Reading the Bible (12) | Ecclesiastes

Thanks to @smallaworld for the suggestion to skip Job, Psalms, and Proverbs and go straight to Ecclesiastes. (But when I looked back just now, I found that he suggested that I skip Ecclesiastes and go straight to Isaiah. Hahaha, I made a mistake.)

I don’t know if it’s because of skipping reading, but I feel that the style has suddenly changed. The previous storm suddenly stopped here. It used to be like a war epic, with the current of time flowing rapidly and various characters floating and sinking in the water, struggling to survive. Suddenly, the water surface opened up into a lake, and the lake surface was as calm as a mirror, reflecting the blue sky and white clouds, and everything calmed down.

And the "Bible" has also become a Buddhist scripture, coming and going, and there are only two sentences to summarize the paragraphs: they are all vanity, they are all chasing the wind.

The book of Ecclesiastes begins with: "The words of the preacher, the son of David, who reigned in Jerusalem." David's son was Solomon, which may be why @A Grain of Wheat said :

Most people believe that the author of Ecclesiastes was Solomon.

But drunk horse brother @DrunkenDonkey said :

Many books in ancient times were written by ancient people, perhaps centuries later, who said they were "King Solomon" and wrote from the first-person point of view.

Personally, I prefer the theory of a drunken horse, because Solomon is almost the king who lived the most comfortable life in the "Book of Kings". He basically never fought in a war. The greatest achievement in his life was to build the temple for Jehovah, not himself. Lifted wood and hewn stone. Then he was admired by thousands of people, enjoyed great wealth and wealth, and enjoyed endless enjoyment without suffering much at all. It is not impossible to say that in his later years he would feel a little sad because his life was coming to an end. But it is somewhat far-fetched logically to say that he regarded everything in the past as vanity and wrote a book about it in order to teach future generations. This was not the first day that he suddenly became disillusioned after knowing that people would eventually die.

This kind of psychological transition is more suitable for people like Moses and Aaron who have unfulfilled ambitions, or those like Thanos. Although their wishes were achieved at the stage, they later suffered from the pain of killing their loved ones day and night, and finally conquered the world of mortals. Become a Buddha immediately. And Captain America, after fighting and fighting, got tired, handed the shield to Falcon, and went to live his own life.

You, Solomon, the second generation of rich people, fair and beautiful, well clothed and well-fed, don’t you feel guilty for saying this?

I have read half of the Bible, and now that I am here, I finally don’t see Jehovah getting angry and punishing people, which feels pretty good. Especially since I was a child, I have been accustomed to hearing that the four elements are empty, and when I see that the Bible also talks about this, it feels like I have traveled thousands of miles in a strange place and suddenly met an old friend. But because my old friend was a monk, we couldn't drink wine and eat meat together. We could only sit together under the bodhi tree and recite Amitabha, which made us secretly happy.

However, although all things are empty, the central idea of ​​the Bible cannot be lost, and it must still be: the fear of God.

I think there is an unresolved logic here: If everything is empty, why should we worship God? Like the soldier in "Attack on Titan" who asked the regiment leader Alvin: Why should I obey your orders if I'm going to die anyway? Alvin's answer is very confusing: Because people will eventually die, is there no point in living? Ecclesiastes is not very good. It finally told me: "Having heard these things, the conclusion is to fear God and keep His commandments. This is the duty of man." The word duty means that Some moralizing. What's more, if God has such a fiery temper and his hands and eyes reach into the sky, how can he make those who fear him feel that all things are empty?

Obey, obey, obey, Ecclesiastes says not only to fear God, but also to obey the king. I forgot where I came from before, saying that religion is essentially a kind of stability maintenance. But no, it goes without saying that when politics and religion are unified, even if they are not unified, the values ​​​​that religion brings to people are probably what the ruling class likes to see. Only our party is stupid, insisting on spending its own money to build a police state, and is unwilling to use religion.