October 16, 2006
All is Futile (or Takin' it Easy)
If I had to sum up Koheles, I'd say his main message is: you are going to die. Nothing can stop that. It doesn't matter how rich or how poor, or how smart or how good you are. You are going to die. It might be tomorrow, it might be in a hundred years from now, but at some point, the game will be over. So why worry about the past, and why fret over the future? Enjoy life, live each day to its fullest, and don't get too hung up over stuff.
This is pretty much the message all the way through. At the very end, however, things seem to change, when in the final lines we are admonished:
The end of the matter, all having been heard: fear God, and keep His commandments; for this is the whole man. 14 For God shall bring every work into the judgment concerning every hidden thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil.
Which would seem to say quite the opposite of all that was said before.
I'm tempted to take the critical approach and say that the closing statements were the work of a different author (in terms of the writing style, the closing lines are clearly uttered by the "narrator" rather than by Koheles himself).
I recalled, however, an article by R. David Fohrman that discusses the significance of the story of Cain and Abel (or Hevel, for those of you who speak the vernacular). Behind Cain's murder was an attachment to the earth, or to this world; Hevel, on the other hand, freed himself from earthly attachments and chose instead to herd sheep, an occupation that allowed him to be unfettered to any physical place, but also to attach himself to something non-physical (recall that God is also referred to as The Place/HaMakom). By freeing himself from the earth, from this world, Hevel was able to attach himself more directly with the Divine (or offer up that which was his, submitting himself to Its ultimate authority).
I think herein lies the connection between the apparently contradictory voices in Koheles. It is not simply that we are to eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die; rather it is that we recognize the futility in amassing any type of power, whether it be physical or metaphysical in nature. On a basic level this means living life as it comes, taking the good with the bad and not sweating it (sometimes you eat the bar...). On a deeper level, this is affected by fear of the Divine, but not the kind of fear we traditionally think of. Instead of trembling before God, we demonstrate this fear by reliquishing authority and power, tempering our ambition for earthly pursuits before the Infinite.
I don't know about you, but I take comfort in that, knowing there's folks like that out there, taking her easy for all us sinners.
The pasuk that always hit me funny in Koheles is also near the end- the exact phrase escapes me but it says something like - It all comes down to Money.
Posted by: Ari at October 17, 2006 2:56 PM
