Better off dead. That is the message of Ecclesiastes 4:1–3. Don’t believe me?
“And I turned and I saw all the oppressions (העשקים, ha-ashuqim) that are done under the sun. And behold! The tears of the oppressed (העשקים, ha-ashuqim), and there is not for them a comforter; and from the hand of their oppressors there is power, and there is not for them a comforter. And I commended the dead, who have already died, more than the living, who are living still, and better than both is the one who has not yet been, who has not seen the evil work that is done under the sun.” ~ Ecclesiastes 4:1–3, my own translation.
This is the hebel world I mentioned before. A world in which those who are oppressed have no comfort. A world in which one is better off dead; or, even better, having not yet been. The hebel world isn’t some fictional dystopia. It is everything Qoheleth saw, and everything you see. The world is the hebel world.
And in my opinion, this passage best exemplifies why that is. Qoheleth observes their tears and begs us to see what he sees—that no one comforts them. What in the world! How can this be? Again, Qoheleth is provoking that response of “this is not how it should be.”
I do not need to tell you that the oppressed deserve comfort. I may not be an ethicist, but I truly do not see how one can miss the disjunction here. Qoheleth commends death and non-existence—one should not do that!! Moreover, a biblical author should not be saying such things. They should be talking about the afterlife.
What does Qoheleth think of the afterlife? Well, all go to “one place” (3:20). That place is Sheol, “where you are going” (9:10). But in 4:1, Qoheleth is asking us to observe physical reality. And sadly, not much has changed since he taught these words. The “oppressed,” under the current circumstances, have become the “detainees,” the “immigrants.” Those who are ridiculed for being “crazy” when they suffer from psychiatric disorders. The children afraid to go to school because of a bully. The employee dreading Monday morning because of a horrible boss.
But their tears. Look at them. Behold them. What do they say about this world? Is this a utopia?
For Qoheleth, that would be a resounding no. Welcome to one of my favorite passages, which is truly the beating heart of this project. The first time I actually read Ecclesiastes, one of the questions I walked away with was: “No one? No one to comfort them? Not even God?” As I will argue, Qoheleth does not just observe an absence of human empathy; he observes an absence of that in addition to a hidden God. In this case especially, that hidden God is also experienced as absent. Woefully absent.
What is being protested?
The idea that God does not comfort the oppressed is both deeply unsettling and shockingly unorthodox. Breaking from my more serious prose for a bit, Qoheleth is hella unorthodox. We’ve already been told that humans are no different than animals. That all is hebel. That the places of justice and righteousness are perverted by wickedness. All just in 3:16–22. Why, then, should we be surprised (or “amazed”; 5:7) at the sight of oppression? Or the oppressed finding no comfort?
What we really want to hear is the theology of (many of) the Psalms, that name God as a fortress or refuge. The God to whom the psalmist says, “your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” But perhaps most of all, we want the God of Deutero-Isaiah.
Deutero-Isaiah (that is, Isaiah 40–55), begins as follows,
“Comfort, O comfort my people,
says your God.” (Isa. 40:1, NRSVue)
Elsewhere, the author says,
“Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth;
break forth, O mountains, into singing!
For the Lord has comforted his people
and will have compassion on his suffering ones.” (Isa. 49:13)
And, of course,
“I, I am he who comforts you” (Isa. 51:12)
These are, indeed, beautiful passages. But they are also deeply problematic. There are some who do not experience this comfort. I doubt I am the first person to read them and think “yeah, if only…” And in fact, I believe one of the authors of the Bible did.
A Fight Inside
The disjunction Qoheleth observes is not just a problem in empirical reality. It is also a fracture within himself. One emerging scholar, Jimyung Kim, suggests Qoheleth is battling multiple voices within his own head. As we saw in 3:17–18, where both verses begin with “I said to myself…”, Qoheleth is not shy about his internal debates or interior monologues. And in 4:1, I find a striking internal debate.
In 4:1, we find a struggle between a voice that desires the Comforter of tradition and a voice that only sees the “power” and effect of the oppressor. Qoheleth frantically repeats “there is no comforter.” I may be getting ahead of myself, but the immediate pivot to the value of life in 4:2–3 is evidence of an emotional fallout of Qoheleth’s having seen this bleak reality. And he refuses to offer sterilized hope.
