- What gain has the worker from his toil? I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. -
Any of you feeling a little déjà vu here? No? Just me?
Swear I’ve had that feeling before….
Sorry to all the dads out there for beating you at your own game. Let’s dive in!
Yes, these words have appeared earlier in the text. Like the vanity and feasting on the wind line, we are being asked to reinspect these ideas with the new information Solomon has outlined.
So where did they first appear?
Verse 10 occurs first in chapter 1 verse 13. Solomon tells us what business it is God has given man.
That unhappy business is seeing all that is done under heaven. The subtext here is that he is trying to find something that isn’t vanity.
If identified, this would be the action worthy of our time.
In short, his analysis comes up short. It’s in the next verse that we learn everything is vanity and, for the first time, that it’s a feasting on or a grasping after the wind.
Verse 9 comes closer at the end of chapter 2 verse 22. Solomon is lamenting that all his work will go to his heir despite whether he is wise or a fool.
This verse comes right before his truest utterance of despair, saying that his days are filled with only toil and vexation. Even at night, his heart cannot rest.
What’s changed since we first considered these ideas?
Depending on the verse changes the timeline. For the unhappy business, we’ve seen all the ways Solomon tried to find meaning in toil, wisdom, and his heirs.
We’ve also read 8 verses in chapter 3 regarding the proper time for everything.
So why are we revisiting these verses now?
Think about the past 8 verses we’ve just read. They’re an argument that God has a will and a purpose for the events in our lives.
You can’t pick when these happen, what you can do is tune into His will and not resist Him or what He is planning to accomplish.
More than that, Solomon communicates them in something resembling poetry. That’s actually important.
The structure of those 7 verses is repeated, creating 14 comparisons between a state and it’s opposite.
What is it saying? Both in the words and the structure, it expresses a pattern. The English word utilized here is season to help communicate this idea (though the Hebrew reads appointed occasion).
Solomon is making this statement – why does a pattern exist, these transitioning states of joy and despair, if the end result is nothing for your toil and an unhappy business?
This is powerful in two regards.
1) It places this accusation directly at the feet of God, for who else is appointing these times.
2) It pushes back on the earlier assumptions, saying if there is a pattern, perhaps the misery isn’t the point.
Now, it could be these events come randomly, but we know that not to be the case. The time to keep silence and speak can greatly be influenced by the actions we personally take.
Friends, think on these points. The next couple of verses give us great insight to the ideas we’ve laid out today.
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