Does the Teacher reverse matters? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
Readers of Ecclesiastes 7:1-4 could be surprised this is in the Bible:
A good name is better than precious ointment,
and the day of death than the day of birth.
2 It is better to go to the house of mourning
than to go to the house of feasting,
for this is the end of all mankind,
and the living will lay it to heart.
3 Sorrow is better than laughter,
for by sadness of face the heart is made glad.
4 The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning,
but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.
Jehovah’s Witnesses often make a big deal out of the “name” of God, missing the point as if what matters is phonetics, what the name is and how it is pronounced. The importance of a name was more the reputation of the one. When God says He wants His name known, He does not want people to call Him Jehovah or YHWH instead of Bob. He means that He wants His honor and glory to be known throughout the world.
What do these statements mean though about the day of death being better than the day of birth? Why does the Teacher prefer a house of mourning to a house of feasting? Who would prefer to have sorrow instead of laughter?
We have seen a number of times where the Teacher tells us to enjoy our lives. Thus, he is not opposed to enjoyment. What is being said is a general principle. The Teacher realizes that life contains much suffering and sorrow. Birth is when that starts and death is the day it supposedly ends. There is a reason people commit suicide after all. They want their suffering to end.
There is no wrong in pleasure, but there is a wrong in acting like life is all about temporary pleasures. We can easily think of the parable of the grasshopper and the ant. The ant worked hard in the warmer weather to prepare for when the winter came. The grasshopper took no thought in that and hopped around regularly without a care in the world. When the winter came, it was the ant who survived.
The Teacher then wants us to look at reality. In our day and age, it’s easy for twenty-somethings, or even people my age in our forties, to think that we will live forever. Unfortunately, it could happen to any of us at any moment. We’ve all heard of stories of people cut down in the prime of life. They had their whole futures ahead of them and then, game over.
So by all means yes, enjoy your life, but also be realistic. Do not take your life for granted. Realize that there will come a time when it will end. While Christians do have something they can look forward to, that doesn’t mean we should not take life seriously here. The Teacher reminds us of how important life here is.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
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