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- [00:00]
Josh Bosse
Foreign.
- [00:06]
Brent Billings
This is the Bama podcast with Marty Solomon. I'm his co host, Brent Billings. Today, Josh Bosse is bringing in Red Dent to consider the appointed time for everything. We're going to cover it all today, from what I understand, right, all of.
- [00:20]
Josh Bosse
Them, Every appointed time. Now is the appointed time for podcasting, it seems. Before we get into this, of course, we have our obligatory warning. Remember, this book is very dangerous to us. This. This is. This book is so dangerous they almost didn't put it in the Bible, folks.
- [00:41]
Marty Solomon
Is this the buzz? This is the buzzfeed tagline for this episode.
- [00:45]
Josh Bosse
Yes. For the.
- [00:46]
Marty Solomon
For this book of the Bible, Yes.
- [00:47]
Josh Bosse
They actually l told me a piece of trivia which I always love bringing up. Apparently there is a debate in the Mishnah about whether touching a scroll of Kohelet makes you unclean or something along those lines. So it was very controversial, both on the Jewish side and Christian side. You know, there's a lot of people are unsettled and for good reason. This book is very challenging, but there are additional layers of contextual reality that make it challenging for us listening to it here. And the first is that as a book of philosophy, it can trick us into being too abstract. This is non abstract philosophy. This is rooted in the material world. The concrete metaphors that are used are meant to be taken concretely and so we can't get too abstract with it. And number two is that this book is very individualistic. It uses a radical individualist lens because Kohelet is not coming from a culture that is individualistic like ours. But that does not mean that she is individualistic the way that we are. Her individualism is radical in a context where she was ostensibly brought up in a more collectivistic communal culture. And so we have to understand that her individualism is more a lens of seeing things through just purely human eyes. The experience of a human may be detached from or in opposition to sometimes the communal identity or culture. And so we have to not just try and project all of our individualistic and abstract philosophical norms here. Kohelet is not just making statements that she thinks is true and then backing them up with facts. She is actively exploring with us the tension between questions and these extremes we've talked about in the last two episodes of of Time, the past and kind of the existential tension of trying to become wise when the past can't be changed and time only moves forward, we grow older and we can't ever undo that. And then conversely, in the previous chapter, talking about the tension of the future and us trying to live wisely but not knowing what that will ever amount to, which is additionally and poetically potent when we consider the voice of Solomon that she is kind of literarily evoking and the fact that his own legacy, as much wisdom as he had, as much wealth as he had, got off track immediately with his successor. All that being said, we are now ready to dive into probably the most famous or at least the most quoted section of Qohelet. So with that, let's go ahead and read the very famous, you know, a time for everything bit. But what I want to have the listeners think about is that we have a lot. There's a lot going on here where they're going to be basically 14 couplets paired sayings. A time for this and a time for that. There's going to be a group of seven of them total. So seven lines with 14 couplets and 28 uses of the word time. Time for this, time for that. And as we're reading them, you know, feel free to think about, what do these actual images evoke? Like, that's a lot of images to evoke in such a compact bit of text. A lot of repetition. So don't get lost in the repetition and just say, oh, yeah, there's a time for everything. What is being said in these images? And with me throwing that out there. Brent, will you go ahead and read the dang text for us?
- [04:46]
Brent Billings
There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to uproot. A time to kill and a time to heal. A time to tear down and a time to build. A time to weep and a time to laugh. A time to mourn and a time to dance. A time to scatter stones and a time to gather them. A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing. A time to search and a time to give up. A time to keep and a time to throw away. A time to tear and a time to mend a. A time to be silent and a time to speak. A time to love and a time to hate. A time for war and a time for peace.
- [05:39]
Josh Bosse
Beautifully done. Thank you, Brent.
- [05:41]
Brent Billings
I mean, is it, though? I just feel like I. There's. There's so much repetition. I'm like. I'm not quite sure how to read this.
- [05:51]
Josh Bosse
Yes.
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Brent Billings
Like, is it supposed to feel that, like, samey. I mean, I guess it is, but.
- [05:57]
Josh Bosse
Well, yeah, that. There's. There's a lot we could say about that. So. So, yeah, it does feel very samey. And this is. This is one of. I think, kind of going back to my earlier warning. This can be the. The danger of Kohelet. There is so much repetition. Not just, you know, we have a lot of it very obviously here, but throughout the whole book. And it's. It's easy to just hear like, oh, yeah, the cynical voice. Everything's meaningless, you know, yada, yada, yada. But within that repetition, there's actually a lot going on. And one thing I want to say right off the bat is that I have a bone to pick with this translation.
- [06:31]
Brent Billings
Me too.
- [06:31]
Josh Bosse
Okay, what was your thought?
- [06:33]
Brent Billings
The beginning, There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens. Those words are respectively zaman and ET. Yes, ET gets translated season in that first verse, but every instance of time afterwards is ET.
- [06:51]
Josh Bosse
Yes, indeed. That is a great, great point. And the word ET there is like the most general word for time. So it does make sense to translate it as time. And the reason why they don't translate it as time. And the first one is that that word, zaman, it's a word for like a very specific appointment. Like, you know, this is again, kind of a more of a Western thing, you know, with our desire for punctuality. But it's like we always eat dinner right at six. Like, that would be the word zaman. Like there's an appointed time for this one thing. So there's a lot of specificity to that word. In the nasb, they just say there is an appointed time for everything and there is a time for every matter under heaven. So they just. They keep it consistent.
- [07:43]
Brent Billings
Net does something similar. They say appointed time and appropriate time.
- [07:48]
Josh Bosse
Yes. And see, this is where that word ET it is very, very general and can be a little bit broader once you get into kind of adding connotation to it. It's a word that's used so frequently, I don't really know if there's a solid connotation. That would be a good L question. But in general, though, I'm going to say I'm fine with. Is interesting, though, that Cohellat starts by talking about there being a specific time for everything. Like, there is a very. Like, this is kind of painting a picture of like, kind of a clockwork universe of like, there is a specific time for this and a specific time where this is going to happen. And that. That seems kind of out of step with. With Qohelet's sense of. Of feeling. Befuddled by the world kind of the. The cynicism. Like, is there really a right time for everything? Like, that doesn't seem like a super cohelit point to make, but we'll. We'll get there. The bone I had to pick with the translation was the very, very first image. Now, your translation read, a time to be born and a time to die. And that I just can't agree with because the word there, it is the word for being born, but it's in the active sense. So it would be a time to give birth and a time to die. And now listener might be saying, oh, okay, we're. We're kind of picking this apart, aren't we? Aren't those kind of the same thing? But no, it's very different.
- [09:23]
Brent Billings
Well, that's what we do here on the Baymo podcast, though, so don't apologize for.
- [09:27]
Marty Solomon
Totally changes the subject. Right? Because if it's being born, it's a child, but if it's giving birth, it's a mother.
