₦airaland Forum

SpyMaster1:
.... It's not outright denying God, but it refuses easy religious comforts and stares reality in the face. No wonder atheists often call it their favorite part of the Bible.

SpyMaster1:
✓ If you're looking for feel-good verses about divine purpose and eternal reward, skip the Book of Ecclesiastes. It's one of the most unusual and uncomfortable books in the entire Bible—and for many non-believers, it's the one they actually connect with.
The main voice in the book (called Qoheleth or "the Teacher" looks at life "under the sun" and delivers a relentless, unflinching verdict: "Vanity of vanities! All is vanity." Everything is meaningless, like chasing after wind.
He observes: .

budaatum:
Funny this. I am an atheist, and the entire Bible is like curriculum to enlightenment, as opposed to "manifesto", to me, as it forces one to look, and looking makes one see. We read in this Bible that humans must not eat only bread or they will become malnourished, so we'd hardly read just the Book of Ecclesiastes, or even the Bible, and say we've read it all.

In fact, if anything, Jesus himself is the Chief Atheist, but one needs to become as a child as he suggested, which means, abandon the beliefs drilled into you and look again with fresh eyes. But we all know that entering the womb to be born again is as hard as threading a camel through the eye of the needle.

That said, Ecclesiastes 11:4 is one of my favourite verses. Instead of waiting for good weather, the wise control the weather in a greenhouse.

Spymaster1, are you aware of Ecclesiasticus too?

https://www.biblesociety.org.uk/explore-the-bible/read/eng/gnb/sir/1/

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Sirach%201&version=NRSVUE

Kobojunkie:
The book instead read more like an ode to major depression. I hope you are not under some notion that those who are don't believe in a god --- not the religious atheists out there who seem instead certain of existence of no god in their delusion --- all struggle with major depression? 🥱🥱

MaxInDHouse:
What you need is a Bible study!

Dtruthspeaker:
No where did Solomon deny God . Rather, what you see is a man who used all his resources, might and intellect in an attempt to beat, burst and nullify God's Hold on man.

So, He never at any point denied God, he just thought like atheists that God could be beaten.

But alas, he saw it was a complete vanity and that is what you see him confess in frustrated exasperation.

MaxInDHouse:
What you need is a Bible study!

Ecclesiastes simplified everything in the Bible whatever we are struggling to get is not real because we will still die anyway and if you think your children will inherit your wealth what assurance do you have?
We came to earth empty handed and so we return empty handed our only hope is if God finds us worthy to come back and live again! Job 14:13-15

SpyMaster1:
The Teacher spends most of the book saying "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." Everything we chase money, wisdom, pleasure, legacy, even "righteous living" ends the same way: we die, and it's all forgotten.

MaxInDHouse:
This is where you got the Preacher wrong!

What the preacher is saying is that we will die whether we are righteous or not but there is a reward for righteous people: God will remember them!

For the true God will judge every deed, including every hidden thing, as to whether it is good or bad. Ecclesiastes 12:14

This means there is a reward for being righteous and Job said:

O that in the Grave you would conceal me, That you would hide me until your anger passes by, That you would set a time limit for me and remember me! If a man dies, can he live again? I will wait all the days of my compulsory service Until my relief comes. You will call, and I will answer you. You will long for the work of your hands. Job 14:13-15

God has given His only begotten Son the authority {Matthew 28:18} to call the dead back to life {John 5:28-29; 11:25} so there will be a resurrection of the RIGHTEOUS (faithful servants of God) and the UNRIGHTEOUS (honest hearted individuals who live by conscience) Act 24:15

But the WICKED (deliberate evildoers) will not be remembered because they are of no good use so they remain in their graves forever! Psalms 9:17

SpyMaster1:
He even questions the afterlife directly: man and beast have the same fate, same breath, same end. "Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward or the spirit of the beast goes down?" (Eccl 3:19-21).

SpyMaster1:
... The book shows a man who experiences life as if God is distant or not actively bringing justice and meaning in the everyday world "under the sun."
He tries everything wisdom, pleasure, massive wealth, women, building projects, power and still concludes over and over: "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." Death makes everyone equal (wise and fool, man and beast). Injustice thrives. Nothing seems to last or satisfy permanently. Even his search for meaning feels like "chasing after the wind."
It's not exactly "trying to beat God." It's more like a brutally honest experiment: "What if I live as if the things the world offers can give real, lasting fulfillment?" And he finds out they can't. The frustration and exasperation you mentioned is very clear in the text.
Where many people (including skeptics) see the "atheistic" feel is in the main body of the book the long first-person reflections. Then the very end (Eccl 12:9-14) suddenly shifts to a third-person voice that says: "Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. God will judge every deed."
To a lot of readers and even some biblical scholars, that ending feels like a later pious addition or frame almost like an editor saying "Okay, but let's make sure people don't walk away too discouraged." Without those last verses, the book ends exactly as it began: "All is vanity."

