 |  |
Chapter 7:, as we have previously pointed out, echoes most of the expressions of
chapter 2:, 3:, and 4:, and is in the second half of the book, when question begins to
give place to answer. Right there, at the junction of the two parts of the book, is placed
the solution of the enigma, viz.:--
"What is he who hath been?
Long ago his name was given
And it is perceived what (that name indicates)
It was ADAM; neither may he judge Him that is mightier than he."
The vanity of this life, all the strange and perplexing dealings of Providence are all
traceable back to the nature and fall of man. The NATURE of man as much as the FALL
of man.
"The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam a life-giving spirit.
Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that
which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from
heaven" (I Cor. 15: 45-47).
The answer to this set of difficulties is the answer to Ecclesiastes' problem, the
resurrection of the dead. "It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption." Sown,
not as some think when a person is buried, but when he is born into the world. For no
one sows dead seed. The contrast is between the two Adams.
"As in Adam all die (wise as well as fools), so in Christ shall all be made alive (wise
as well as fools)" (I Cor. 15: 22).
When once resurrection is believed and seen as the goal of God and the entrance into
true life, then we reverse the statement of the vanity of all labour, "forasmuch as ye know
that your labour is not in vain in the Lord".
"For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared
with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creature
waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to
vanity, not willingly, but by reason of Him who hath subjected the same; in hope,
because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the
glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know (as Ecclesiastes perceived) that the
whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now" (Rom. 8: 18-22).
"By one man sin entered into the world and death by sin.......When I would do good
evil is present with me. O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body
of this death?" (Rom. 5:, 6:, 7:).
These and such like passages echo and illuminate the discovery of Eccles. 6: 10. The
one great pitfall into which most of us fall is revealed in the last sentence of 6: 10. Man,
whose name is red earth or mould, "the thing formed by the potter", let him beware of
saying, "Why hast thou made me thus?" We must avoid "judging" the One that is
mightier than we are. The book of Job reveals something of this:--
"But how can mortal man be just with God?
If man contend in argument with Him,
Of thousand things he could not answer one
However wise of heart and stout of limb