Ecclesiastes 3:10 Ulasan

Solomon having shown the vanity of studies, pleasures, and business, and made it to appear that happiness is not to be found in the schools of the learned, nor in the gardens of Epicurus, nor upon the exchange, he proceeds, in this chapter, further to prove his doctrine, and the inference he had drawn from it, That therefore we should cheerfully content ourselves with, and make use of, what God has given us, by showing, I. The mutability of all human affairs (Ecc 3:1-10). II. The immutability of the divine counsels concerning them and the unsearchableness of those counsels (Ecc 3:11-15). III. The vanity of worldly honour and power, which are abused for the support of oppression and persecution if men be not governed by the fear of God in the use of them (Ecc 3:16). For a check to proud oppressors, and to show them their vanity, he reminds them, 1. That they will be called to account for it in the other world (Ecc 3:17). 2. That their condition, in reference to this world (for of that he speaks), is no better than that of the beasts (Ecc 3:18-21). And therefore he concludes that it is our wisdom to make use of what power we have for our own comfort, and not to oppress others with it.

INTRODUCTION TO ECCLESIASTES 3 The general design of this chapter is to confirm what is before observed, the vanity and inconstancy of all things; the frailty of man, and changes respecting him; his fruitless toil and labour in all his works; that it is best to be content with present things, and cheerful in them, and thankful for them; that all comes from the hand of God; that such good men, who have not at present that joy that others have, may have it, since there is a time for it; and that sinners should not please themselves with riches gathered by them, since they may be soon taken from them, for there is a time for everything, Ecc 3:1; of which there is an induction of particulars, Ecc 3:2; so that though every thing is certain with God, nothing is certain with men, nor to be depended on, nor can happiness be placed therein; there is no striving against the providence of God, nor altering the course of things; the labour of man is unprofitable, and his travail affliction and vexation, Ecc 3:9; and though all God's works are beautiful in their season, they are unsearchable to man, Ecc 3:11; wherefore it is best cheerfully to enjoy the present good things of life, Ecc 3:12; and be content; for the will and ways and works of God are unalterable, permanent, and perfect, Ecc 3:14; and though wicked men may abuse the power reposed in them, and pervert public justice, they will be called to an account for it in the general judgment, for which there is a time set, Ecc 3:16; and yet, such is the stupidity of the generality of men, that they have no more sense of death and judgment than the brutes, and live and die like them, Ecc 3:18; wherefore it is best of all to make a right use of power and riches, or what God has given to men, for their own good and that of others, since they know not what shall be after them, Ecc 3:22.

I have seen the travail which God hath given to the sons of men,.... The pains and trouble they are at to get a little wisdom and knowledge, Ecc 1:13; and so to obtain riches and honour, peace and plenty, which sometimes they do obtain, and sometimes not; and when they do, do not keep them long, for there is a time for everything. This the wise man had observed, in a variety of instances; and he considered the end of God in it, which was for men to be exercised in it, or "by it"; or "to afflict" or "humble them by it" (l); to let them see that all their toil and labour signified little; all depended on a divine blessing, and no happiness was to be had in the creatures; all was vanity and vexation of spirit; See Gill on Ecc 1:13. (l) "ad affligendum se in ea", Montanus; "ut eos adfligat in ea, sc. per eam", Rambachius; "ut ea redderet humiles", Tigurine version.

"What gain, then, has the worker in exchange for all his toil? I have observed the task which God has given the sons of man to be concerned with: He made everything beautiful in its time; He has also put an enigma into their minds so that man cannot comprehend what God has done from the beginning to end." The opinion of many other scholars on this passage does not escape me, because in this world God conceded to the teachers of perverse doctrines their true occupation, lest man's idle mind should become slow and while thinking that God's creations are good, yet nonetheless not be able to see them as the natural knowledge of the world. But the Hebrew who taught me the Scriptures explained it in this way: when all things are placed in their own time and there is a time for destroying or building, weeping and laughing, silence and speaking, and others things which are said about time, why do we try to survive in vain and believe the labours of this short life to be perpetual? And according to the Gospel we are not even happy, and it is called wickedness since we think nothing of tomorrow. [Cfr Matth. 6, 34.] For what more are we able to have in this world than continual striving in that toil, which God has given to man, so that one man may gain more by following others, in a situation where he is able to learn and exercise himself? For all that God does is good, but good in his world. It is good to wake and to sleep, but it is not good to be always awake or asleep, since in turn each and every thing can be considered good, when there is need, according to God's plan. Moreover God also created the world to be inhabited by men, so that they should enjoy the variation of time, and not seek the causes nature, how all things are made, why He made this or that grow or change from the beginning of the world until now.