Qoheleth was almost certainly familiar with Deutero-Isaiah. Ecclesiastes, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, is widely believed to have been written between 400 and 200 BCE, with most scholars favoring a later date. Deutero-Isaiah, on the other hand, is generally placed in the mid-sixth century, during the Babylonian exile. But Qoheleth’s familiarity with one specific text is not so much our concern here. Rather, it is that, by this point in history, Israel desired a comforting God.
And so, again, Qoheleth’s dilemma is not just what he sees with his eyes. He wants to believe that God will comfort those who hurt. He wants to see the tears of the oppressed wiped away by a benevolent God. That is not happening. The tears fall with no resolution. And instead of a pious or hopeful reflection, Qoheleth follows this observation with an indictment on the value of life itself.
All
Let’s go back to something I said in the introduction. I equated “the oppressed” in Ecc. 4:1 with modern marginalized groups. Because this is an issue that has existed as long as humans have. Qoheleth does not give us a specific political or religious scapegoat. Instead, the message in this verse is so painstakingly true of all of human history.
As such, we are not dealing with natural suffering. We are dealing with oppressive power structures and human-inflicted suffering. But not some of it; all of it.
The force of “all” (כל, kol) signals the totality of human cruelty and exploitation. We are not talking about land seizures or extortion. We are talking about total oppression. All the oppressions.
The Oppressed
The oppressed are just that: the oppressed. In English, Qoheleth speaks of “all the oppressions” happening “under the sun,” and then encourages the reader to, “Behold! The tears of the oppressed.” In Hebrew, however, “oppressions” and “oppressed” are the same word: ha-ashuqim. As such, there is no distinction between the act of oppression and the victims of oppression. It becomes a matter of identity.
This “glitch” is actually a literary masterpiece. For some scholars, it is a mistake that needs touching up. But I find that it is a deliberate, devastating literary strategy. Specifically, as I read it: the individuals Qoheleth speaks of in 4:1 are so deeply consumed by their victimization that their personhood becomes completely indistinguishable from the oppression they are dealt.
Think about the victims of the 2026 Iran War. Who are they? Do you know anything about them? What music they listened to, their family trees, or even their jobs? No. You know them as victims. As casualties. Their tragedy is forever inseparable from their identity by millions of people. A complex human being is reduced to a casualty, a statistic. Grammatically, this is what Qoheleth does, but not to capitalize on their suffering. He does so to force us to look at the totalizing nature of human cruelty.
And Their Tears…
Why does Qoheleth specifically tell us to behold their tears? The tears indicate deep anguish, or as Arthur Keefer suggests, “sorrow and depression.” We cannot entirely rule out material deprivation. But, whereas some scholars read this as a judgment on socio-political mistreatment, I find the words “all” and “tears” render such a view anything but compelling.
There is an emphasis on the depth of the victims’ emotional pain. What happens under the sun? This. This is exactly what happens. When no God intervenes, humans are left to their own devices. And the powers that be do not care for the oppressed, they are the oppressors. And as for God? Not only does God not intervene to smite the oppressors, but God does not even intervene to comfort the oppressed.
The Crisis of Comfortlessness
The critical question becomes: is this an indictment on human failure or divine absence? Some of my evangelical friends believe it is the former. God is not mentioned here. Not by name, at least. And that is where I differ.
We need to consider the theologies of the day. By the time Qoheleth is writing, Isaiah has been in circulation for at least one century, but likely 3–4. Jumping outside the scope of my thesis a bit, the Gospels especially call on Isaiah. It is a powerful book. A popular book.
And a core theme of Deutero-Isaiah (Isa. 40–55) is that God will comfort Israel. Not only Isaiah, but the Psalms as well, including the one many of us memorized as children (Ps. 23:4; 34:18). Deutero-Isaiah was written while Israel was in exile. They were the oppressed. Isaiah desired a comforter. So, Deutero-Isaiah depicts God as the Comforter the nation desires.
But then there’s Qoheleth. For Qoheleth, the problem is precisely that nobody, neither human nor divine, offers any solace to the oppressed. As such, they do not receive the eventual restoration received or promised elsewhere in the Bible (Isaiah 61:7; Job 42:10).
