God.
8 If thou seest the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting of judgment and justice in a province, marvel not at the matter: for he that is higher than the highest regardeth; and there be higher than they.
9 Moreover the profit of the earth is for all: the king himself is served by the field.
10 He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loveth abundance with increase: this is also vanity.
11 When goods increase, they are increased that eat them: and what good is there to the owners thereof, saving the beholding of them with their eyes?
12 The sleep of a labouring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much: but the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep.
13 There is a sore evil which I have seen under the sun, namely, riches kept for the owners thereof to their hurt.
14 But those riches perish by evil travail: and he begetteth a son, and there is nothing in his hand.
15 As he came forth of his mother's womb, naked shall he return to go as he came, and shall take nothing of his labour, which he may carry away in his hand.
16 And this also is a sore evil, that in all points as he came, so shall he go: and what profit hath he that hath laboured for the wind?
17 All his days also he eateth in darkness, and he hath much sorrow and wrath with his sickness.
18 Behold that which I have seen: it is good and comely for one to eat and to drink, and to enjoy the good of all his labour that he taketh under the sun all the days of his life, which God giveth him: for it is his portion.
19 Every man also to whom God hath given riches and wealth, and hath given him power to eat thereof, and to take his portion, and to rejoice in his labour; this is the gift of God.
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Ecclesiastes examines the human idea of happiness to see whether anything can...  Read more

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.

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