Episode 5: Pleasure Under the Sun

 Nothing lasts. The work, the worries, the possessions, the reputation, even the memory of having been here—all of it eventually disappears. Ecclesiastes does not answer this problem by discovering some hidden permanence. It asks whether the fleetingness of life might change how we receive its ordinary pleasures. Can we enjoy what is given without pretending that it will last or asking it to make life enjoy what is given without pretending that it mean more than it can? 

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Imagine your grandfather at the end of a long and seemingly content life. He is lying in bed with his descendants gathered around him. He is fully cognizant and without pain. The time is short. You are all attentive to his last words, waiting for his wisdom and advice.

And then he begins to talk.

“Nothing lasts,” he says. “All the things I worked for, worried about, accumulated, and tried to understand—what did they finally add up to?”

How would you respond?

Welcome to one biblical understanding of human life: the unsettling voice that dominates Ecclesiastes.

You are listening to Happiness and the Pursuit of the Good Life, a podcast about ancient wisdom, modern psychology, and the search for a life that is not only successful but meaningful. I’m Michael Satlow.

Today: Ecclesiastes and pleasure—its surprising biblical perspective.

Ecclesiastes’ answer is not that pleasure gives life meaning. It is that in a world where nothing lasts, ordinary pleasures may be among the few gifts that we can genuinely receive. His distinction is between enjoying pleasure when it comes and organizing a life around pursuing it.

To understand Ecclesiastes, though, it will be useful to begin with some historical context.

The book of Ecclesiastes was probably written during the Hellenistic period, when Judea was part of a world increasingly shaped by Greek language, institutions, and ideas. Jerusalem remained centered on its temple and priestly elite, but educated and wealthy Judeans were becoming exposed to wider intellectual currents.

The first verse of the book ascribes it to Kohelet, “the son of David, king in Jerusalem.” Later tradition would identify the author as King Solomon. Yet the ascription to Kohelet, rather than directly to Solomon, is significant and intentional. Kohelet in Hebrew means something like “the preacher” or “the convener.” The term is generic, not a proper name. The author was creating a narrative persona, elusively linked to Solomon, which is important for the ultimate message of the book.

It is as if to say that if the wisest and richest man in antiquity regards worldly possessions as fleeting, we should pay special attention.

The language and message of the book, though, indicate a Hellenistic, cosmopolitan setting. That message is forcefully stated at the very beginning of the book:

Hevel of hevels, all is hevel. What real value is there for a person in all the gains he makes beneath the sun?

I have left hevel untranslated here. The Hebrew word hevel is the core of the entire book. It literally evokes breath or vapor—something real, but impossible to grasp and quick to disappear. “Futility” captures part of its meaning, but so do “fleeting,” “elusive,” and “insubstantial.”

Much of the book simply drives home this fundamental observation. The world goes inexorably on in its natural rhythms. People are born and people die, and nothing of substance ever seems to change.

As he writes:

Sometimes there is a phenomenon of which they say, “Look, this one is new!” But it occurred long since, in ages that went by before us. The earlier ones are not remembered; so too those that will occur later will no more be remembered than those who will occur at the very end.

In the face of certain death, meaninglessness, and oblivion, what are we to do?

Kohelet’s first answer is to pursue wisdom. This activity, though, gave him no happiness. “For as wisdom grows, vexation grows; to increase learning is to increase heartache,” he writes.

Confused by this result, he decides to try a radically different course. “I ventured to tempt my flesh with wine and to grasp folly,” he says, so that he could empirically determine whether our few days on earth are better spent in the study of wisdom or in the pursuit of pleasure.

Having all the money he needed, he really gave this one the full college try. He bought up everything he could, amassing property, gardens, gold, and slaves. He enjoyed this extreme wealth, but in the end it was a letdown.

Having tried both wisdom—which we should suppose also encompasses a life that includes traditional virtues—and folly, he concludes that wisdom is indeed better. That, however, is cold comfort, because at the end of the day, we all die.

It is game over for the wise person and the fool alike, with no afterlife and no lasting impact.

He hammers this point home by comparing humans to animals:

For in respect of the fate of man and the fate of beast, they have one and the same fate. As the one dies, so dies the other, and both have the same life breath. Man has no superiority over beast, since both amount to nothing.

So too, there is no justice in this world, where the good sometimes die young and the wicked prosper.

That realization drives him to a key insight:

There is nothing worthwhile for a person but to eat and drink and afford himself enjoyment with his means. And even that, I noted, comes from God.

The urge to amass things is a kind of curse from God. The best way to respond to our inevitable fate is to recognize and take advantage of the brief pleasures that God provides. These pleasures include those of companionship and sociality. They encompass both the physical as well as the deeper and more general ones.

Kohelet thus comes to the conclusion that wisdom is this very realization: that one should eat and drink and get pleasure from all the gains he makes under the sun during the numbered days of life that God has given him, “for that is his portion.”

Book learning, like much of everything else, is merely futile and ultimately vain.

But what of morality and the role of God in this life of pleasure?

