THE CONCLUSION OF THE MATTER
47
Psalm 19:8 says, `The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes', and this thought enters into `the
conclusion of the matter'. Dispensations change, and the commandments of the Lord change with them, but to keep
whatever is the truth for the time is the one sure way of peace.
To fear God and to keep His commandments is the whole of man. The word `duty' is not needed. Instead of
vexing himself with the crooked things that God alone can straighten, he fears God, keeps His commandments, lives
his life as the Lord prospers, and knows that a future day, a future life, a future judgment are a necessity and that
THERE all crooked places will be made straight, all inequalities rectified. So the book ends:
`For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil'
(12:14).
`EVERY WORK'. - Many saints hold such a view of grace as to preclude a judgment of their works. The judgment
of works is found in both sets of Paul's epistles, those of the Mystery as well as those of the Acts. While it is right to
ponder with chastened heart the judgment of secret things that are evil, surely it is an encouragement to know also
that the secret things that are good shall also be fairly judged in that day?
Many problems arising out of this book are still left unsolved, but we feel that the main issue, the search for what
is that good that man should do in this life, has been rewarded, and is now in the possession of the reader.
Thus ends our examination of a confessedly difficult book, a book not in high esteem among the `orthodox', but
a book which being given by inspiration of God is not only `profitable' but to those who have been granted the eye
of faith, a book calculated to shed great light upon the tangled pathway of the believer, who, while `in this
tabernacle', must of necessity have continual contact with things `under the sun', even though his hope and calling
place him in Christ `far above all'.
APPENDIX
The Testimony of the Vocabulary
Let us look at the statements of the book a little more closely. Everywhere we have statements that read like
autobiography, `I was king', `I gave', `I builded', `I found', &c. Those who deny the Solomonic authorship on
literary grounds admit that Solomon is personated by the unknown author. Grotius bases his argument for the late
date of Ecclesiastes on the appearance of (supposed) Aramaic words. These are sir `pot' (7:6), pesher
`interpretation' (8:1), gummats `pit' (10:8), abiyonah `desire' (12:5).
Regarding the word sir `pot', it was used by Moses even in Exodus 16:3, and is the very word used in 1 Kings
7:45 for pots in the temple built by Solomon himself! Grotius therefore in this case is singularly unreliable.
Readers may remember that Daniel was `proved' to be a pious fraud because foreign names were given to
musical instruments. The critics, however, were found untrustworthy, for the instruments, being imported, would
naturally have native names, and the intercommunication of Daniel's day has been proved, and the critics routed.
The wide dominion of Solomon, the coming to him of such as the Queen of Sheba, accounts for the introduction of
stranger words than Aramaic.
Let us now notice, some parallels that we find between Ecclesiastes and other of Solomon's writings: