Ecclesiastes 9, Death Comes to us All

The Teacher addresses death, chance, and the pleasures of living.

Ecclesiastes 9:1-3, Death comes to all

So I reflected on all this and concluded that the righteous and the wise and what they do are in God's hands, but no man knows whether love or hate awaits him.  All share a common destiny‑‑the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the clean and the unclean, those who offer sacrifices and those who do not. 

As it is with the good man, 

so with the sinner; 

as it is with those who take oaths, 

so with those who are afraid to take them.  

This is the evil in everything that happens under the sun: The same destiny overtakes all. The hearts of men, moreover, are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live, and afterward they join the dead.

The Teacher's fatalism continues. He laments that the same destiny -- death, the grave, Sheol -- comes to all mankind, regardless of their actions in life.

Ecclesiastes 9:4-6, It is better to live

Anyone who is among the living has hope‑‑even a live dog is better off than a dead lion!  

For the living know that they will die, 

but the dead know nothing; 

they have no further reward, 

and even the memory of them is forgotten.  

Their love, their hate and their jealousy 

have long since vanished; 

never again will they have a part 

in anything that happens under the sun.

Despite the surety of death, still, argues the Teacher, it is better to be alive and experience the world around you. The dead know nothing; all has ended.

In the culture of the ANE, dogs were not pets but dirty scavengers. Yet, says the Teacher, it is better to be a despised dog and alive, than a once powerful but now dead lion!

Ecclesiastes 9:7-10, Enjoy the time you have

Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for it is now that God favors what you do.  Always be clothed in white, and always anoint your head with oil.  Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun‑‑ all your meaningless days. For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun.  Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the grave, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.

Being clothed in white and anointing one's head are apparently indications of luxury and indulgence. So go forward enjoying the life you are given. Death will come soon enough.

I am reminded of famous lines from Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat, on appreciating eartly paradise:

With me ... A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,

A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread--and Thou

Beside me singing in the Wilderness--

Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

I note that Khayyam was a (Muslim) theologian, a poet and a great mathematician!

Ecclesiastes 9:11-12, Time and chance

I have seen something else under the sun: 

The race is not to the swift 

or the battle to the strong, 

nor does food come to the wise 

or wealth to the brilliant 

or favor to the learned; 

but time and chance happen to them all.  

Moreover, no man knows when his hour will come: 

As fish are caught in a cruel net, 

or birds are taken in a snare, 

so men are trapped by evil times 

that fall unexpectedly upon them.

Swiftness or strength do not always win out; sometimes chance and luck intervene. Time and chance come to us all, says the Teacher. He then ends this passage with a  depressing and fatalistic stanza -- we are all mere fish or birds trapped in a net. The Teacher's viewpoint is overwhelmingly fatalistic and despondent. 

A different viewpoint, but a similar warning, occurs in the New Testament passage, James 4:13-16, in which James warns

Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.”  Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow.  What is your life?  You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes....

Ecclesiastes 9:13-18, The forgotten wise man

I also saw under the sun this example of wisdom that greatly impressed me:  There was once a small city with only a few people in it. And a powerful king came against it, surrounded it and built huge siegeworks against it.  Now there lived in that city a man poor but wise, and he saved the city by his wisdom. But nobody remembered that poor man.  So I said, "Wisdom is better than strength." But the poor man's wisdom is despised, and his words are no longer heeded.  

The quiet words of the wise are more to be heeded 

than the shouts of a ruler of fools.

Wisdom is better than weapons of war, 

but one sinner destroys much good.

The Teacher tells a story of a town saved by a poor but wise man. After saving the town by his wisdom, the man is forgotten. Commentators debate whether or not this event is a historical one observed by the Teacher or merely a story to make a point. And did the poor man save the town but was forgotten later, or did the poor man have an idea to save the town but was ignored, to its destruction? The Hebrew is unclear (say Alter and Davidson) but both agree with the NIV's translation in which the poor man was ignored after saving the town. For an alternative story, of a wise man ignored by his community to their detriment, listen to Harry Chapin's The Rock.