Finding Favour in the Sight of God by Richard P. Belcher Jr

Author:Richard P. Belcher Jr. [Belcher Jr., Richard P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781783597154
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Published: 2018-07-25T16:00:00+00:00

The role of the calls to enjoyment

Many understand the calls to enjoyment as theological affirmations of faith that are an answer to Qohelet’s struggle to find meaning in life. The elements of the calls to enjoyment are gifts from the hand of God (2:24; 3:13; 5:19) and people are exhorted to enjoy the benefits of eating and drinking that come from labour. An important distinction puts the calls to enjoyment in proper perspective. The main question of the book concerns the results of labour (1:3): ‘What profit is there for a person in all his labour at which he labours under the sun?’35 This question occurs also at 2:22, 3:9 and 5:11. This is the fundamental problem that Qohelet seeks to answer. The term for ‘profit’ (yitrȏn) is a commercial term that refers to a surplus or gain, but it has a wider meaning in Ecclesiastes as it is used in reference to wisdom (2:13). When two things are compared, yitrȏn refers to an advantage one thing might have over another thing (2:13; 3:19; 5:8; 6:8, 11; 7:11–12; 10:10–11). When it is used by itself, it refers to any net gain that allows one to get ahead in life,36 or to a desired result produced by effort or labour. The basic answer to the question of 1:3 comes in 2:11, where Qohelet considers all his activities and concludes that there is no profit to labour under the sun. This answer does not change throughout the book. There may be some things that give a relative advantage over other things (2:13–17), but there is no real profit to anything. If something seems to provide a net gain or a desired result, it always falls short of the desired outcome.

Although Qohelet denies that there is any profit to labour (2:11), he acknowledges that there is benefit to labour that people should enjoy (2:10). The pleasure he found in labour is called his ‘portion’ (ḥēleq),37 a term that occurs with several of the calls to enjoyment (3:22; 5:18–19; 9:6, 9; 11:2). The calls to enjoyment are not the profit that comes from labour, because there is no profit from labour (2:11). They are only the portion that one should enjoy from labour. In other words, there is no lasting benefit from labour so one may as well enjoy the limited benefits of this portion that comes from labour. The calls to enjoyment are not on the level of profit and are not the answer of faith.

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