SpyMaster1:
The Preacher (Qoheleth) spends 12 chapters showing how meaningless life is "under the sun" righteous or wicked, we all die the same way, injustice thrives, and there's no clear evidence that God is actively rewarding the good or punishing the bad in this life.

SpyMaster1:
He even questions the afterlife directly: man and beast have the same fate, same breath, same end. "Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward or the spirit of the beast goes down?" (Eccl 3:19-21).
That's not language of confident hope in rewards or resurrection.

SpyMaster1:
Then, suddenly in the final verses, it shifts to "Fear God and keep His commandments... for God will bring every deed into judgment." Many readers notice this feels like a completely different voice — almost like a later editor added it to wrap up the bleakness with a traditional religious conclusion. Without those lines, the book ends on pure "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.".

Dtruthspeaker:
Your observation is well on point save one or two things I see you do not get.

On the first view, everything you have said is 100% correct. However, if you go through it Deeply, you would see that Solomon was obviously trying to remove God from his mind and life like Isreal did and he sought to live as if there was no God. Hence we see him doing everything to shake and remove God from himself hence as you rightly observed, he was trying to live as if God did not exist or was distant.

Hence, what you call "experiments" is him seeking and trying out different ways in which he thought that he may use to break out of the System and Hand of God.

And that is why you see in response God rejected him as God had done to Saul.

And that is why you see that the whole of ecclesiastics is him confessing his deep and great attempts to evade God and the failures of it, leading him to confess that in the end God, is God and that no man can defeat Him. And that his father was right, Fear God for everything man plans to do without God is vain.

So, the bottomline of ecclesiastes is that there is no escaping God's Hand and system no matter how hard you try

MaxInDHouse:
Here the Preacher is telling us that both humans and animals have the same energy that keeps us living so at death nothing survives either man or animal not that there we won't be a resurrection.
It's your preconceived thought regarding life after death that makes it difficult for you to grasp.
Most religions teaches that at death something comes out of us which lives afterwards that's what the Preacher condemned as falsehood because nothing survives us do at death we cease to exist!

SpyMaster1:
But when you look at the text itself, it doesn't read like a story of someone actively fighting or trying to "break out of God's system." The Preacher mostly describes life as it appears when observed honestly "under the sun": everything wisdom, pleasure, wealth, work, even righteousness feels like vanity (meaningless vapor). Death makes no distinction between the righteous and the wicked. Injustice often wins. Cycles repeat with no real progress or lasting reward.

He doesn't sound like a man rebelliously shaking his fist at God. He sounds more like someone quietly observing a world where God (if present) seems distant and uninvolved in making things fair or meaningful. Even his recommendations are modest: just enjoy simple things like food, drink, and work while you can, because that's the best this short life offers.
The part where it suddenly concludes "Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. God will judge every deed" (Eccl 12:13-14) does feel like the resolution you're describing. But many readers notice how different that ending sounds in tone and message from the long, frustrated monologue that comes before it. It comes across almost like a later pious editor or frame narrator stepping in to give the book a more orthodox, comforting close turning the raw skepticism into a lesson about not trying to escape God.
Without those final verses, the book ends exactly as it began: "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." No triumphant confession that "you can't defeat God." Just honest acknowledgment that life often feels absurd and empty when faced squarely.

That's the real power of Ecclesiastes it shows how meaningless much of existence can appear when we stop forcing religious answers onto it. The idea that Solomon was secretly rebelling and then surrendered makes for a nice moral story, but the skeptical heart of the book feels more like someone simply describing reality as he saw it, without easy escapes or divine victories.

SpyMaster1:
The rhetorical question "Who knows?" strongly suggests uncertainty or doubt about any afterlife where the human spirit survives in a better way. If he believed in a clear resurrection or conscious survival after death, this would be a strange way to express it.
You say he's condemning the idea that "something comes out of us which lives afterwards" and teaching that we simply cease to exist at death. That actually supports the skeptical, almost atheistic tone of the book rather than a religious one. Most of the Bible (especially later Christian teachings) promises some form of afterlife, judgment, and resurrection. But here the Preacher seems to reject easy comfort and says: death is the end for everyone, righteous or not, and we can't know if anything continues.

Dtruthspeaker:
Clearly because you don't want to see the full picture for you forget that we too like God, can read his mind and see his intentions.

And his intention was to live away from God's control hence he did only the things that would naturally make God hate him and remove His Hand from him.

And we all know why he is doing that and what/where he is heading to.

For funny, why did he now not do the goodestess things that would make God over love him?

