NOTES for Ecc 6:1-2

In his reflections on the meaning of life, Ecclesiastes again and again returns to the thought of the uselessness of any human deeds and efforts applied by a person to achieve the goal he has set before himself. And the point is not even the impossibility of achieving the goal as such. Often, according to Ecclesiastes, it happens that, having everything, a person cannot make use of anything (vv. 1-2). One may live many years, but if during all these lived years a person has never had occasion to experience the joy of life, one may consider that the person has not lived at all (vv. 3-6).

Clearly, the main theme of Ecclesiastes' reflections becomes the quality of human life. A person labors for sustenance, for physical bread, but his life ("soul") is not satisfied by this bread. And wisdom, if it is reduced only to reflections, abstraction, speculation (to what Ecclesiastes calls "wandering with the soul"), is also worth nothing: it is important not only to reflect, but also to see with one's eyes (vv. 8-9). Clearly, in the search for the meaning of life Ecclesiastes became so immersed in reflections, speculations, and abstractions that he himself sensed their excessive instability. This is not surprising: for the concept of wisdom in ancient Israel was always connected not so much with theory as with practice, whether practice connected with craft or artistic labor, or the practice of social relations, or, finally, as in the post-exilic writings of the wise, the practice of righteous life, inseparable from the observance and fulfillment of the Torah.

But every practice presupposes the presence of a meaning obvious to the one practicing it, and this, clearly, Ecclesiastes has lost. One can be a righteous person, but righteousness is not rewarded in this world and is needed by no one in it except the righteous person himself. One can be a good ruler, but there are still more bad rulers, and no one has the power to change the life of society for the better. And the main thing is that everything ends in Sheol, which deprives everything of meaning: human efforts aimed at arranging life, all the deeds of a good ruler, and even righteousness itself. What remains is only the human being before the face of an unknown, blind force that is certainly stronger than he is (v. 10). And then it really becomes completely impossible to determine what the meaning of human life consists in, what is better for a person, and how to gain wisdom that would make life in this senselessly hostile world at least somewhat bearable (vv. 11-12).