- [09:33]
Josh Bosse
Yes. And specifically, I think, you know, everything else we see in here is very active, right? You're killing and you're healing, you're tearing apart, and then you're sewing back together. You're loving and hating. Like, it's all things you actively do. Being born is passive to me. What this highlights is, you know, we can see pretty clearly most of these paired images are opposites. But if we think about it, you know, even more actively in terms of what does it mean to do this versus doing that. We have giving birth, you know, creating new life and a time to. To die, to give up your own life, so to speak. It's not quite the same opposite that we might draw where, like, in a Western sense, saying, oh, you're born and then you die, like, that is kind of a perfect, neat, little symmetrical parallelism. But I like Qohelet's tension here because this is the tension between the stage of life where you are creating new life and as a new parent. There's definitely a difference between being born and being a kid versus the time of life when you are giving birth and having a kid. You are full of this, like, messy, chaotic endeavor of raising up new life, raising up a generation, versus being at the end of your life where you've done all the work. You are now moving on to accepting your end, to seeing your legacy go forth in front of you. And what's also interesting is the parallel image that we have, which is a time to plant and a time to uproot what is planted kind of parallel, right? You plant something, you're creating new life. And then we have this uprooting what is planted. Now, this is a little bit different because, you know, it doesn't, you know, the above image of a time to die is not, you know, something that I don't think Qohelet is talking about suicide or intentionally killing yourself. But this idea of uprooting what is planted is also connected to the idea of being like a transplant, being a foreigner, or also of being barren sometimes it's used on occasion. But this idea of bringing new life and, like, we could say, starting a new community, right? If you plant something, you're usually planting maybe a field or a garden, you're not just creating life in this individual sense, but you are creating a whole new sphere of life. You're not just giving birth to an individual child, but you're giving birth to all the things that accompany that. You and the community, raising them and doing this group effort to create more life. That image of, you know, there's a time to start a new community, start a new project, go on to a new journey in life. And then there's a time to be uprooted from your context, to give up on a dream, maybe to let something simply die. And that, to me, those images feel like. I feel a lot more push and pull on my heart when I hear those images with that context. Kind of to your point, Brent, about them being a little bit Sany. I want to tell you all, folks, there is a lot in these that I'm going to have to skip over. Primarily, there are a lot of remazine, a lot of references in the text that I think would be really cool to look into. There might even be patterns there that I am not seeing. But I would encourage you to do that on your own because it is simply fantastic. But one other thing I wanted to point out about this first image before we move on, is that when we think about the image of giving birth and dying, where do we see that happen in the text? In fact, where might we see a bunch of collected.
- [13:38]
Marty Solomon
Are you thinking about, like, genealogies?
- [13:40]
Josh Bosse
Exactly. A genealogy, this person. And usually this is how biblical genealogies, or often how they're structured, not just this is the time the person was born and the time they die, but this is the time they were born, this is the time they gave birth to the next generation, and this is the time they died. So, again, makes a lot of sense to have this. This genealogy we're talking about, not just Your own beginning and end, but the cycle of one generation building onto the next, followed by this image of planting and uprooting. There is a time to carry on your lineage, and there is a time to pull up the plants, pull up your tent stakes and switch it up, move on, depart from your family. This is what God called Avraham to do, right? Leave your family behind, go do something new, settle someplace else. Sometimes we're called to do one thing, sometimes we're called to do another. And again, this isn't just talking about abstract times. Oh, it's time to do this. Oh, it's time to do that. This is saying, sometimes you are in a season, a moment in history, whatever unit of time we want to say where God might call you to start doing the exact opposite kind of work. Maybe, you know, you've been very much on the. The giving birth, the planting. You've. I don't know, you've been in child care at church your whole life, and all of a sudden God says, all right, leave all that behind. Time to do something else. Time to go be a stranger in a strange land. Oh, that is. That has a lot more existential human tension than just saying, ah, someday gotta live, you gotta die. Yeah, that's how life goes. You know, it's. There's more to it than that. So, that being said, I'm going to move through these images a little more quickly because there's just so dang many of them.
- [15:25]
Marty Solomon
There are a couple that we'll get to that I do actually find very intriguing in the. The couplet, like line one line to the next.
- [15:32]
Josh Bosse
Okay, actually, let's. Let's jump to those first.
- [15:35]
Marty Solomon
Yeah, so I. I see that in some cases, it feels obvious, like how the coupling goes together, like the one that we just talked about. Even the next one, a time to kill is paired with a time to tear down. A time to heal is paired with building. But then I'm curious about a time for. Let's see, I'm looking at Robert Alter's translation, where he renders it flinging stones and gathering stones in. And then that is paired with embracing and pulling away. Or like, I guess, withdrawing.
- [16:07]
Josh Bosse
So, yes.
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Marty Solomon
How does flinging stones and embracing go together? And how does gathering stones go with pulling back from a hug?
- [16:16]
Josh Bosse
All right. Yes. I'm glad we got into this one. Is a little bit uncomfortable because. And actually, I. I got this insight from Mr. Alter himself.
- [16:24]
Marty Solomon
Okay.
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Josh Bosse
Which is that in this case, throwing and gathering stones is euphemistic of. How do I put this A seed that you are.
- [16:35]
Marty Solomon
Yep, yep. Okay.
- [16:36]
Josh Bosse
Planting your seed, casting the stones, or you are refraining from doing that, you are embracing someone or you are shunning that embrace and saying no. Oh, yes.
- [16:45]
Marty Solomon
Ok, okay, okay, okay. Well, how about. Oh, go ahead.
- [16:49]
Josh Bosse
No, no, no, please, please.
- [16:50]
Marty Solomon
Well, I'm gonna ask about a different one. So if you have more to say about this one.
- [16:53]
Josh Bosse
So here, I'll. I'll just crack this wide open. So isn't it interesting that you just jumped to another one that had to do with what? Creating life and. Yeah, not creating life. So we might think, oh, is there some kind of parallel here? Because they're not all about creating life and not creating life. We have ones about silence and about weeping and these things. So there is. I said before, there are seven couplets, and wouldn't you know it, this follows kind of the days of creation style, where we have achaism in the abc. Abc. So give birth and die with plants. And uproot is number one. And what you just talked about, the throwing and gathering stones, embracing, distancing, that is number four. So we have 1, 2, 3. 1, 2, 3. So the 1, the A part of this chiasm is about life, about creating life and about moving on or letting life die out or uprooting centers on that, that need to create life. And we'll see that the other ones, the B and C, have their own parallel. And what this leaves, kind of like with the creation story, leaving the Sabbath outside of that cycle, is the very last element of this one. Loving and hating, war and peace, which we'll get back to. What was the other one that you. The next one that you had a question about.
- [18:29]
Marty Solomon
The next one was actually, I think it would be one of the sea couplets. It would be the second one. So tearing and sewing.
- [18:37]
Josh Bosse
Yes.
- [18:38]
Marty Solomon
And then how does tearing and keeping silent and sewing and speaking. Sewing in the sense of like. Like a threads, like through a fabric.
- [18:47]
Josh Bosse
So this is an image of mourning. When you're mourning, you tear your clothes, right. And when you are mourning the people around you, they're in silence. You're not talking like normal. You're going around in silence. Maybe you're crying too, but you are in morning. And then the opposite side of that, you go back and you sew your clothes up. When you're saying, okay, it's time to get on with life now I can talk normally, and I'm not gonna just break down in tears all the time.
- [19:15]
Marty Solomon
Okay, okay, okay, I see where this is going.
- [19:17]
Josh Bosse
And if we go Back. What is the second line or the third line? Sorry, the C line. We have weeping and laughing. We have mourning and dancing. So again, that repetition there is this, this. This mournful aspect. And in fact, I have, in my own kind of accounting of this chiasm, I have called this C parallel loss. Dealing with loss. We weep and then eventually we can go back to laughter. We mourn, then eventually we can dance. We tear, and then eventually we sew. We're silent, but eventually we speak.