(Ecc. 3:1-22) Man has his appointed cycle of seasons and vicissitudes, as the sun, wind, and water (Ecc 1:5-7). purpose--as there is a fixed "season" in God's "purposes" (for example, He has fixed the "time" when man is "to be born," and "to die," Ecc 3:2), so there is a lawful "time" for man to carry out his "purposes" and inclinations. God does not condemn, but approves of, the use of earthly blessings (Ecc 3:12); it is the abuse that He condemns, the making them the chief end (Co1 7:31). The earth, without human desires, love, taste, joy, sorrow, would be a dreary waste, without water; but, on the other hand, the misplacing and excess of them, as of a flood, need control. Reason and revelation are given to control them.

(See on Ecc 1:13).

"I saw the travail, which God gave to the children of men to fatigue themselves with it - : He hath well arranged everything beautiful in its appointed time; He hath also put eternity in their heart, so that man cannot indeed wholly search through from beginning to end the work which God accomplisheth." As at Ecc 1:14, ראיתי is here seeing in the way of research, as elsewhere, e.g., at Ecc 2:24, it is as the result of research. In Ecc 3:10 the author says that he closely considered the labour of men, and in Ecc 3:11 he states the result. It is impossible to render the word ענין everywhere by the same German (or English) word: Ecc 1:13, wearisome trouble; Ecc 2:26, business; here: Geschftigkeit, the idea is in all the three places the same, viz., an occupation which causes trouble, costs effort. What presented itself to the beholder was (1) that He (viz., God, cf. Ecc 3:10 and Ecc 3:11) has made everything beautiful in its time. The author uses יפה as synon. of טוב (Ecc 3:17); also in other languages the idea of the beautiful is gradually more and more generalized. The suffix in בּעתּו does not refer to God, but to that which is in the time; this word is = ἐν καιρῷ ιδίῳ (Symm.), at its proper time (vid., Psa 1:3; Psa 104:27; Jer 5:24, etc.), since, as with יחדּו (together with) and כּלּו (every one), the suffix is no longer thought of as such. Like יפה, בעתו as pred. conception belongs to the verb: He has made everything beautiful; He has made everything (falling out) at its appointed time. - The beauty consists in this, that what is done is not done sooner or later than it ought to be, so as to connect itself as a constituent part to the whole of God's work. The pret. עשׂה is to be also interpreted as such: He "has made," viz., in His world-plan, all things beautiful, falling out at the appointed time; for that which acquires an actual form in the course of history has a previous ideal existence in the knowledge and will of God (vid., under Isa 22:11; Isa 37:26). That which presented itself to the beholder was - (2) the fact that He (God) had put את־העלם in their hearts (i.e., the hearts of men). Gaab and Spohn interpret 'olam in the sense of the Arab. 'ilam, knowledge, understanding; and Hitz., pointing the word accordingly עלם, translates: "He has also placed understanding in their heart, without which man," etc. The translation of אשׁר אשׁלי is not to be objected to; מבּ is, however, only seldom a conjunction, and is then to be translated by eo quod, Exo 14:11; Kg2 1:3, Kg2 1:6, Kg2 1:16, which is not appropriate here; it will thus be here also a prep., and with asher following may mean "without which," as well as "without this, that" = "besides that" (Venet. ἄνευ τοῦ ὃτι, "except that"), as frequently כּי אפס, e.g., at Amo 9:8. But that Arab. 'ilam is quite foreign to the Heb., which has no word עלם in the sense of "to rise up, to be visible, knowable," which is now also referred (Note: Vid., Fried. Delitzsch's Assyr. Stud. (1874), p. 39. Otherwise Fleischer, who connects 'alima, "to know," with 'alam, "to conceal," so that to know = to be concealed, sunk deep, initiated in something (with ba of the obj., as sh'ar, whence shâ'ir, the poet as "one who marks").) to for the Assyr. as the stem-word of עילם = highland. It is true Hitzig believes that he has found the Heb. עלם = wisdom, in Sir. 6:21, where there is a play on the word with נעלם, "concealed:" σοφία γὰρ κατὰ τὸ ὄνομα αὐτῆς ἐστί, καὶοὐ πολλοῖς ἐστὶ φανερά. Drusius and Eichhorn have here already taken notice of the Arab. 'ilam; but Fritzsche with right asks, "Shall this word as Heb. be regarded as traceable only here and falsely pointed only at Ecc 3:11, and shall no trace of it whatever be found in the Chald., Syr., and Rabbin.?" We have also no need of it. That Ben-Sira has etymologically investigated the word חכמה as going back to חכם, R. chap, "to be firm, shut up, dark" (vid., at Psa 10:8), is certainly very improbable, but so much the more probable (as already suggested by Drusius) that he has introduced (Note: Grtz translates eth-ha'olam by "ignorance" (vid., Orelli, p. 83). R. Achwa in the Midrash has added here the scriptio defectiva with the remark, שהועלם וגו, "for the mysterious name of God is concealed from them.") into חכמה, after the Aram. אכם, nigrescere, the idea of making dark. Does eth-ha'olam in this passage before us then mean "the world" (Jerome, Luther, Ewald), or "desire after the knowledge of the world" (Rashi), or "worldly-mindedness" (Gesen., Knobel)? The answer to this has been already given in my Psychol. p. 406 (2nd ed.): "In post-bibl. Heb. 