For my weekly quiet time this Sabbath, I studied Ecclesiastes 8. I’d like to start out this post with a quote from Raymond C. Van Leeuwen on vv. 10-17. It’s in the HarperCollins Study Bible:
“Human experience of God’s justice is mysterious, even inverted (thus vanity), leading the wicked to think it does not exist. Even the wise cannot know it (8.17; 3.11) yet Qoheleth insists on its reality (3.16-17; 11.9) and commends joy (8.15).”
Qoheleth looks at life and thinks that it’s not fair. There are wicked people who live long and prosper, while there are righteous people who have little to show for their wisdom, and whose lives may even be cut short.
Does Qoheleth believe that God is fair, in spite of all the injustice that he sees in the world around him? Van Leeuwen’s answer is “yes.” I can understand why Van Leeuwen concludes this about Qoheleth. Qoheleth says that we don’t know a lot of things about the past, the present, or the future (i.e., Ecclesiastes 3:11; 8:17). Maybe, in this life, God rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked in ways that we cannot see.
Or perhaps Qoheleth is open to the possibility of reward and punishment in the afterlife. Granted, there are places in which Qoheleth dismisses the possibility of an afterlife (Ecclesiastes 3:16-22; 9:4-6). One could argue that his whole existential crisis is propelled by his belief that this life is all there is, for everything looks so pointless to him when he considers that life is so short. That’s why he exhorts people to enjoy the pleasures of life while they still can: recognizing the transitory nature of life enables one to appreciate more fully what life has to offer.
But Qoheleth wonders in 3:11 if the spirit of man goes upward while the spirit of animals goes downward—to the dust. In 12:7, he says that the spirit of human beings goes to God, who gave it. Qoheleth may assume that this life is all there is, but could there have been times when he acknowledged that there may be an afterlife? Qoheleth says in 11:9 that God will bring certain actions into judgment. Although Qoheleth never explicitly states that God will judge people after they die, could Qoheleth have believed in God’s justice amidst the apparent injustice in the world around him on account of some belief in an afterlife?
Perhaps Qoheleth had a “hopeful” view of the afterlife, just like there are “hopeful” universalists who aren’t sure that God will save everyone in the end, but who hope that God will do so. These hopeful universalists aren’t dogmatic that God will save everyone, but they don’t rule out the possibility that God will do that. Similarly, maybe Qoheleth hoped that there might be an afterlife, which would solve his puzzle of how injustice can exist in a world that’s ruled by a just God. But he wasn't sure.