The truth is, he simply wanted to prove that God could be dispensed with especially against his father who feared God i am sure in his mind he said "too much".

So, we can all see that he planned on proving that God is useless and dispensable and that is why we see God quickly kick him out and rejected him and reffered every righteous king to his father, completely skipping him.

So, all the things you are describing was Solomon's attempt to mock, disgrace and humiliate God, exactly as atheists all tried to do. But in the end it is only failures and sorrows and mournings that they shall get.

So, it is not out of piety that it ended that way but out of a loud resounding defeat which God made him announce since Solomon planned to openly disgrace and humiliate Him.

You obviously forget that God Sees all the things we have in mind.

MaxInDHouse:
The Preacher supports the resurrection that is why he concluded saying:

For the true God will judge every deed, including every hidden thing, as to whether it is good or bad. Ecclesiastes 12:14
If there is no resurrection how can there be judgement? John 5:28-29🤔

SpyMaster1:
If the whole point was to support resurrection and judgment, why wait until the final sentence after 12 chapters of skepticism? Why does the Preacher sound so uncertain about the afterlife earlier ("Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward...?" if he believed in a clear future judgment?

SpyMaster1:
I think we're reading the same book very differently.
You're saying Solomon deliberately tried to live in a way that would make God reject him, that he wanted to prove God was "useless and dispensable," and that the whole book is his loud confession of defeat after God kicked him out. That sounds like a lot of speculation about Solomon's secret intentions and God's exact thoughts.
The text itself doesn't say any of that. The Preacher doesn't describe himself as actively fighting or mocking God. He mostly observes life "under the sun" and repeatedly concludes that everything wisdom, pleasure, wealth, work, even trying to be righteous feels like vanity (meaningless). Death equalizes everyone. Injustice is common. Nothing seems to last. He doesn't sound like a rebel trying to humiliate God. He sounds more like someone honestly describing how empty and absurd life can feel when you look at it without forcing religious meaning onto it.
The idea that this was all a big plan to "disgrace God" and that God then forced him to announce his defeat at the end feels like reading a dramatic religious story into the book. Especially since the strong "Fear God and keep His commandments, God will judge every deed" only appears right at the very end (Eccl 12:13-14). Many people see that ending as a later addition a pious frame added by editors to turn the raw skepticism into a neat moral lesson about not trying to escape God.

The power of Ecclesiastes is precisely in its honest skepticism. It doesn't read like the confession of a failed rebel who got defeated by God. It reads like someone confronting the meaninglessness of existence head-on, without easy answers. The "God will fix it with judgment" part feels more like human wishful thinking layered on afterwards to make the despair more bearable.
Atheists don't "try to disgrace God" any more than Solomon supposedly did. Many simply look at the world as it is with death, injustice, and no clear divine intervention and conclude that life often feels meaningless. Ecclesiastes captures that feeling better than most religious books.
Trying to turn the Preacher into a cautionary tale about rebelling against God and getting crushed seems to miss the raw, existential honesty that makes the book stand out.

Dtruthspeaker:
It seems like you never heard and read about Solomon before you read ecclesiastes or you are pretending for you will not understand ecclesiastes without you first reading about Solomon to understand why he said the things he says in Ecclesiastes. And so it is no speculation.

The bible showed us his intentions and the acts he did to fulfil those intentions and from God's rejection and cast out of him, we can see that he therefore did those things with the same bad intention we all know.

So, as i said, you just want to look at ecclesiastes from the narrow view as you do not want to see the whole Truth you first saw when you declared that Ecclesiastes is written in sorrowful despair.

So now you are running from the effects of the whole of it to try to bring focus on the subjects like justice, death etc he raised in your denial. Forgetting that those subjects are also even taken care of and complimented by other writings in the bible.

So, those subjects were not your original pursuit but you yourself observed that Ecclesiastes was written depressively.

The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable" - James A. Garfield

Better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie." — Khaled Hosseini

"Denial ain't just a river in Egypt- Mark Twain

SpyMaster1:
I have read about Solomon the wealth, the 700 wives, the idolatry, the turning away from God in his old age. That background is well known.
But here's the thing: even with all that, when I read Ecclesiastes itself, it doesn't read like a personal confession of "I tried to rebel against God and failed, so now I admit defeat."

Dtruthspeaker:
You cannot read ecclesiastes without that background because no one says anything out of nothing. Everything always has a cause and a reason. So since you have read about his acts, therefore you can see (if you truly want to see) all that causes him to say what he says in Ecclesiastes.

And why would he say "i rebelled against The Lord" when he already knows that people have already seen his acts?

This is a case of you refusing to see and accept the Truth right in front of you

We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.- Dennis Diderot.