- [19:51]
Marty Solomon
So this is. This is like Shiva, right? Like, keeping silent. And then there comes a. A period. After that period of time, you then open up and speak.
- [19:59]
Josh Bosse
Yep, exactly. And so this is again, like, not just saying, oh, there's a time to mourn and a time to not mourn. This is again, the tension of these images is like, how do you go from weeping back to laughing? How do you go from having torn these clothes and this, like, you know, again, ancient times, you don't have, like a million shirts that are 3 cents a piece. Like, you have, like, maybe just one tunic and you've torn it. And so every day when you get up and put it on that. That torn bit of cloth right over your heart is reminding you of this loss. At what point do you say, okay, I'm going to fix this. I'm going to sew this back up? Like, it is about the moving on. That, like, tension of, like, when do you stop mourning? How can you stop mourning for this person you love? So what's in between these two? What's in between the creation of life and mourning? You know, morning's usually the loss of life.
- [20:59]
Marty Solomon
You got a time to kill. Killing and healing.
- [21:03]
Josh Bosse
Yep. Tearing down.
- [21:04]
Marty Solomon
Tearing down and building. Yeah, this is interesting, right? Like seeking and losing, keeping and flinging away. Seems like those actually are coming in the opposite order, like, if that makes sense. So killing is first killing and tearing down, but then in the second one, losing and throwing away. Are the. Are the second half of those lines in the couplet?
- [21:27]
Josh Bosse
Yes, now. So, yeah, this one is. Yeah, a little bit trickier in that sense. The first B line, kill, heal, tear down, buildup, like you said, that one is very, you know, kind of straightforward. So I looked up the first mentions of all these words, and this is where I found a lot of the interesting stuff. So if you want to do a word study on this, that's what I would do first. Look up all the first mentions. Ecclesiastes uses a lot of words that are not in Torah. But interestingly, for a lot of These, they go back to Torah. So kill and heal. Kill is kind of obvious. It's Cain, right? That's the first time we have any killing. The first healing is when God heals Avimelech after him and his household have been, quote, unquote, shut up. Bodies have been messed with by God and God heals him. And what's interesting is that in these terms, like conflict exists in both cases. And when we think of killing and healing, we think, oh, first you kill and then afterwards you take care of people's wounds. But in, you know, in the case of Avimelech, there is no initial violence between Abraham and Abimelech. The healing is what resolved the conflict. So these aren't necessarily like different. Different stages of the same story, but we can also see it in a certain sense as different ways of how do you resolve a conflict? Do you resolve a conflict by attacking the other person? Do you resolve a conflict by trying to heal the other person? And before we quickly jump into, well, of course the Jesus path is to heal, not kill, let's remember that this is also, you know, speaking in, you know, historically, a post exilic context. So we could be talking about, you know, a Roman soldier, you know, messing with your wife when you're on the road, like, what do you do? What do you do? And Kohelet is. Is not, you know, we have to remember not. Not coelid is talking about what is happening under the sun. So not like that Kohelet is excluding a. A religious life or making decisions based on faith. But coed is very much a realist and asking the tough questions that life throws at us. So we have tearing down and building up, you know, do we. When we enter the land and there's all these high places, we have to tear them down. But what do we build up in its place? Or do we build up in its place? You know, I think about Jericho, right? There's a curse put on anyone to rebuild Jericho. Building does not always mean something positive. In fact, one of the first times that building up is used is it's used euphemistically talking about Sarai being built up through Hagar with the her surrogacy, which we would look at that and maybe not look at that as building up in a. In a positive sense. So these are not images. You know, some of them can seem black and white, not always as black and white. And again, it's. It's about that tension. And if we look at that second one that you brought up, Reed, of seeking and losing, guarding and throwing away. So first of all, to seek in the Hebrew is also used. It's not necessarily just looking for something that is lost. It can also be like. Like when God talks with Noah when he says, you know, if you, you know, whoever kills a person, they will have their bloodshed. Whoever sheds the blood of man by man, their blood will be shed. Right before that it says, God will seek the life from anyone who spills blood. So there is a sense of the word seeking that can mean to. To go and demand something of someone. Like if someone borrowed your lawnmower and you went to seek it from them. So it doesn't necessarily mean like, oh, I'm just out looking for stuff, I'm trying to find myself. I'm a seeker. Like, it can mean to, to go and demand or to let something be lost. And that word for lost is also the word for destroyed. Like when we say, like, oh, this, you know. Or actually they say it in Exodus, the court magicians, and say, don't you see? Egypt is lost. And it can mean lost, like lost in the desert. But it's usually a word used to talk about something being destroyed utterly. So do you go seek something? Do you go, you know, do you. If you're, you know, I remember when I lived in Spokane, we had a landlord that was very, very unreasonably picky. We spent, you know, hours cleaning our apartment. And then she said, oh, well, I had to redo this, so I'm going to charge you 200 bucks out of your deposit. I'm not going to get that. That back to you because of this and this. And I could have sought after justice and taken her to small claims court or something. Or I can give up as lost my deposit and just say, all right, we're going to, we're going to let that go. And parallel to this word for keep, there is that word shower that we've talked so much about. Shomer being a guard word to guard and protect. Do you. Do you look over something when you're in a time of conflict? Are you protecting things at all costs or are you willing to throw stuff away? You know, I remember as a kid when I first heard about a story of Jonah, right when they're in a storm, they start throwing stuff overboard. And I was like, what? Really? Like, throw all the stuff you were carrying? Like, what the heck? Like, why would you do. I would, I would not do that. I would want to keep all my stuff. You know, I'm a kid. I'm thinking about Losing all my toys, all my pogs. Yeah, yeah, exactly. They don't even weigh that much. Come on. And. But there is a time where you guard and there's a time where you throw away. And again, that tension of when do you choose which one or what? And again, the tension can become, what if one becomes the other? What if. When do you give up? After you've said, nope, we're going to. We're going to find this thing, we're going to seek it. When do you give up and say, okay, like, this is kind of the. Like the sunk cost fallacy, right? It's easy for us, once we've gone down one. One line of reasoning, to stop and say, you know what? I think it's actually time to just give this up. Or it's time to throw the cargo overboard. Or it's, you know, I've been trying to heal this, but maybe it's time to kill this relationship and move on with my life or whatever. So there is this cycle here. We can kind of see of, you know, life creating it, maybe walking away from it at times or accepting its loss. Then we have conflict, and then we have loss. How do we mourn life? Conflict, loss. There's probably a more poetic way to string these things together, but that's the best I have for you right now.
- [28:21]
Marty Solomon
That's good. That's good.
- [28:22]
Josh Bosse
And then we get to the end. Love and hate, war and peace. Now, there is something very, very strange going on in this verse. Does anyone notice it? There's a big, big problem with our rhythm.
- [28:37]
Brent Billings
They're flipped. Love corresponds to war. Hate corresponds to peace.
- [28:41]
Josh Bosse
Yes. What the heck is going on? It's almost as if this seventh couplet is itself its own little chiasm, where we have love and peace on the outside and hate and war on the inside. What's also interesting with this one is that when I was looking at the first mentions again, kind of going to the Qohelet's love of. Kind of these. These gray areas, these tough questions. The first use of the word love in the text. Does anyone want to guess without looking at the episode notes?
