Early on in the final semester, one of my writing group colleagues asked me, “How does protest differ from lament?” Yikes. That was a question I was completely unprepared to answer. Thankfully, I still had several weeks before the final submission.
For a while, I probably would have considered Ecclesiastes as a work of lament. But I do not, and there is indeed a distinction to be made. In Ecclesiastes, lament becomes protest.
According to Wikipedia—which, in the age of AI, is somehow looking better by the day—lament is “an expression of grief, often in music, poetry, or song form.” That checks out. Ecclesiastes is often read at funerals. It does, indeed, deal heavily with the themes of life and death.
Theologically, lament often seeks solace within a relational framework. Breaking from this framework, however, Qoheleth names the utter incoherence of reality and refuses to harmonize the dissonance between tradition and experience. For Qoheleth, one such example is a “hebel that takes place on earth, that there are righteous people who are treated according to the conduct of the wicked and wicked people who are treated according to the conduct of the righteous. I said that this also is hebel” (Ecc. 8:14).
That’s not how it should be. But that’s how it is.
In this context, hebel is not a cry of sorrow. It is an active, critical response to a world where the expected Divine Comforter does not comfort or intervene at all.
Coherence, Purpose, and Significance
Perhaps my favorite contemporary resource on Ecclesiastes, Arthur Jan Keefer’s Ecclesiastes and the Meaning of Life in the Ancient World, seeks to define the meaning of life in Ecclesiastes. He frames this definition around the work of psychologists Frank Martela and Michael Steger, who argue that the “meaning of life” is defined by coherence, purpose, and significance (p. 5).
Righteous people should not perish in their righteousness. And the wicked should not prolong life in evildoing, however one might achieve that. But they do (Ecc. 7:15). And one cannot “make straight” what God has “made crooked” (7:13).
If the meaning of life is a prominent theme in Ecclesiastes, then Qoheleth’s understanding of it is certainly muddied. For the most part, it is incoherent. Nothing makes sense. Qoheleth encourages a response from the reader of “that’s not the way this should be,” without explicitly saying that.
But there are also instances in which life lacks significance. In 4:1–3, Qoheleth commends death and non-existence over life itself, after observing the “tears of the oppressed.” More on this later.
While my thesis does not emphasize purpose as much, it is worth noting. Purpose “arises when life has a future, overarching goal” (p. 11). As Keefer emphasizes, this is tricky because of Qoheleth’s reliance upon contradiction; thus, the book’s view of purpose can itself “be framed as contradictory.”
A life that is coherent, holds significance, and carries purpose has significantly more value than a life that is incoherent, insignificant, and purposeless. So why is it that Qoheleth’s approach to life’s meaning is so fractured? In my interpretation, because that is how God designed it. Not necessarily because God authors every cruelty, but because Qoheleth repeatedly places human limitation, crookedness, and unknowability within the world God has made.
Hidden: Not Absent
My initial hypothesis was that Qoheleth’s God is entirely absent. I was wrong. A realization I did not come to until this January. In my original approach, Qoheleth embodied a sort of functional deism: the world was created, then indifferently abandoned by God. However, the text’s insistence on the “fear of God” renders such a theory of simple absence completely untenable.
I still, however, predominantly use “theology of absence” when referring to Qoheleth’s theology. I remain firm in that. Absence and hiddenness are indeed ontologically distinct, with the latter implying a concealed presence and the former a total vacuum. In the ancient world, however, divine absence did not exist in the simple binary of theism vs. atheism. In Qoheleth’s world, the active deity withholds comfort and moral intervention. God is hidden. And because God is completely inscrutable, God is experienced as totally absent by those under the sun. After all:
“He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover, he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” Ecc. 3:11.
Qoheleth laments. Quite a bit. But as I have found myself wrestling with throughout this process, there is an element of frustration. Qoheleth is not some hippie teacher. He is not a prophet of doom, either. But he isn’t happy. And as the seas are never full (1:7), so too is his desire to see justice prevail never satisfied.
Qoheleth is not an atheist, but Qoheleth indeed observes that God does not step in. God is hidden. God prevents humans from understanding certain things. Some scholars, such as Tremper Longman III, an otherwise conservative commentator on Ecclesiastes, do not see 3:11 as comforting. It is actually quite depressing. To quote Longman:
“However, not everyone can avail themselves of these diversions, only those whom God so blesses. The implication is that other people, including Qohelet himself, must struggle with depressing reality.” (P. 125).
