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Articles
A collection of short articles about the book of Ecclesiastes.
The Secret Code
In 1934 the Ovaltine company gave a secret decoder ring to anyone who joined the “Little Orphan Annie” club. With the ring you were able to reveal the real message hidden in a line of plain text. Today, a great many books and sermons about Ecclesiastes also offer a secret code that unlocks the message […]
C. S. Lewis and Kohelet
In 1964 C. S. Lewis wrote a book on the Psalms where he makes a passing reference to Ecclesiastes. He is speaking of how even the most dire parts of the Bible can still shed light upon our understanding of God. He argues against dissecting these difficult texts through exposition and instead, letting them wash […]
Beautiful in its time?
If you type the words “beautiful in its time” into your web browser and click on images your screen will fill up with flowers, butterflies and sunsets – all with those famous words from Ecclesiastes plastered over top of them in flowing script. What you won’t see is a mushroom cloud from an atomic bomb […]
It’s Not Meaningless
If you read the words of Kohelet (the author of Ecclesiastes) in some modern translations you will find that the endless repetition of the word “meaningless” is like Chinese water torture. Work is meaningless, pleasure is meaningless, money is meaningless, life is meaningless, wisdom is meaningless and even death is meaningless. With all this “meaningless” […]
5 Keys to Understanding Ecclesiastes
The book we have come to know as Ecclesiastes takes its title from the Hebrew name of its writer, Kohelet. At the end of the book his biographer writes, “Kohelet was wise and he passed on his teachings to the people. He pondered, searched out, and set in order many proverbs. He studied to find […]
The Forest for the Trees
Think of the Bible as a forest. As you explore its groves you will find many different ‘trees’; massive oaks, stately pines, weeping birches and other species both exotic and plain. Each tree is quite different from the others but each makes an important contribution to the overall vitality of the forest. Throughout the ages […]
The Pursuit of Wisdom
At first glance Kohelet appears to denigrate wisdom but a closer examination of his teachings shows that he is extremely positive about the place of wisdom in our lives. He tells us that the wise can see where they are going while the fool stumbles along in the dark, that wisdom is like an inheritance […]
Who was Kohelet?
The question of who wrote the book we know as Ecclesiastes has been the subject of much debate. For a thousand years or more it was believed that king Solomon wrote the book. This was both its salvation, for it kept the religious leaders of the day interested in preserving the book, and also its […]
A Hamster’s Guide to the Rat Race
As a boy I loved going out to the dump on Saturday mornings to collect bits and pieces for my latest invention. On one of those excursions I spotted a small wire cage, bent and twisted, lying near the top of the drop-off pile. Clambering over boxes and broken debris, I discovered a hamster huddled […]