- [29:14]
Brent Billings
It's too late. I already looked.
- [29:15]
Marty Solomon
Sorry, I haven't looked. The first use of love.
- [29:19]
Josh Bosse
Yes.
- [29:21]
Marty Solomon
It's going to be used of God, I would bet. Am I close? Is it. Is the word. No, I'm not okay.
- [29:29]
Josh Bosse
God is saying it.
- [29:31]
Marty Solomon
Hold on. So I'd say it's Jacob I loved.
- [29:36]
Josh Bosse
No.
- [29:36]
Marty Solomon
Is that it? Okay.
- [29:38]
Josh Bosse
Take your son, your only son, whom you love. It's the Akada.
- [29:44]
Marty Solomon
That's the one.
- [29:45]
Josh Bosse
It is the command to kill your own son. That's the first time love is used. Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. And the first time hate is used ironically is in a positive context when Laban and Bethuel and the rest of Ribka's family are blessing her. They say, may you inherit the gates of those who hate you. It's used as a blessing. How funny. The bigger question, though, to get us back to it is, why the flipped order here? Why war before peace? That's the real question. What shouts out to me from this as first of all, we have. This is. This is the last remes I'm going to do for this one. Actually, Brent, why don't you go to Exodus, chapter one and then go down to verse 10.
- [30:37]
Brent Billings
Come, we must deal shrewdly with them, or they will become even more numerous. And if war breaks out, we'll join our enemies, fight against us, and leave the country.
- [30:47]
Josh Bosse
Yes, and crucially, the word for enemies. There, they will join our enemies. That word for enemies is those who hate us. Now, what's also funny is this verse is the first use of the word wisdom in Torah. Let us deal wisely with them. Chachmah. Very interesting. And this is, of course, the leadership of Mitsrayim, Egypt. This is Pharaoh speaking of the people of Israel dwelling in their midst, justifying the enslavement and genocide against the Hebrews. And right at the center of it, they might grow too big for us. And if there is war, they might join those who hate us. War and hate right in the same verse. How interesting. Also, along with the word for wisdom, how doubly interesting. Now, again, I don't know how many of these first mentions are intentionally evoked so we can even let go of that. But what I think is so interesting here is that to me, this whole arc, this, all these tensions that Kohelet is pulling out, you know, they're not really a lot of the tensions that I feel in my daily life, but they probably would be if I was in exile. When is the right time to start a family in exile? When's the right time to start a new life? How do you deal with conflict? Do you stand up for your rights, even even though you're probably going to get ignored and shouted down and it might be more trouble than it's worth? Do you just. Does your cousin who got in trouble, do you. Do you cast them away and let them deal with their own consequences, or do you fight for their justice in a broken system that Isn't even yours. It's someone else's. You're here because someone took you from your land. How do you deal with loss when it's all around you? How do you ever find a way to get to.
- [32:43]
Brent Billings
LAUGHTER yeah. That's interesting, because in the context of my own life, I feel like most of these, you know, it's a rotating cast, but they come up somewhat regularly.
- [32:53]
Josh Bosse
Yeah, yeah.
- [32:53]
Brent Billings
But then in the context of exile, like, almost every one of these every day or every week, like, this is a constant tension for them.
- [33:02]
Marty Solomon
Well, and it's also, you know, this is individually, and, you know, you talked about the individualism of Kohelet, but individually, there is a certain sequence or rotation of these, but communally, these are concurrently happening all of the time.
- [33:19]
Josh Bosse
Yes.
- [33:20]
Marty Solomon
There is always somebody in our community who is experiencing love or conflict or loss.
- [33:27]
Josh Bosse
Absolutely. And this is honestly something that Kohele will very much touch on later. In terms of what, you know, we. In some senses, we have a. A choice of where we can find ourselves in these, just by what part of our community we're present with. But what I want to suggest here is that what Kohelet puts between love and peace, you know, love and shalom, like, there is. These are, you know, not just trivial good things that we like. These are cornerstones of our very faith. You know, we say that God is love. We here at Bema, we say, you know, we put shalom against empire. And what I love about this is that those are not allowed to be in this, like, harmonious parallel that we see throughout it. They are split apart, and in between them is this double portion of hate and war. I don't know if I can really pull out more of a. Of a. I think Kohelet is probably saying more here than I can fully grasp, but to me, this is just a big sign that blinks. Just like exile. Exile, Exile. There is all this hatred and war that kind of worms its way into the center of things and. Or at least that's what a lot of this is happening in opposition to or in response to. And the exile is precisely what makes all these questions and all these tensions even. Even more tense. I guess that makes these things almost contradictions that cannot be resolved. And, you know, this is something I. You know, we are not totally strangers to, like. Like you said, Brent, like, these things do come up in our lives, and they are. Are very big. They take up a lot of our. Our heart, our attention.
- [35:24]
Marty Solomon
I detect a. A hint of hopefulness in the tension. Like, you can yes, they are. They are being split apart by war and hate. But you can also look at it as they are the beginning in the end. Like, they are the enveloping. You know, they are the shell that surrounds, like this. This other thing that goes on. And so, you know, if it was love and hate, a time for peace and war, and war has the final word there, you know, in. In these lines of poetry. To me, that's. That's a different. I walk away feeling different from that than I do if. And. And notably, like it's conspicuous the way that these are flipped in order. I think for me, at least, drawing attention to Shalom is the final thing. That's where this ends. Love and then shalom, they. They swallow it all up.
- [36:15]
Josh Bosse
Absolutely. But I'm going to tell you this. When it comes to Kohella, we are going to have to fight tooth and nail to get to the hopeful part, because, yeah, she does not. Does not let things slide too easily into the. Into the comfort realm.
- [36:32]
Marty Solomon
It's true.
- [36:32]
Josh Bosse
And this is where I brought this up a couple times. But I think that there is, you know, the way in which Kohelet is philosophy is pretty obvious, but there is just a thread in this, in Qohelet, in the provocative nature of Qohelet that feels very prophetic, you know, very. Like there is a. A provocation existing in the middle of this. We are supposed to wrestle with this, but also it's very. It's not going to be easy. And what's also interesting is going back to the beginning with our conversation about time, which, especially given the last two episodes, you know, we have this exploration of the past and this exploration of the future. And now it feels like not separate from those, but. And maybe even because of those tensions of not knowing what the future will bring, not being able to change the past. All of these feel very much the tension of being in the center, the tension of being pulled between the past and the future. Especially in exile, right? You can't change the fact that you're in exile. You're there because of all the history leading up to that moment. And what's your future going to look like? Is your whole tribe going to be wiped out and not exist in 200 years, or are you going to be back in the land in 200 years? Well, shoot, if you knew that, then you'd know what to do with your life. Which again, goes back to there's a time for everything. And the tension between all these, I feel like shows underlines what. Like the Tension for cohelot of. But we don't know what those times are. I don't know whether the solution is to kill or heal. Right now, I don't know if I'm supposed to. Like, is me moving on from weeping to laughter? Like, what happens if you move on too soon and you've got this festering grief that you've never quite, you know, quenched in your heart? Or have you just lived your life forever dwelling on that grief and you wasted your youth because you didn't move on to laughing because you were scared of it. Like, there is no clear answer. And so even when it seems like, you know, from our abstract Western view that Kohelet's just saying, ah, yes, there is this perfect clockwork heavenly calendar where everything happens at the right time. But as human beings, what the heck do we know about that? We're just in the middle, unsure of which one is right. And with this, I'd like you, Brent, to read. Just go ahead and read the next couple of verses 9 through 11.