The God of Ecclesiastes is close to the God of the Deists. This is a God who designed, created, and set into motion the world in its natural rhythms. “Whatever God has brought to pass will recur evermore,” he writes. “Nothing can be added to it, and nothing taken from it.”

God does not seem to care very much about what humans do, either individually or collectively. Nor is God much interested in rewarding and punishing people, whether in this world or in some kind of afterlife. “God is in heaven and you are on earth,” he writes.

But Kohelet does not go as far as the Deists, even if he feints in that direction. Individuals may not be able to please God and get rewarded, but they can annoy God, which is something to be strongly avoided.

One of God’s major irritants is a false or unfulfilled vow:

Better not to vow at all than to vow and not fulfill it. Else, God may be angered by your talk and destroy your possessions.

There is not a lot else, though, that seems to anger God.

When the classical prophets of the Hebrew Bible saw oppression of the poor and the weak, they declaimed at length about God’s displeasure and looming punishment. One striking feature of Kohelet is how comparatively unmoralizing it is.

Kohelet cautions that the love of money leads nowhere, but this is less about morality than about the effect it has on the individual. Similarly, a person should strive for a good name, presumably because it leads to a more pleasant life. Do not curse higher-ups—not because it is immoral, but because “a bird in the air may carry the utterance, and a winged creature may report the word.”

The single place that positively mentions the importance of God’s commandments is the very end of the book. The book’s closing epilogue instructs the reader to “fear God and keep the commandments.” Many scholars see this as a later framing voice, added precisely because Kohelet’s own teaching was so unsettling. Whether or not that is correct, the ending shows that ancient readers already felt the tension that we are feeling.

In fairness, I think the logical conclusions of this line of reasoning scared Kohelet himself.

Later in the book, he strongly asserts that wisdom is far better than folly, and vexation is better than heedless hedonism. Even while returning to this more conventional way of thinking, though, he seems to struggle to justify the reasons for it. The best reason he seems to advance is that too much folly would lead others to think of him as a fool. The cost of folly, then, is social scorn.

So too, at the end of chapter 11, he repeats his central message yet again, but this time adds a caveat that comes out of the blue:

O youth, enjoy yourself while you are young. Let your heart lead you to enjoyment in the days of your youth. Follow the desires of your heart and the glances of your eyes, but know well that God will call you to account for all such things. Banish care from your mind and pluck sorrow out of your flesh, for youth and black hair are fleeting.

Some scholars have suggested that the line about God was a later addition, but it could just as easily have been Kohelet’s own misgivings about promoting a life of pleasure-seeking.

In the end, I think that the most constructive message we might take from Kohelet is that pleasure is natural, God-given, and to be savored and enjoyed when the opportunity presents itself. The opportunity, though, in Kohelet’s world, was not frequent, even for the super-wealthy.

The problem comes when one devotes oneself to the pursuit of pleasure. This is the folly that he criticizes. The active pursuit of pleasure is bad not because it is immoral, but because, in the end, it is not beneficial for the one doing it.

I suspect that we have all had experiences that fall into that category, where we actively pursued pleasure and did things that we later regretted with a sense of shame or foolishness.

Kohelet’s message becomes even more striking when seen against another, sometimes competing, biblical understanding of happiness. It is written at the very beginning of the book of Psalms, for example:

Happy is the man who has not followed the counsel of the wicked, or taken the path of sinners, or joined the company of the insolent. Rather, the teaching of the Lord is his delight, and he studies that teaching day and night.

This is the understanding of happiness that we perhaps most often associate with the Hebrew Bible. It is an understanding that overlaps with the Aristotelian idea that flourishing is best found through the development of virtues. Avoid the wicked and their ways on the one hand, and on the other hand embrace God’s commandments and their continuous study.

This is an understanding that leaves us entirely unprepared for Ecclesiastes.

Kohelet’s worldview seems to have come more from the Epicureans than from any biblical tradition. Happiness is not found in wisdom, with its natural limits and struggles, but in accepting the world as it is—especially the inevitability of death—and taking pleasures without guilt when they present themselves.

Neither Kohelet nor the Epicureans promote a life of licentiousness or gluttony.

Scholars continue to debate how Kohelet, with its jarring message, ever made it into the Bible. But regardless of that answer, it adds a unique and, I think, valuable message through its filtering of a conventional wisdom tradition through a Hellenistic lens.

Kohelet should get the last word here:

Go, eat your bread in gladness, and drink your wine in joy, for your action was long ago approved by God. Let your clothes always be freshly washed, and your head never lack ointment. Enjoy happiness with a woman you love, all the fleeting days of life that have been granted to you under the sun, all your fleeting days. For that alone is what you can get out of life and out of the means you acquire under the sun.

Let me leave you with a couple of questions to think about.

When in your life are you striving for something that may never finally satisfy you?

What ordinary pleasures are already available to you, but repeatedly postponed while you pursue something else?

What might it mean to receive those pleasures gratefully without making them the purpose of your life?

You have been listening to Happiness and the Pursuit of the Good Life with me, Michael Satlow. Readings, resources, and ways to support the podcast are available in the show notes and at mlsatlow.com.

I welcome your questions and feedback.