For Mark McEntire, there is a development in the portrayal of God across the Hebrew Bible. As the “plot” of the Hebrew Bible progresses, God recedes from active participation. God remains active but only engages with the world from a calculated distance.
The Historic Backdrop
Although I do not believe dating Ecclesiastes to be important to this study, it is helpful when we are considering the broader theological history. The shift McEntire develops, and the one I argue Qoheleth develops, is frequently situated in the late Persian or early Hellenistic period.
For Michael V. Fox (not the actor Michael J. Fox), the book was written in a Hellenistic context. Specifically, it was written during the Ptolemaic period. At this point, the Greeks began to lose faith in their traditional gods, with skepticism and anxiety over justice, freedom, and divine care growing.
This era was also marked by rapid economic developments that placed an enormous burden on the common folk. If written during the Achaemenid Persian period, the socio-economic culture was particularly marked by taxes, mortgages, and foreclosures. Wickedness in the places of justice and righteousness.
But now there are emotional stakes: tears. These tears represent a failed system of justice. They represent a world that constantly promises God will comfort them or even restore them… only for them to find no such resolution.
I do not read this as my primary interlocutor, Luca Mazzinghi, does. He likewise identifies the absent comfort as a direct polemic against Isaiah 40–55, but holds God “directly responsible” for such earthly chaos. I furthermore do not believe Qoheleth is speaking solely about absent human consolers. Instead, while the oppression itself is indeed human-inflicted, it occurs directly under the gaze of a sovereign God who permits its continuation without any intervention or solace.
The Verdict on Existence
Qoheleth does not follow 4:1 with, “But God hears your cry! God will comfort you!” No, we get something much more hopeless: a commendation of death and non-existence over life itself.
That is how bad life under the sun is. Those who have already died are better off; and better yet are those who have not yet been. Oppression exists. And the oppressed find absolutely no comfort. Who would want to live in such a world?
This valuation of death, of course, finds further resonance in the Bible. Perhaps most importantly, both Job and Jeremiah curse the days of their birth (Job 3:3–26; Jer. 20:14–18). It’s also not the only time Qoheleth commends death over life (cf. 6:1–6; 7:1).
But that is the world as Qoheleth sees it. As I began this post, not much has changed. The oppressed go without comfort, and the righteous perish while the wicked “prolong” their lives (7:15). In the midst of it all.. where is God? Where is the God that Deutero-Isaiah and the Psalms promise? Where is the God of justice?
Qoheleth’s answer: not here. Not right now.
Conclusion
Qoheleth has observed all the oppressions that take place under the sun. He has seen wickedness in the places of justice and righteousness, but now, he has presented us the emotional core of the problem. What happens in a world without a reliable divine order?
This. Wickedness in the place of justice. The oppressed without comfort. I think about the test subjects in the Holocaust. Bone marrow injected with bacteria, limbs removed without anesthesia, or experimented on with poison. The parents and children detained and separated by ICE. Behold their tears, Qoheleth urges. Where is their comfort?
I do not believe this antagonizes God, nor do I believe it disproves God. To quote Elie Wiesel, reflecting on faith after the Holocaust, “I have not lost faith in God. I have moments of anger and protest. Sometimes I’ve been closer to him for that reason.”
Only, I do not believe Qoheleth finds himself closer to God. He finds himself begging, “How can this be happening?” And ultimately, he finds himself finding the value of life under the sun to be quite low. As consistent throughout the book, Qoheleth finds God as inscrutable. As hidden.
That does not make him an atheist. And while some scholars indeed argue that Qoheleth is agnostic, I do not find that compelling. Qoheleth certainly believes in God and has a specific God in mind. Which almost makes the problem worse: God is there, God knows what’s going on, and yet, God is doing nothing.
Humans are creating the problems and inflicting the suffering. But by this point in history, the concept of divine intervention is dwindling. Qoheleth observes life under the sun. He critiques this world fiercely, as in 4:1. The world under the sun is hebel. All that is within it is hebel.
God does not intervene like God used to. The promises of Isaiah, for Qoheleth, are not coming true. There is no one to comfort the oppressed. Absolutely no one, whether human or divine… there is not for them a Comforter.