- [39:04]
Brent Billings
What do workers gain from their toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart. Yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
- [39:20]
Josh Bosse
Wow. First we gotta say literarily, wow.
- [39:24]
Marty Solomon
Oh, gosh. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. This is one of my favorite lines in the scriptures.
- [39:28]
Brent Billings
A little footnote there in the middle of that last part, too.
- [39:32]
Josh Bosse
Yeah.
- [39:33]
Brent Billings
The question is, he has made everything beautiful in his time. He has also set eternity in the human heart so that no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
- [39:43]
Josh Bosse
Yes, exactly. Exactly. But before we dive into that beautiful little chunk, because that. That is. Yes, we're going to spend a lot of time on that verse. And I mean, it's like you said, Reed, it's. It's one of the most incredible verses in the Hebrew Bible. It's literally where I got the name for my ministry from. But let's go back. Oh, yeah, let's go back to verse nine. We start with the perennial Qohelet question, which is my utrone. What is the utrone? What is the benefit? What is the remnant? What is the leftover bit? What is that little. Is there. Like, what else is there for humanity? Are we just at the. At the mercy of these times that we don't. We aren't able to know in advance? We just have to put up with, oh, well, all right, now I have to mourn. I Have to mourn because I lost this thing and I didn't think I was going to lose it. Okay, and diving into some of the. To put some of the Hebrew parts in there a little more clearly. What is the yitron? What is the remnant for? Your translation said worker, which is great. The word. There is the word asa, to make, to form, to work. And it's. What is the benefit? What is the yitron for the worker in their struggle? What are we getting out of this? Beyond just our daily bread, beyond just our paycheck, beyond just the. The plain fact of the matter. And like Kohelet said at the end of the last chapter, right? We can be present, we can enjoy the good things we have. We can appreciate them. That's not what Q is talking about. Qohelet has already acknowledged this. Kohelet is asking a higher question. Is there something more? And if so, what is it? Follows this with I have seen the task God has given the sons of man, humanity to occupy themselves. That word for task there is the same as the word for affliction, an affliction with which we are afflicted. Then we break into this beautiful verse, everything becoming beautiful in its time. Oh, I love that line. Everything is beautiful in its time. And God has also set eternity in their hearts, humanity's heart. What I love about this too is that. Well, for one thing, it's brings us back to the previous sentences. If you just read verse 11 out of context, you get to that second sentence, you say, wait, who's there? We don't know. Just says, he's made everything beautiful in its time. He has also said eternity in their heart. Who's they? That's why we need the other parts of the beginning. The workers, the people that are struggling through this present reality, stretched between a past they can't change and a future they can't know. And they're wondering if there's more to it. And Coillet says, God has made everything beautiful in its time. And that speaks to that whole big passage, a time for this and a time for that. There's even beauty, Kohelet is saying, in tearing your clothes when it's time to tear your clothes. There is beauty in living in harmony with these times we find ourselves in, even if it requires us to do things we don't like or don't want to do or aren't ready for. There's still beauty in that. But also, God has set eternity in our heart. And in the Hebrew sense, this word eternity, it can also be translated as the universe or the world at different points. Because olam is the word. There is olam. Olam is not so much about time inherently as it is about its root. Comes from the word hidden. Because these things are so large that functionally speaking, they are hidden from us, whether it's the ancient past or the far off future, either side of the spectrum of time, any point on that line outside of our little blip, totally hidden from us. Same with the world. Even with all our modern technology, you still can't see all of it. I mean, maybe you can see all of it from space, but you can't walk all of it. You know, you, you could spend all your life and you probably couldn't see all of China, you know, or all of Africa. Like it, it's just most of it is hidden from us. There's eternity in our heart, in the center of our minds, in the center of our desire to understand. And God put that there so that we can find out what God's doing from beginning to end.
- [44:23]
Marty Solomon
It's kind of a. I, I wonder if there. There's like a sense of wonder and I think there's maybe also a sense of frustration.
- [44:33]
Josh Bosse
Yes.
- [44:34]
Marty Solomon
That, you know, the. What, what we've been talking about, like what you put so well, just a little bit ago, Josh, about how, you know, we're. There's a time for this and a time for that, and we don't necessarily know what is what, you know, even down here in our own little corner of the world. And so there is a sense of wonder at things that go well beyond that. From beginning to end. God has set that. But there is also like a. Just a. There, There is a confounding nature to that.
- [45:09]
Josh Bosse
Right, exactly.
- [45:10]
Marty Solomon
And that God and I. I think it's interesting because not every translation makes the causal connection so that. And yet it seems like maybe there is a causal connection, that there is something intended about a kind of ignorance, you know, that God is the one who knows and we are the ones who do not know. And that is by design.
- [45:35]
Josh Bosse
Yes. What's also interesting is there are some parallelisms in the, the Hebrew. Here we start with God made everything beautiful in its time, and it ends by saying we won't know the works. God made from beginning to end. Again, a reference to time. And right in between that, we have this phrase that we're, we're trying to pick apart. God gave our heart eternity, but without us being able to actually see what God's doing in a sense, like Qohelet might be Saying here, and I'm going to say might, because there's so many different ways we could take this phrase. I want to leave room for other interpretations, but it feels as if Qohelet is saying, like, God put this yearning for the eternal in us without letting us actually see it. We're looking toward it, but we don't have the eyes to actually take it all in. Again, you said it perfectly, Reid. A beautiful blend. A poignant blend of immense irritation and frustration and total awestruck wonder. You know, if Kohella was merely frustrated with all this stuff, she would probably just give up and move on with her life. But there is something compelling about this. There is something that yearns within us to grasp the whole, even though we can't. And God put it there. This is a reflection of what she just said, that there is. This is something we're afflicted with, almost like a punishment or a disease. Like there is this desire to know more, to understand God, to understand what God is up to, even though God is also the one that makes that totally hidden from us. On one level, we could say this seems contradictory, but it's a little more than that. I would call it a paradox. Why did God put this in our heart if we're not allowed to find out the answer? We are all very smart. We've been around the block. We know the story. We know the text. We could probably come up with some pretty good answers. But for the sake of letting this beautiful thing kind of just sit and be beautiful in its own little place, let's just move on and see what else Qohelet follows this up with.
- [47:55]
Brent Billings
I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live, that each of them may eat and drink and find satisfaction in all their toil. This is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will endure forever. Nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him. Whatever is has already been, and what will be has been before. And God will call the past to account. Another weird juxtaposition of like, something so beautiful. And then just like, yeah, I love that sound.
- [48:36]
Josh Bosse
That is a perfect encapsulation. Very good. Yeah. So we start again kind of with a reiteration like, well, it's going back and saying, I already know. I've already said, like, yep, this is the best thing. Just enjoy what you have. And acknowledges that this is, you know, this is the gift of God. You. You know, the good Things, they ultimately come from God. And, and, and while Kohelet doesn't always make God out to be the most benevolent coel, it is also saying like, yeah, you know, if God doesn't give you the opportunity to enjoy anything, then you don't have that. So if you do have the opportunity to enjoy it, gotta, gotta know that that's from God and, and enjoy it while you have it. And then we have this juxtaposition of, you know, the fleet enjoying the, the fleeting present moment with what God is doing lasting forever. And this casts our mind back even further, not just to the conclusion of the previous chapter, but all the way back to chapter one. But this time what's interesting is that instead of just talking about the earth lasting forever and there being this like, unchanging creation that cycles around regardless of what we do on top of it now Qohelet is kind of centering God. Like it's what God does that will remain forever. It's the gift of God in the present moment. God has so worked so that we fear him or are in awe of him. Which might be more appropriate for this passage? And then we end with the strange statement about God. How is it your translation put it, Brent?