'olam denotes not only 'eternity' backwards and forwards as infinite duration, but also 'the world' as that which endures for ever (αἰών, seculum); the world in this latter sense is, however, not yet known (Note: In the Phoen. also, 'olam, down to a late period, denotes not the world, but eternity: melek 'olam, βασιλεὺς αἰώνος (αἰώνιος), seculo frugifero on a coin = the fruit-bringing 'olam (Αἰών).) to the bibl. language, and we will thus not be able to interpret the words of Koheleth of the impulse of man to reflect on the whole world." In itself, the thought that God has placed the whole world in man's heart is not untrue: man is, indeed, a micro-cosmos, in which the macrocosmos mirrors itself (Elster), but the connection does not favour it; for the discussion does not proceed from this, that man is only a member in the great universe, and that God has given to each being its appointed place, but that in all his experience he is conditioned by time, and that in the course of history all that comes to him, according to God's world-plan, happens at its appointed time. But the idea by which that of time, את (זמן), is surpassed is not the world, but eternity, to which time is related as part is to the whole (Cicero, Inv. i. 26. 39, tempus est pars quaedam aeternitatis). The Mishna language contains, along with the meaning of world, also this older meaning of 'olam, and has formed from it an adv. עולמית, aeterne. The author means to say that God has not only assigned to each individually his appointed place in history, thereby bringing to the consciousness of man the fact of his being conditioned, but that He has also established in man an impulse leading him beyond that which is temporal toward the eternal: it lies in his nature not to be contented with the temporal, but to break through the limits which it draws around him, to escape from the bondage and the disquietude within which he is held, and amid the ceaseless changes of time to console himself by directing his thoughts to eternity. This saying regarding the desiderium aeternitatis being planted in the heart of man, is one of the profoundest utterances of Koheleth. In fact, the impulse of man shows that his innermost wants cannot be satisfied by that which is temporal. He is a being limited by time, but as to his innermost nature he is related to eternity. That which is transient yields him no support, it carries him on like a rushing stream, and constrains him to save himself by laying hold on eternity. But it is not so much the practical as the intellectual side of this endowment and this peculiar dignity of human nature which Koheleth brings her to view. It is not enough for man to know that everything that happens has its divinely-ordained time. There is an instinct peculiar to his nature impelling him to pass beyond this fragmentary knowledge and to comprehend eternity; but his effort is in vain, for (3) "man is unable to reach unto the work which God accomplisheth from the beginning to the end." The work of God is that which is completing itself in the history of the world, of which the life of individual men is a fragment. Of this work he says, that God has wrought it עשׂה; because, before it is wrought out in its separate "time," it is already completed in God's plan. Eternity and this work are related to each other as the accomplished and the being accomplished, they are interchangeably the πλήρωμα to each other. ימצא is potential, and the same in conception as at Ecc 8:17; Job 11:7; Job 37:23; a knowledge is meant which reaches to the object, and lays hold of it. A laying hold of this work is an impossibility, because eternity, as its name 'olam denotes, is the concealed, i.e., is both forwards and backwards immeasurable. The desiderium aeternitatis inherent in man thus remains under the sun unappeased. He would raise himself above the limits within which he is confined, and instead of being under the necessity of limiting his attention to isolated matters, gain a view of the whole of God's work which becomes manifest in time; but this all-embracing view is for him unattainable. If Koheleth had known of a future life - which proves that as no instinct in the natural world is an allusion, so also the impulse toward the eternal, which is natural to man, is no illusion-he would have reached a better ultimatum than the following: -