What were the pleasures of Solomon’s garden? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
A large portion of my research was on Ecclesiastes 2. Thus, you will see I have a lot pre-written on that already. Here then, is some of what I wrote on the topic:
Looking at these verses from Ecclesiastes, the pointing to Eden might not come across immediately, but Meek contends that the author fully intended it. He notes repeated phrases showing up like “to plant”, “to make”, “gardens”, “trees of every kind”, “to water”, “to sprout”, and the overall theme of a ruler creating a garden.[1] The Teacher chose of all places to go to for pleasure to use language picturing a garden and not just any garden, but the original one that was meant to be a paradise. Kim and Hoang present a contrast of God saying everything is good in the creation account and the Teacher saying everything is vanity.[2]
A difference between the two accounts is that in the Genesis account, it is God who is the creator. In the Ecclesiastes account, the Teacher focuses on himself as the one who did this. This could indicate that the Teacher had a desire to go back to Eden. After all, if any place in Israel’s history represents joy, surely Eden deserves that honor. So what all went into creating this new paradise of joy?
Also, nothing in this passage serves a necessary function to a working city. At most, one could speak of providing food with trees. Instead, this could be akin to a man today saying “I built theaters, arcades, skating rinks, parks, and museums.” All of these can benefit a city, but a city can function just fine without them also.
What of the women in the passage? Goldingay sees the passage as describing “girls and girls” and sees a parallel in Judges 5:30. There, the text can also mean “A womb, two wombs.” Goldingay then says that that could mean that the Ecclesiastical verse could mean, “A breast, two breasts.”[3] If Goldingay has the correct interpretation, this could refer more then to the delights of sexual pleasure that are physical rather than such important aspects as childrearing. Perhaps a parallel lies in Proverbs 5:18-19 where the young man warned against adultery gets told to cling to the wife of his youth and “May her breasts satisfy you always.”
Such a reading of seeing sexual pleasure as meaningless regardless seems odd if the same person wrote the Song of Songs, a book devoted to the joy of sexual pleasure. Hence, some writers think that women are not even in view here. Miller says that the language used of delights refers to fine things and never refers to people. He sees the terms of women more likely referring not to women but “every human luxury, chest upon chest of it.”[4] If Miller has the idea correct, then a life of luxury is what the Teacher has in mind.
I will not attempt to say which side has the right interpretation of this debate, seeing as brilliant scholars who know Hebrew take different positions. If Solomon wrote the book, this could indicate a looking back on life after the errors of his ways in 1 Kings 11. That could mean that Solomon reflects on his life after his heart strayed and decides in the end that what happened was pointless. On the other hand, many kings often had plural wives and remained faithful to YHWH (David comes to mind), so if the authorship remains the same, then Solomon might mean that in his own lifetime, his pleasure, including sexual pleasure, did not satisfy him even before he fell away from YHWH.
For the sake of argument, let us include sexual pleasure in the list of what the Teacher engaged in since usually this gets esteemed as one of the greatest goods in our society today. The Teacher nowhere denies that he enjoyed what all he partook of. He just looks back at the end of that enjoyment and asks “What was the point?” “Why bother?” In the end, did he really get anything truly good out of it?
Ryken describes the Teacher as someone who would be on Fortune magazine as the wealthiest man in the world. He would have supermodels as his constant companions. He asks his readers if they find what the Teacher has tempting. Ryken then sees a parallel with the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.[5] (1 John 2:16) Despite all that the Teacher has, he never says, “This I found worthwhile.”
Something to consider lies in that while the Teacher does declare his efforts as meaningless, he does not say that the goal was wrong in itself. No indication comes up considering pleasure an evil. The Teacher does not say “Therefore, one should not build gardens.” He instead says that this was a meaningless endeavor. Why?
Earlier in this paper, Maier was cited about suicidal millionaires. If he showed them the passage from Ecclesiastes under discussion, would they look and say “Yes. That’s me.”? The meaningless the Teacher speaks of comes from having it all and seeing that you have reached the end. People behave like children on Christmas morning and after opening the last gift ask “Is that it?”
The section ends with another “under the sun.” The Teacher concludes that in this mortal realm, you can live for all intents and purposes in Eden, and still not find satisfaction since death will still come to you. Eden without the tree of life in it just becomes at best a temporary respite on the pathway to death.
And by the way, have a nice day. This is also just the first part of Ecclesiastes 2. We’ll see what else lays in store in this fascinating chapter.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
[1] Meek, Ecclesiastes and the Search for Meaning in an Upside-Down World, (Peabody: Massachusettes, Hendrickson Publishers, 2022), 6.
[2] Nga Thi Hong Hoang and Sung Jin Kim, “An Analysis of the -iterary Allusion in Ecclesiastes 2 to the Creation/arrative in Genesis 1-2 3hetorical 3ole of the Creation Motif in Ecclesiastes 2***, ACTS Theological Journal, (2019), 20. https://research.ebsco.com/c/trvdli/viewer/pdf/n7hbgqgy2f
[3] Goldingay, 147.
[4] Miller, 55.
[5] Philip Graham Ryken, Ecclesiastes (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2010), 50.