- [50:10]
Brent Billings
God will call the past to account.
- [50:11]
Josh Bosse
Yeah, God will. Which isn't bad. The word there is to seek, which as we talked about earlier in the big time poem, to seek can also be to demand or to bring something to account. And yeah, bringing the past to account.
- [50:28]
Marty Solomon
Is this verse 15 that we're talking about?
- [50:30]
Brent Billings
Yeah.
- [50:30]
Josh Bosse
How does yours translate it?
- [50:31]
Marty Solomon
Well, both the JPS and Robert Alter translated as God seeks the pursued.
- [50:38]
Josh Bosse
I'm glad you brought that up. That's where I was going next because it is a weird Hebrew phrase.
- [50:42]
Marty Solomon
So weird.
- [50:42]
Josh Bosse
God seeks what has been pursued. Interesting, right? What the heck does that even mean?
- [50:51]
Marty Solomon
Well, what has been pursued by. By whom? And presumably if anyone else has pursued it, does God. Why does God need to seek it? What does it mean for God to seek? This.
- [51:04]
Josh Bosse
Yes.
- [51:05]
Marty Solomon
This is. Huh.
- [51:07]
Josh Bosse
What's interesting is. Yeah, that word for pursue is usually like, yeah, pretty, pretty aggressive. It's used often in, you know, pursuing someone in battle is where it's probably most often used. It can mean just to follow someone, but it really is generally like we talked about this in Psalm 23, I believe. May goodness and mercy follow me all the days of my life. May they pursue me. So there is something there. Like is this talking about God seeking out those who have been, like, maybe people who have been persecuted and preyed Upon a lot of translations put this idea of things that have been passed by, but that doesn't seem to have the same sense of what was chased after a very puzzling verse, especially when we consider the first part of that, which is again, kind of a reiteration of things that we've heard in chapter one of what has been is what will be. But God seeks what has been pursued. For one thing. This is just kind of a puzzling conclusion. Like, we have all this. I just want to point out we have all this, you know, kind of reflecting back on things that Qohelet has already established. Right? Oh, things will last forever. We can't really change that. Centering it on God, which is kind of new. But then we seem here for Qohelet to make a pretty declarative statement about what God is up to, even after we just had this massive poetic verse that we love so much about how you can't know what God's up to. What is this? Is Qohelet beginning to catch a glimpse of what God's agenda is? Is Qohelet saying something else altogether? Namely. And this is what I'm mostly trying to bring up. It's pretty odd that Qohelet is. Is talking about what God is up to after saying, who can know what God is up to? You guys catching what I'm putting down here?
- [53:13]
Marty Solomon
Yeah, I mean, it's. It's like it feels at odds a little bit with itself to say we can't. We can never grasp or understand, you know, what. What God has done from beginning to end. And then to say, like in verse 15. Yeah, but what, what. What already has been. That's, you know, that's. That's what whatever is already has been and what is going to be already has been. Like, there's a. There's a. Yeah, we don't get from beginning to end. But also the future is pretty much like the past. Like, it just repeats itself.
- [53:44]
Josh Bosse
And this is where, you know, a lot of some of those contradictions are alleviated when we think more in terms of the concrete and what has literally been said. Because in terms of knowing what God has in store for us. And literally the words used from beginning to end is from the start of something to its accounting. There is this pretty strong statement that we are not able to discover what God is up to, maybe at least in a. In a big picture sense. And then we have this reminder of everything that Kohelet has established that, you know, best thing is just to enjoy what you have in the present. What God does can't be changed. Don't try and mess with that. God's worked in such a way that we just. We get to be in awe of it or in fear of it. If God says, your time is up, you know, boy, that's the only thing to really be afraid of. And God gives you something good, who can take it away from you?
- [54:46]
Marty Solomon
Does it feel a little bit like. So he talked several times about the concreteness of Qohelet's argument or observation. She's looking at things that are happening right around her.
- [54:58]
Josh Bosse
Right.
- [54:59]
Marty Solomon
But then, like, as part of the. The confusion here or the. The trying to tie these pieces together in this passage feels like. I mean, that verse that we keep going back to about eternity in the heart, that is ungraspable. It. It feels like it's starting to sort of transcend, you know, like that. Like we're. We're. We've just come off of a section of, you said of, like, love and conflict and loss. And these are, like, universal, real human experiences that we can all point to in very concrete ways. And now that's like getting. It's. It's. We're going somewhere, we're going somewhere else.
- [55:41]
Josh Bosse
Absolutely. And I think this is where we, like, let's also notice that when the things start getting transcendent and abstract, the Hebrew gets really weird. And I think that is. Is part of, like, those things go together because.
- [55:56]
Marty Solomon
Yeah, absolutely.
- [55:57]
Josh Bosse
Abstraction, this transcendent idea of trying to understand, like, what. What is God doing in the world? Like, that's kind of stands in for what we might say more simply is, what's the purpose of life? You know, what is God doing here? What are we supposed to be doing here? And in this context, the struggle that we're going through, the times that we're in the historical moment, like, those are the things, the real concrete things that make us reflect on that bigger question not as some philosophical curiosity, but as something urgent, like, what am I actually doing here, God? Why am I suffering? Why are we in exile? Right. Those are the. The real questions that we have an urgency to. This is not just some, you know, academic pursuit. And I'm glad that we've kind of been circling around this, because I feel like this might, for the. The listener, draw out the. Some of the struggle that Kohelet is trying to put us through.
- [56:58]
Brent Billings
I would like to add an additional couplet pair.
- [57:01]
Josh Bosse
Ooh.
- [57:02]
Brent Billings
Of my own making. This is not the word of the Lord.
- [57:04]
Marty Solomon
Yeah. This is what we're Here for the word of brand is what we're here for. Let's go.
- [57:09]
Brent Billings
A time for clarity and a time for confusion. A time to agree and a time to contradict.
- [57:16]
Josh Bosse
That's good.
- [57:17]
Marty Solomon
Ooh, how do I drop this microphone? Brent, drop your mic. You just did.
- [57:22]
Josh Bosse
That was.
- [57:23]
Marty Solomon
Yeah. Heck, yeah.
- [57:24]
Josh Bosse
Oh, man, that's really good. Absolutely.
- [57:27]
Marty Solomon
That's like the whole. That could be the. The slogan for the whole Bama project.
- [57:32]
Josh Bosse
Yeah.
- [57:32]
Marty Solomon
It's like trying to hold together clarity and confusion, agreement and contradiction. Heck, yeah. That's sage. Like, Brent, well done.
- [57:44]
Brent Billings
I mean, I'm just following in the footsteps of Paul. He's like, I. You know, I've got this thing. It's this. This isn't from the Lord. This is from me. And God's like, yeah, you know what? Ship it.
- [57:54]
Marty Solomon
We'll put it in the Bible and call it the word of God.
