The Message of Ecclesiastes: A Time to Mourn, and a Time to Dance (The Bible Speaks Today | BST)
Overview
“Vanity of Vanities,” says the Preacher, “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.” (Ecclesiastes 1:2) Is that what life is all about? A wisp of vapor, a puff of wind, a mere breath—nothing you can get your hands on—the nearest thing to zero? So says the Preacher in the book of Ecclesiastes. But is this the whole message of Ecclesiastes?
Derek Kidner introduces this book of Ecclesiastes, which speaks so powerfully, to our generation. His love of Hebrew poetry and his understanding of biblical mind shine through in this book.
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Key Features
- Applies the truth of Scripture to everyday life in the contemporary world
- Engages a variety of readers with accessible, nontechnical language
- Analyzes the flow of thought in passage-by-passage exposition of Old Testament books
- Provides insightful treatment of key themes
Top Highlights
“At bottom we can find the axiom of all the wise men of the Bible, that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. But Qoheleth plans to bring us to that point last of all, when we are desperate for an answer. There are hints of it in passing, but his main approach is from the other end: the resolve to see how far a man will get with no such basis. He puts himself—and us—in the shoes of the humanist or secularist. Not the atheist, for atheism was hardly a going concern in his day, but the person who starts his thinking from man and the observable world, and knows God only from a distance.” (Page 14)
“Surprisingly, and superbly, Qoheleth in verse 11 enables us to see perpetual change not as something unsettling but as an unfolding pattern, scintillating and God-given. The trouble for us is not that life refuses to keep still, but that we see only a fraction of its movement and of its subtle, intricate design. Instead of changelessness, there is something better: a dynamic, divine purpose, with its beginning and end. Instead of frozen perfection there is the kaleidoscopic movement of innumerable processes, each with its own character and its period of blossoming and ripening, beautiful in its time and contributing to the over-all masterpiece which is the work of one Creator.” (Pages 38–39)
“Unlike the animals, immersed in time, we long to see them in their full context, for we know something of eternity: enough at least to compare the fleeting with the ‘for ever’.1 We are like the desperately nearsighted, inching their way along some great tapestry or fresco in the attempt to take it in. We see enough to recognize something of its quality, but the grand design escapes us, for we can never stand back far enough to view it as its Creator does, whole and entire, from the beginning to the end.” (Page 39)
- Title: The Message of Ecclesiastes: A Time to Mourn, and a Time to Dance
- Author: Derek Kidner
- Series: The Bible Speaks Today
- Publisher: Inter-Varsity
- Print Publication Date: 1984
- Logos Release Date: 2015
- Pages: 110
- Era: era:contemporary
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subject: Bible. O.T. Ecclesiastes › Commentaries
- ISBNs: 9780851107288, 0851107281
- Resource ID: LLS:BST21EC
- Resource Type: Bible Commentary
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-29T22:22:22Z