Ecclesiastes part three

Starting at verse twelve, the author says he turns his thoughts to consider wisdom, madness, and folly.  He saw that wisdom was better than folly, but the same fate overtakes both the fool and the wise man.  Since that was true, what was the benefit of being wise? They will both be forgotten in days to come. They both must die! Yes. So what? I don't get this obsession with being remembered. What difference does that make to you, if you are dead. Life is for living now.

Verse 17, the author says he hated life, because his work was "grievous," whatever that means. It's all meaningless and he hates it, because everything he has worked for will be controlled by someone else when he is gone. That person could be a fool! Woe is him. A man could work with wisdom, knowledge, and skill, but after he dies, someone else takes over his stuff. This is ridiculous. What does he expect? He needs to count himself lucky to have lived to a good age, and to have been able to actually gain knowledge and skills, along with other privileges he must have had. To him, though, it is all meaningless.

Verse 24, the author seems to change his tune. Now he says "there is nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work." Guess what? That comes from God! Weird. Why can't it just be the natural state of things? What does a God have to do with it? Well, according to him, without god, who can eat or find enjoyment? A whole lot of people. I'm eating an ice cream sandwich right now and enjoying it very much. No God necessary.

The next statements by the author are a load of crap. "To the man who pleases him, god gives wisdom, knowledge,  and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases god." Say what? This is very different than what he said earlier. His previous statements did not reference a god at all. Plus, both the wise and the fool were going to die. Plus, the person who was wise and worked hard was going to have all his stuff go to someone who might be a fool. Was this passage added by someone who wanted to make a plug for god? If so, it didn't work out so well. At the end it says "This too is also meaningless." So even pleasing god is meaningless? Confusing.

Plenty of "sinners" have an abundance of wealth and knowledge. Plenty of people who aim to please the god of the bible toil away to give their hard earned money to someone else.

I was curious about this first reference to god. It is not the lord, Yahweh. It is the collective godhead Elohim, in this passage. Also strangely enough, the literal translation of verse 25 is "for who can eat, or who can have enjoyment more than I." My NIV bible says "for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment." Very different.