Book of Ecclesiastes, The

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Jun 2000 by Fredericks, Daniel C

The Book of Ecclesiastes. By Tremper Longman III. NICOT. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998, 306 pp., $35.00.

This commentary in the NICOT series is an important addition because it is an evangelical's attempt to take the interpretation of Ecclesiastes as a pessimistic and skeptical book to its ultimate, logical conclusion.

No other OT book provides a greater number of introductory challenges, and Longman avoids very few areas of controversy while balancing details with theological overviews excellently. Matters of date and language are presented somewhat agnostically and are deferred to the exegetical section for any greater resolution. Here the footnotes themselves reflect excellent studies of the complex linguistic matters. He believes the book is likely postexilic. His proposals on the theological intention of Ecclesiastes impressively collate the main remaining issues of authorship, genre, and structure.

The "Text and Commentary" section's main subdivisions reflect Longman's thesis (expressed in terms borrowed from M. Fox's research) that Ecclesiastes is a frame narrative that corrects the intellectually struggling and unorthodox Qohelet by couching his thinking between the opening and closing orthodox comments of the frame narrator. At this point Longman applies his own research in Akkadian "fictional autobiographies," concluding that Ecclesiastes's frame narrator incorporated this example of Mesopotamian literary tradition for his own purposes. Longman sees some sequence of thought within what he describes as the two fictional "Quest" sections (1:13-2:26, and 3:1-6:9), and then a loosely connected string of subjects titled simply "Qohelet's Wise Advice" (6:10-12:7). However, readers are well served by Longman's objective to present the most coherent Qohelet possible by providing very helpful introductions and summaries for every main division of the pericopes.

Other significant qualities of this commentary are the able translations of each Hebrew structural unit into clear, readable English. The bibliography and indexes are thorough and will serve all levels of further research that any reader would like to pursue.

In the context of recent Ecclesiastes scholarship, Longman is firmly in the camp of those such as Fox and J. Crenshaw who understand Qohelet to be a confused, pessimistic theologian who has no hope of finding a coherent world view. "Meaningless" is the meaning of hebel for Longman, and Qohelet's broader theological message is tersely regarded to be, "Life is full of trouble and then you die" (p. 34). The more positive readings by G. Ogden and R. N. Whybray, for example, are considered inadequate given the depth of Qohelet's emotional despair. Any experience of joy that Qohelet might allude to is "simply a narcotic that numbs the recipient to the true nature of reality" (p. 35).

The sources of Qohelet's anguish are 1) death and 2) the inability to control and know the appropriate time to do anything" (p. 33). Consequently, "there is no purpose to doing anything in this fallen world." Longman's Qohelet feels confused, frustrated, joyless, disappointed, chilled to the bone with fear, full of doubt, helpless, and hopeless. There is no consolation for Qohelet, because "Qohelet's world view does not let him take a transcendent yet immanent God into consideration in his quest for meaning" (p. 66). Worse than simply a detached God, however, Qohelet's God is dangerous, a cosmic bully who frustrates the moral order, and is even the cause of some moral evils. For Qohelet, work is evil and life is hateful, and even wisdom is meaningless and unhelpful in the end. Thus for Qohelet, all is utterly meaningless.

On the other hand, Longman's confused Qohelet speaks often of a limited meaning to eating, drinking, and enjoying one's labor. It is gratuitous, however, to qualify these as merely "simple pleasures," as Longman does consistently. Some other aspects of life with relative value are wisdom in general, companionship, decrying oppression, patience, righteousness, self-awareness, wise speech, personal glory, eating for nourishment, diligence, and life itself! Longman's argument goes further than most in retaining an absolute skepticism throughout Qohelet's autobiography, resorting to the gambit of a self contradicting Qohelet a minimum number of times. Yet, this strained attempt at continuity in chaps. 1-8 inevitably unravels in the commentary on chaps. 9-11, where the concentrated enumeration of proverb-like wisdom must be repeatedly admitted to be relatively valuable. For Longman, the ideas that everything is utter meaninglessness and that there is relative meaningfulness for some aspects of life, are somehow compatible, especially in the mind of one like Qohelet who is supposedly disposed to such contradictions.

Those who would find Longman convincing must accept that utter meaninglessness and relative value are somehow compatible, accept that Qohelet's orthodox statements are only slips in reasoning, not heartfelt confessions, and accept that his confusion about this and many other issues was worthy of massive quotation for a frame narrator. There will be many who will concur with Longman, since current Ecclesiastes scholarship tolerates projecting confusion about the book's meaning onto Qohelet himself.