- [57:57]
Josh Bosse
Oh, man. Okay, so I have. I've put us all through this because I have a sense of an answer here. I don't know if it's the right answer, but I'm going to put it out there in terms of what it means for God to seek the pursued. I think what Qohelet is saying here is this kind of is the opposite of what we were talking about earlier. The. The abstraction, the eternity, the full awe of God. And isn't this such a smaller scene, God seeking what has been pursued? And I think what Qohelet is talking about is that all the messy loose ends of life, the. The people who, you know, just end up being a statistic in a natural disaster, the little side plots of life that don't go anywhere, the narratives that don't resolve, all the. All the thread are left hanging that no one ever weaves into a greater whole. I think he's saying God chases down every one of those. God seeks every single one of those. There is no end to a story that God has not sought out. And I think this is really important because I had this feeling at least, that this is an important inflection point because of where we're going to go next, that this kind of creates rather than the awe of a God that is. Is bigger than infinity, you know, that. That defies even our biggest concepts to turn and. And also show not just a more intimate face of God, but to emphasize, like, the urgency that God has in these little lost threads, these things that were chased down, the. The. You know, the squirrel in your backyard that a hawk swooped down and unceremoniously killed and brought back to Its young. Like God checks in on what. How that story wrapped up, too. That's what I think this is saying.
- [60:02]
Marty Solomon
I'm on board with that. It's interesting. It's like. It's like. It's like things are in progress. Right. Life is in progress. Our understanding of the world around us is in progress. And we tend to, at some point, tire out, and we can't. We reach a limit. Right. We can't. We can't go any further either because we are frustrated, as we've mentioned here, is like kind of a. A sentiment that you can detect or. Because we just literally die. And like, there are, you know, the stor. Those thread lines, though, go, that's. That somehow weave their way through our lives. Don't start and end with us.
- [60:41]
Josh Bosse
Yes. Y.
- [60:43]
Marty Solomon
And it's like this. It's like this reassurance, Right. That God continues to seek what we have pursued and where we came to a limit. God does not come to a limit. And God sees all things through down to their ultimate completion.
- [60:58]
Josh Bosse
Yeah.
- [60:59]
Marty Solomon
Which, you know, is something far. I mean, now we're getting into, like, the end, right. Beginning to end. And God seeks everything down to its end. And, you know, there's. Yeah. This is like a. A good 2am you know, up too late kind of conversation.
- [61:16]
Josh Bosse
Absolutely. Right, absolutely.
- [61:17]
Marty Solomon
But. But just the reassurance of, like, God will. God will seek this out, which I suspect actually as a turning point into the next verse that you're about to get to.
- [61:28]
Josh Bosse
Yes.
- [61:29]
Marty Solomon
This. This becomes an important thing to hold on to because. Sorry, I'm not trying to steal your.
- [61:34]
Josh Bosse
Your.
- [61:35]
Marty Solomon
Your teaching here, but I. I think I see where you're kind of going with it. Which is. Which is. It's like, uber important. This is like a linchpin. This is something we have to hang on to.
- [61:44]
Josh Bosse
And I also wanted to make, well, you all, but also the audience aware of what we're going to get into in the end part of this chapter. So as I mentioned, this chapter, we have this big, long, poetic thing. Then we have this little paradox that Kohella, you know, this little paradox grenade that Koheleh throws in and then kind of just reviews everything that's been talked about and makes kind of some interesting conclusions. And this is a pattern that repeats. Kohele, as I've been studying through this, there will be two chapters that are, like, looking at tensions on two ends of a spectrum, the past and the future. And I won't spoil the other tensions that lie ahead of us. But then in the third chapter, There is always a kind of synthesis. How do we tie these things together? Except instead of our style of synthesis, where we're trying to create resolution, what happens for Kohelet is that out of that tension will come a new tension, a new question, a new dimension to the larger journey that she's on. That is what is about to be unveiled. And so with that, Bren, why don't you go ahead and read 16 to 22, the end of the chapter.
- [63:01]
Marty Solomon
There's.
- [63:02]
Brent Billings
And I saw something else under the sun. In the place of judgment, wickedness was there. In the place of justice, wickedness was there. I said to myself, God will bring into judgment both the righteous and the wicked, for there will be a time for every activity and a time to judge every deed. I also said to myself, as for humans, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals. Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals. The same fate awaits them both. As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath. Humans have no advantage over animals. Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place. All come from dust and to dust all return. Who knows if the human spirit rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth? So I saw that there is nothing better for a person than to enjoy their work, because that is their lot. For who can bring them to see what will happen after them?
- [64:08]
Josh Bosse
Quite a left turn here at the end, right? Like, this did not seem to be the track we were on. What's interesting, a lot of new questions and ideas spill out here at the end, but I think they all come from this inflection point right at the beginning of that chunk that Qohelet looks around. And in this, like, after having this transcendent, you know, insight and struggle with our connection with God. And what is God really about? How did God make us? Why do we have this yearning for God? Then Kohelet turns around and says, wait a second. Everywhere that we're supposed to have righteousness and justice, I see evil there all the time. All the time. And sure, God will judge all this. Eventually in the future, there will be a time for that. So what is really being judged? Are we really as spiritually elevated? Is all this transcendence really warranted? Are we really different than animals? There was a line there. I really actually like the way your translation put it, Brent, about the test, testing humanity so that we see that we are animals. Like, it's as if Kohelet is wondering, like, is this. Is this Paradox. Is this contradiction real? Is. Is there a secret answer? Is God trying to get us to yearn for something larger? Or is it like it seems, and God is way bigger than us and we don't have any connection, and we're just really, really smart animals. Because when I look for. When I look at the places where we try and be the most, like God, where we try and do righteousness and justice, we really do not do a good job of that. And then we get into all those deeper questions. Who is actually known? Who has the odd experienced that animals die and go down and we die and go up and get little angel wings and halos? Like, who. Who can say that they have experienced that?
- [66:10]
Brent Billings
Yeah.
- [66:10]
Josh Bosse
Other than, you know, all the people that write books about, oh, I had a. You know, I clinically died and then came back, like, you know, setting that aside.
- [66:17]
Brent Billings
But they don't even call that death. They always call that near death. It's like you didn't actually quite get there.
- [66:21]
Josh Bosse
Sure. Yeah.
- [66:22]
Brent Billings
You didn't quite experience it.
- [66:24]
Josh Bosse
Exactly. And that. And that really is the question that Kohelet is posing. Like, we don't actually know that we are any different. We know we both die. And when we think to ourselves, oh, I'm. I'm a higher being. I'm a divine. I'm. I'm made in the image of God, Coil is kind of saying, well, I don't know about that. We don't really do a good job of actually living by even our limited idea of God, let alone what God's actually like and actually doing. So on what basis do we say that we're different from animals? Oh, my goodness. Kohelet is not pulling punches.
- [67:01]
Marty Solomon
How different a sentiment from when we did our psalm series, whenever that was, and we did the one that talks about how you have made man a little lower than the angels, Right?
- [67:16]
Josh Bosse
Yes. Yes.
- [67:17]
Marty Solomon
And Kohlet's like, yeah, like dogs.
- [67:23]
Josh Bosse
We're like dogs. Yeah.
- [67:26]
Marty Solomon
We're like cows. We're like. We're beasts.
- [67:29]
Josh Bosse
Yeah. It's kind of the opposite. He's like, you've made us a little higher than the animals. Like, just a little bit. We're barely not animals.
