ECCLESIASTES 5 – OPPRESSION, ENVY AND LONELINESS

“Again I looked and saw all the oppression that was taking place: I saw all the tears of the oppressed – and they have no comforter; power was on the side of their oppressors.

And I saw that all labor and all achievement spring from man’s envy of his neighbor.

Again I saw something meaningless under the sun: There was a man all alone; he had neither son nor brother. Two are better than one. If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up” Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.” (Ecclesiastes 4)

Three themes: oppression, envy and loneliness. They are prevalent in our world.

Power corrupts, and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely. Politicians and rulers are corrupted by power and tend to over-reach in their attempts to control. You see it at work in every generation and in every nation. Envy leads to protest and victimhood. Redistribution of assets and censorship are given priority over freedom and prosperity. Self-centeredness and obsession with career at the expense of relationships results in loneliness. Marriage is deferred or ignored and children are seen to be an unnecessary expense and encumbrance. The longer we live the more we experience bereavement of those we love. Social mobility causes us to move away from family and community and we live alone. Retirement communities replace affinity networks and the desire to be independent and not to be a burden to others relieves children of any responsibility to their parents.

Ecclesiastes observes what is wrong in society but does not propose a solution. The modern conviction is that it is somehow possible to put things right in this world in a general way.

“Historical experience tends to suggest, however, that although it may be possible to moderate the worst effects of societal evil and even replace evil with good in limited ways, the best-intentioned attempts to do so will be tainted by still further evils often unintended by the good and idealistic people involved in the projects. There are, at worst, spectacular examples from recent human history of groups of people who were utterly convinced of their ability to change the world for the better but whose ideas, when put into practice, resulted in widespread human misery. Moreover, it is simply a fact that individuals usually have little power to change society at large, and their immediate need is to see the world clearly and to form some idea of how to negotiate it well. This is no less noble or important a task than the one carried through by the prophets, who for all their assaults on the human misery that they saw before them were never so naïve as to assume that utopia is humanly achievable. Jesus himself told his disciples that the poor would always be with them (Matt.26:11) in the world, and he himself laid great emphasis on individual transformation as the heart of a societal transformation that would certainly occur in the near future (e.g. 5:13-16). In the end it is God who must put things right (cf. Eccl.3:16-17), In the meantime the person sickened by oppression and injustice should follow the countercultural pathway sketched by Ecclesiastes: hard work carried out for and in community rather than envy-driven, self-centered, and lonely toil, along with the striving for empty advancement. It is impossible to be a follower of Jesus and simply observe ‘the tears of the oppressed’ who ‘have no comforter’ (Eccl.4:1), nor is it acceptable simply to offer empty words. There must naturally be practical comfort in loving actions – such as caring for widows and orphans, the immigrants and the poor – of which the whole Bible speaks. The life of selfish individualism leads neither to happiness nor to eternal life.” (Iain Proven)