{"id":1845,"date":"2017-11-28T09:47:43","date_gmt":"2017-11-28T14:47:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/?p=1845"},"modified":"2017-11-29T10:29:53","modified_gmt":"2017-11-29T15:29:53","slug":"an-old-guy-reconsiders-ecclesiastes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2017\/11\/28\/an-old-guy-reconsiders-ecclesiastes\/","title":{"rendered":"An Old Guy Reconsiders Ecclesiastes"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m not an intensely religious man.\u00a0 I ponder the questions of who, what, how and why in much the same way I imagine men always have.\u00a0 But I do read the Bible and I have my favorite passages.\u00a0 In the Old Testament I gravitate to Ecclesiastes 9:7 to 9:10.<\/p>\n

The King James Version translates it thus:<\/p>\n

7<\/a><\/strong>Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart; for God now accepteth thy works.<\/strong><\/p>\n

8<\/a>Let thy garments be always white; and let thy head lack no ointment.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>9<\/a>Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, which he hath given thee under the sun, all the days of thy vanity: for that\u00a0is<\/em>\u00a0thy portion in\u00a0this<\/em>\u00a0life, and in thy labour which thou takest under the sun.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>10<\/a>Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do\u00a0it<\/em>\u00a0with thy might; for\u00a0there is <\/em>no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Now something in verse nine always bothered me.\u00a0 \u201cAll the days of the life of thy vanity.\u201d\u00a0 So, Solomon says our lives and our happiness and our loves and our families are in vain?<\/p>\n

I dug a little deeper and found that the Hebrew word being translated as vanity is \u201chevel.\u201d\u00a0 The root meaning of hevel I have read, is \u201cmere breath.\u201d\u00a0 And the connotation is insubstantial, ephemeral.\u00a0 That makes a little more sense.\u00a0 Life is ephemeral.\u00a0 We have a thousand versions of this.\u00a0 \u201cTime flies, \u201clife is short,\u201d \u201cars longa vita brevis,\u201d etc., etc., etc.<\/p>\n

I felt better about that.\u00a0 I retranslated that passage:<\/p>\n

Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the fleeting days of thy life, which he hath given thee under the sun, all thy fleeting days:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>That\u2019s better.\u00a0 So, that\u2019s how I became a biblical scholar.\u00a0 The pay is non-existent but I imagine the big guy up there will appreciate me straightening out the English language version of his book.\u00a0 So, I\u2019ve got that going for me which is nice.<\/p>\n

But I was still disturbed by the negative vibe of all this ephemeral talk.\u00a0 Was Solomon trying to bum us out?\u00a0 In fact, the whole book of Ecclesiastes was a giant downer.\u00a0 Here\u2019s a guy who\u2019s got everything in the world.\u00a0 He\u2019s got gold, silver and bronze literally piled up to the sky.\u00a0 He\u2019s got wives and concubines to the extent that he probably was considering a vow of chastity just to save his own life.\u00a0 He\u2019s blessed by God with matchless wisdom and a mighty nation that views his word as law.\u00a0 He should be the happiest man on earth.\u00a0 Why is he griping about everything under the sun?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s because he sees the end of the road.\u00a0 He sees his own death on the horizon.\u00a0 In other words, he\u2019s old.<\/p>\n

And now I\u2019m old and I understand.\u00a0 You see all the things you should have done or shouldn\u2019t have done and you\u2019re filled with regret and anger at yourself.\u00a0 And since Solomon knows himself to be the wisest man on earth he sees it as his part to tell the rest of us to stop chasing all the meaningless stuff like gold and silver and empires and just eat our bread, drink our wine and love our wives for as long as we\u2019re allowed.<\/p>\n

Now I no longer see Ecclesiastes as a depressing work.\u00a0 I see it as a friendly signpost to the rest of us to cut to the chase and take care of the things that have actual meaning.\u00a0 Keeping healthy with food that is good, enjoying the simple pleasures of life and loving your wife and your family.\u00a0 And don\u2019t waste time.\u00a0 Time is short.\u00a0 Use it.\u00a0 So that\u2019s why my articles are short too.\u00a0 I\u2019ve got most of today off and I intend to have some fun.\u00a0 Have a great day.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Since my readers don’t always stop by every day I figured I’d paste this poll on each post for a while to see what folks call themselves.\u00a0 This is the post the poll came from\u00a0\u00a0Who Are We?<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

… And that got me thinking. Who are the people who read my blog?\u00a0 I thought it might be fun to see what the cross-section looked like.\u00a0 If you feel like saying what you believe in, feel free to leave a comment and\/or pick a label from the poll below.\u00a0 I think it might be interesting.<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[Total_Soft_Poll id=”6″]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m not an intensely religious man.\u00a0 I ponder the questions of who, what, how and why in much the same way I imagine men always<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[569,567,573,572,568,570,571],"class_list":["post-1845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","tag-eat-drink-and-be-merry","tag-ecclesiastes","tag-hevel","tag-king-james-version","tag-solomon","tag-the-bible","tag-the-old-testament"],"yoast_head":"\nAn Old Guy Reconsiders Ecclesiastes - Orion's Cold Fire<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2017\/11\/28\/an-old-guy-reconsiders-ecclesiastes\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"An Old Guy Reconsiders Ecclesiastes - 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