Well, i understand

People get to choose between the sweet lie or the bitter truth. I say the bitter truth, but many people don't want it. -Avigdor Lieberman

SpyMaster1:
I understand your point background matters. Solomon had great wealth, many wives, turned to other gods, and lived a life of excess. That history is clear.
But even with that background, Ecclesiastes, it still doesn't read like a personal confession of “I rebelled against God and now I admit defeat.” The Preacher doesn’t talk about his harem, his idolatry, or trying to shake off God’s hand. Instead, he speaks in universal terms: everything under the sun is vanity, death levels the wise and the fool, injustice thrives, and we can’t know what happens after death.
He doesn’t say “I did all these bad things to prove God is dispensable.” He says life feels meaningless no matter what you pursue. That feels less like a defeated rebel’s apology and more like an honest observation of how empty existence can be.
You keep saying I’m refusing to see the “bitter truth.” But for me, the bitter truth in Ecclesiastes is exactly the skeptical part: life is short, death is final, meaning is hard to find, and God (when mentioned) often feels distant. The sweet lie might actually be the sudden ending that says “Fear God, keep His commandments, God will judge everything” as if that neatly fixes all the despair that came before it.

Many readers see that final conclusion (Eccl 12:13-14) as a later addition by editors who wanted to make the book sound more pious. Without those last verses, the book ends on pure “Vanity of vanities” which matches the tone of the rest much better.
I’m not swallowing a flattering lie. I’m saying the raw, existential honesty in most of Ecclesiastes is more truthful than trying to turn it into “Solomon tried to defeat God and lost, so fear God.” That interpretation feels like adding comfort on top of the bitterness the Preacher actually described.
The quotes about bitter truth vs sweet lie are interesting, but they work both ways. Sometimes the bitterest truth is that there is no grand divine plan, no guaranteed resurrection, and no escaping the finality of death. Comforting ourselves with “God will judge and remember the righteous” may feel better, but it might also be the sweeter story we tell ourselves to avoid facing the void.

Dtruthspeaker:
How can you be looking for "I rebelled against God and now I admit defeat." when you have already been given every fact for you to infer?

For example, you see and said that he went after other gods yet he says at the end Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.

14 For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing,

Again, you see he appropriated 1000 women, an obviously deliberate number done against God's Commandment of thou shalt not multiply thy wives, and yet, you are still looking for Solomon to say to you "I rebelled against God and now I admit defeat."?

C'mon man, you are swimming in gross denial and truth is that while i can only present you the with the facts and argue them as i can reasonably do, i cannot force you to accept the impression and meaning of them.

Dtruthspeaker:
How can you be looking for "I rebelled against God and now I admit defeat." when you have already been given every fact for you to infer?

For example, you see and said that he went after other gods yet he says at the end Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.

14 For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing,

Again, you see he appropriated 1000 women, an obviously deliberate number done against God's Commandment of thou shalt not multiply thy wives, and yet, you are still looking for Solomon to say to you "I rebelled against God and now I admit defeat."?

C'mon man, you are swimming in gross denial and truth is that while i can only present you the with the facts and argue them as i can reasonably do, i cannot force you to accept the impression and meaning of them.

SpyMaster1:
..
The Preacher never mentions his 1000 women, his idolatry, or any personal rebellion. He speaks in broad, universal terms about how everything under the sun is vanity wisdom, pleasure, wealth, building projects, and even righteousness all feel meaningless because death levels everyone. He questions the afterlife with real skepticism: man and beast have the same fate, same breath, same end. "Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward...?" (Eccl 3:19-21).
That's not the voice of someone saying "I tried to shake off God and failed, so fear Him." It sounds like someone honestly describing how empty and absurd life feels when you look at it without easy religious answers.

The strong conclusion "Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment" only appears in the very last two verses (12:13-14). To many readers and scholars, this feels like a later pious addition by an editor who wanted to give the book a more orthodox, comforting close. Without those verses, the book ends exactly as it began: "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."
You're inferring a big dramatic story of rebellion and divine rejection. But the book itself reads more like raw existential reflection on a world where meaning is hard to find and death is final. The "God will judge everything" part feels like the sweet comfort added afterward, rather than the bitter truth the Preacher spent most of the book confronting.
I'm not in denial. I'm saying the honest power of Ecclesiastes is in its willingness to face the vanity and meaninglessness head-on, without rushing to "Fear God and everything will be judged fairly." That skeptical core feels far more truthful than turning the whole thing into a morality tale about Solomon trying (and failing) to dispense with God.
The facts of Solomon's life are one thing. What the actual words in Ecclesiastes say is another. And those words lean heavily toward "life under the sun often feels pointless" rather than "don't rebel against God like I did."