God is not absent; God is hidden. But that hiddenness is experienced as absence.
The Deus Absconditus
As noted in my previous article, I find that Qoheleth believes in a Deus absconditus, Latin for the “hidden God.” The term was made famous by none other than Martin Luther. Such a God is inscrutable to human reason. To quote Antoon Schoors, a foundational scholar in Ecclesiastes,
“[God] is the maker of a problematic world, a Deus absconditus. He makes what is the way it is, but he is no factor in human knowledge about the world.” (P. 409).
I know I made this point previously, but an absent God does not mean God does not exist. I am not an atheist, and I do not believe Qoheleth is an atheist. Some scholars, such as Schoors and James Crenshaw, believe Qoheleth is agnostic. As much as I want to believe this, I am not compelled.
That God is unknowable makes sense, and definitely aligns with Ecclesiastes—to some extent. But agnosticism withholds both belief and disbelief. Qoheleth says God has made some things unknowable; he does NOT say God is unknowable. And he is certainly a believer. His “inner dialogue” in 3:16–18 reveals that God will act, at some point. He believes God has given gifts to humankind, such as the gift of pleasure.
Maybe someone will convince me someday, but “God is inscrutable, therefore Qoheleth is agnostic” seems a bit far-fetched to me. And again, as an agnostic, I deeply want this to be true. I’m not convinced. Qoheleth’s argument is too nuanced. And God is much too central to Ecclesiastes for “I don’t know” to be an acceptable answer to the question of belief.
On the Character of God
One of the hardest things for me to reconcile, early on in my deconstruction, was just how different the theologies of the Bible are. Some, like Amos, portray God as pissed off about injustice. Some texts, like Deutero-Isaiah and many Psalms, portray God as comforter. Psalm 88 portrays God as a source of suffering. Job does too, but with a little more nuance. The New Testament, for the most part, emphasizes God’s benevolence.
And then there’s Qoheleth. There are no easy answers for Qoheleth. The oppressed are without comfort. The seas are never full. Where is God in the midst of it all? “God is in heaven, and you upon earth” (5:2). God operates on a totally different plane. Nobody will stop the madness on earth. Not humankind, and certainly not God.
Calling Out; No Answer
Let’s return to something I brought up in my previous post. For Brittany Melton and Carol Newsom, there is no “final” answer to Qoheleth’s questions. There are many possibilities. God does not disappear into the black, as though absent from the theological problem altogether.
But God also does nothing. God does not step in to provide comfort, reprimand the oppressors, or set the record straight. This differs drastically from the God of the prophets. For Amos, God addresses humans as “cows” (4:1). Deutero-Isaiah promises comfort (40:1; 51:12). The God of Jonah tells Jonah to take a chill pill and not fixate on the death and suffering of an entire civilization. But for Qoheleth? Where on earth is God? Or rather, is God even on earth?
Conclusion: The Right to Protest
There are many things to lament. I often consider, as I did before this study and as I still do, Ecclesiastes to be the “goth book of the Bible.” It hyper-fixates on death. Per the NIV, “everything is meaningless.” Per the CSB, “everything is futile.” It’s the book that, if rarely centered in sermons, is always waiting at funerals. There is a time to be born, and a time to… well, you already know.
You already know because Ecclesiastes is more pivotal than you imagined. This book, this beautifully bleak book, something of a loner in the Hebrew Bible, lays the foundation for what we all need: the right to be upset. The ability to say “this is absurd” or “this is inscrutable” without being accused of being a heretic. Better yet, that “this too is hebel.” To say the oppressed are without comfort.
Because they are. Paint as many pictures of Jesus comforting the oppressed as you want, the problem remains the same. Jesus does not comfort the oppressed in 4:1. Jesus has not yet entered the world. For Qoheleth, the God of the flood, of the plagues, of Job’s unnecessary suffering… that God is not going to stop the oppressor. That God is not going to sort out the places of righteousness and justice.
That does not mean that God does not exist. For Qoheleth, that God does exist; and that is precisely the problem. God exists. Chaos ensues. God does not intervene.