- [67:38]
Marty Solomon
But that's the thing about. I mean, that's. That's the thing about, like, the wisdom literature. And what it is, I think, to become wise is to be able to hold all of these. And it's exactly what Kohelet is doing, is holding all of these different things, like intention or in contradiction, Right?
- [67:54]
Josh Bosse
Yes.
- [67:54]
Marty Solomon
Like, did you ever see first Reformed?
- [67:59]
Josh Bosse
Oh, yes, of you all. Of course I have.
- [68:02]
Marty Solomon
So there's that. There's that scene where the guy who's concerned about the fate of the world with global warming is trying to, you know, figure out, like, he feels like he should never have a child. Right. And the pastor is talking to him about his own experience having a child and how, you know, things. There was a tragedy and basically how it's unavoidable. But. But he's. He talks about, you know, hope and grief, and he says, wisdom is the ability to hold two contradictions in your mind at the same time and to be able to live between them, you know, and it. I think it's like, so is. Is man a little lower than the angels, or is man no different than the beasts? And the frustrating wisdom answer is, yes, I love that.
- [68:57]
Josh Bosse
And in fact, I think that those lines probably are pulled a little bit from Qohelet, because the Kohelet has some lines that are pretty much exactly along that later on, I think, in chapter seven, talking about holding on to the one thing and reaching out and grasping the other without letting go. So, yes, I would certainly encourage us to see this as a. As a provocative tension to live within. It's certainly humbling, especially for those of us who aspire to spiritual heights to. To grow closer to God. It is helpful to. To. And I think humbling in an important way. It may. It may. You know, I think because it's a heterodox, it can come off as, you know, something that is, like, forbidden to even consider. But, you know, this is in the text, folks. This is inspired stuff.
- [69:52]
Marty Solomon
Oh, and the way. And in the words of Brent Billings, according to the word of Brent Billings, there is a time for clarity and confusion, for agreement and contradiction.
- [70:03]
Josh Bosse
Exactly. A couple things I want to point out, though, in the Hebrew, which is that, first of all, when it says God is testing humanity, that word there is not the normal word for testing. It comes from a root word, barar, which means for something to be pure or like choice. Like the. The like. Like pure silver. Right? Pure silver. Pure gold. And how interesting that it's almost like Kohelet is saying that the test, like this life, this tension that we're struggling through, will reveal what is more true about us. Are. Are we actually made of this divine gold on the inside, or is it just a clump of dirt with a little bit of flex of fool's gold on the outside? You know, like. Which is it? Clearly there's this mix. It looks, you know, if you Pull a hunk of gold out of the ground, it's going to look a little bit like gold, a little bit like dirt. That is also part of the tension here. Like maybe this isn't even a concluded issue in Kohelet's mind. I don't think Cohelit is saying, nope, definitely humans are just animals. There is more to it. But that Kohelet, again, like, yeah, the, the. We'll come to see this later as Kohelet explores more deeply. It teaches us about wisdom. You know, that it is. It does. Wisdom does not grow from us taking the easiest, simplest solution. It's about exactly as you said, Reid. And I love that, of staying in that tension, living in that tension. So I would exhort everyone to. To take that away from this. And one other thing here is that Qohelet brings us back to the idea of Yitron, of what. What is the. What is the extra? What do we have that's extra according over animals? If we can't solve these big questions, if we can't understand it with the intelligence of our minds, and if our souls as. As much as we can say that the soul exists concretely, if we can't actually turn that into real spiritual advancement, if we can't become more like God in our lives, then what is the difference really? And not asking that from some atheist debate person trying to poke holes in faith, from someone who is asking these questions earnestly and seriously. What's also interesting here, as I said, this is bringing up a new dimension, this dimension of righteousness that, you know, you can talk about wisdom all you want, but there is this bigger question of, you know, right and wrong, that wisdom and. And trying to understand wisdom is making him say, like, you know what? Where do we even get this sense of our identity as humans, that there is a higher way? And at the same time, even as we are moving into this new dimension, Kohele ends by reminding us about the element of time. We can't know what will happen next. And that is really where all this stuff is tied up. These are heavy questions and I hope everyone will stay in that tension. But I want to come back to something Reid said for the end of this. The little sprinkling of hope that the quasi prophetic voice of Kohelet leaves for us is. Then it's kind of left dangling in a. In a strange way. And that, I think, is the part we all loved so much. The paradox. God put a paradox in us. Why not clear. What are we supposed to do with it? What is God up to? Why is God chasing down this and that? What is God? How is God bringing justice and righteousness through us flawed people? I don't know, but there's a paradox there. If God just made us as very smart animals, I don't think we would have that yearning for eternity in us. And maybe just that question, that lingering question in the midst of all this tension, is all the hope we need that resonates.
- [74:12]
Marty Solomon
It's a provocation. The ignorance, I guess, is what we can call it. Not in like a stupid sense, but just we don't know.
- [74:20]
Josh Bosse
Yes.
- [74:20]
Marty Solomon
Is meant to be, I think, a provocation to a life of faith rather than like a reason to just give up, you know?
- [74:29]
Josh Bosse
That's a great point.
- [74:30]
Brent Billings
I am appreciating the, like, prophetic, provocative nature of this animal thing.
- [74:38]
Josh Bosse
Yeah.
- [74:39]
Brent Billings
Whereas, like, you see, you see Paul in like, Romans or whatever, making this very patient argument, like, no, we are, we are like, we have this, like, tendency maybe, but we also have this indwelling of God, like, we are better than this. And he just makes this patient, careful argument about why we are not like the animals. Whereas Kohela is like, no, there's wickedness there. You're supposed to have this, like, judgment and justice and all I see is wickedness. So we're no better than the animals. And it's like this shocking, like, smack across the face, like, don't think you're better than the animals. I've seen what's supposed to be there and it's the opposite of that. So I, I kind of, I'm appreciating that, that take on it.
- [75:29]
Josh Bosse
Oh, I love it. Yes, yes.
- [75:32]
Brent Billings
Making us make our own argument as to why we're better than animals.
- [75:37]
Josh Bosse
Absolutely. And on. Oh, man, I wish I could jump in with stuff because I am. This study, this series. I had originally thought it was going to be a slam dunk because a long time ago I did a super in depth study on Colette. Came up with all this stuff, but it's been a while. So when I cracked it open and started looking around, there was so much more than I thought. All the remesium that I found, I did not know that was in there at all. And it's been very surprising in some very good ways. But where I'm at now in the book in terms of putting the series together, a lot of what you just said, like, resonates so perfectly. And I wish I could just start gushing about that, but that would literally ruin a future episode. So. All right, well, I gotta leave it there. But thank you both for these brilliant insights and words and apparently appreciation that we are bringing to this text. It's. It's. It's doing my soul good.
- [76:39]
Brent Billings
All right. A beautiful time together as always. Love talking to you guys about this stuff. Folks can find more details about our show@baymontestyp.com I. I just, I wonder if there's anyone who stumbled into our podcast at this moment in time and wondering what we're all about. Like, you can find all that on our website. You can use the website to get in touch with us on the contact page. You can check the news and events, everything that we have going on currently, no matter when you're listening to this episode. And of course, you can support our work. We live and die by the generosity of listeners like you. So thank you for that and thank you for joining us on the BMW podcast this week. We'll talk to you again soon.